(でんのうせんしポリゴン[Notes 2], Dennō Senshi Porygon?, lit. Cyber Soldier Porygon) is the 38th episode of Pocket Monsters of Pocket Monsters (1997 series).
This particular episode has been notoriously linked to cases of epileptic seizures caused by strobe lights flashing red and blue seen in certain parts. Due to this, it was banned globally from airing or being released on home video due to safety risks, was only aired once, and is considered officially non-existent in marketing outside of Japan.
Synopsis[]
- ようやくマッチャシティにたどり着いたサトシ一行。しかし、長い旅のせいか、いつも大活躍のピカチュウはずいぶん疲れがたまっている様子。サトシは、ピカチュウを診てもらうためにポケモンセンターへ向かう。ところが、センター内はパニック状態。センターにあるモンスターボール転送システムがうまく作動しないため、センターから送ったはずの珍しいポケモンが全然届かなかったり、すり替えられたりしてしまっていたのだ。この転送システムを開発したという秋葉原博士の様子がなんだかおかしいことを不審に思ったサトシたちは、博士の研究所に忍び込むが……。[1]
- Yōyaku Matcha City ni tadoritsuita Satoshi ikkō. Shikashi, nagai tabi no seika, itsumo dai katsuyaku no Pikachu wa zuibun tsukare ga tamatte iru yōsu. Satoshi wa, Pikachu o mite morau tame ni Pokémon Center e mukau. Tokoro ga, Center-nai wa panic jōtai. Center ni aru Monster Ball tensō system ga umaku sadō shinai tame, Center kara okutta hazu no mezurashii Pokémon ga zenzen todokanakattari, surikaeraretari shite shimatte ita no da. Ko no tensō system o kaihatsu shita to iu Akihabara-hakase no yōsu ga nandaka okashii koto o fushin ni omotta Satoshi-tachi wa, hakase no kenkyūjo ni shinobikomu ga……
- Yōyaku Matcha Shiti ni tadoritsuita Satoshi ikkō. Shikashi, nagai tabi no seika, itsumo dai katsuyaku no Pikachū wa zuibun tsukare ga tamatte iru yōsu. Satoshi wa, Pikachū o mite morau tame ni Pokemon Sentā e mukau. Tokoro ga, Sentā-nai wa panikku jōtai. Sentā ni aru Monsutā Bōru tensō shisutemu ga umaku sadō shinai tame, Sentā kara okutta hazu no mezurashii Pokemon ga zenzen todokanakattari, surikaeraretari shite shimatte ita no da. Ko no tensō shisutemu o kaihatsu shita to iu Akihabara-hakase no yōsu ga nandaka okashii koto o fushin ni omotta Satoshi-tachi wa, hakase no kenkyūjo ni shinobikomu ga……
- Satoshi and friends have arrived in Matcha City at last. However, perhaps due to the long journey, Pikachu, who is usually very active, seems to be quite exhausted. To have Pikachu examined, Satoshi heads to the Pokémon Center. But inside, the Center is in panic. The Monster Ball Transfer System isn’t working properly, so rare Pokémon that should have been sent from the Center either never arrive or are swapped out. Suspecting that something is strange about Professor Akihabara, the developer of this transfer system, Satoshi and his friends decide to sneak into the professor’s laboratory, however……
Episode plot[]
Our heroes journey to the Pokémon Center in Matcha City to help Pikachu rest. While there, they find Nurse Joy frustrated due to an issue surrounding the Pokémon Transport System. She explains that the transporter allows her to send Pokémon from one place to another quickly, but that recently, the transported Pokémon are getting lost in transition, and at the other end, the wrong Pokémon comes out. Due to this, she called in the Pokémon Transporter's inventor, Professor Akihabara to fix it.
Brock theorizes that this could be the effects of a computer virus. Ash misunderstands this as per usual, thinking that the machine has a medically diagnosed human-contracted virus. Professor Akihabara disregards this as impossible, telling them that he designed it too well for it to be a computer virus. However, as he digs deeper into the cause, he seems to panic and rushes out of the Pokémon Center without a word.
After this, the Heroes go to Professor Akihabara's lab to figure out what the issue is. While there, they find a giant transporter designed for not just Pokémon, but people! Professor Akihabara explains that he had been working on this along with a prototype cyber Pokémon named Porygon. He states that his work had been stolen by Team Rocket, and that the reason Pokémon are going missing as explained above was due to them having been stolen by Team Rocket.
Professor Akihabara states that he could send in an anti-virus, but he fears doing so would kill Team Rocket and the Pokémon inside. He decides to send Ash and friends in there instead to defeat Team Rocket against their will. Within cyberspace, they ride upon Porygon's back to find the virus Team Rocket put in, characterized by a roadblock sign.
Team Rocket sees them coming and sends out Arbok and Wheezing, but Porygon defeats them. Jessie and James then send out the prototype Porygon that they had stolen to do battle with Ash's Porygon, but in the end, it is sent blasting off along with them after Pikachu hits it with a Thundershock. However, just as this happens, they're assaulted by something else.
It turns out that Nurse Joy hired another technician to upload an antivirus which is now destroying foreign bodies (humans included) without bias. Team Rocket and the heroes attempt to escape, but Team Rocket is shot down. Ash and his friends rescue Team Rocket and their Porygon just fast enough to survive it, though the lab is destroyed by an explosion. Team Rocket go on to thank Ash, fleeing soon after.
After seeing Professor Akihabara break down due to the destruction of his system, the heroes then make their way back to the Pokémon Center, where Nurse Joy informs them that the transporter is working again. The heroes decide not to tell her that she almost deleted them by accident.
Debuts[]
Character[]
Pokémon[]
Move[]
Trivia[]
- "Dare da?:" Porygon (East Asia)
- The Wednesday iteration of the Kanto Pokérap was skipped due to this episode.
- This episode is most often referred to by English speakers as "Electric Soldier Porygon", a common mistranslation which results from misinterpreting the episode's title as 「電の戦士ポリゴン」 instead of the proper 「電脳戦士ポリゴン」.
(Flashing images, discretion advised) The scene after Pikachu destroys the antivirus' missiles, which is the most notorious and prominent case of alternating bright red and blue effects seen in the episode
- The episode is infamous for using visual effects that health issues resulting from photosensitive epilepsy (PSE) in a number of viewers, including seizures and blindness, an incident known as the "Pokémon Shock" (ポケモンショック Pokemon Shokku, or sometimes also called the Porygon Shock ポリゴンショック Porigon Shokku) by the Japanese press. As the episode was broadcasted in 4.6 million households at the moment, 685 viewers were taken to hospitals soon after the scene was shown at 6:51 PM JST, but only two people remained hospitalized for more than two weeks. Due to this, the episode has been banned worldwide and the industry has imposed warning labels at the start of animated series telling people not to sit too close to their TV screen and to watch in a brightly lit room. It should be noted that PSE itself happens in 1 to 4000 people.
- After the shock, the Pokémon anime went on hold for four months, affecting various later episodes and even Pokémon: The First Movie, and it returned on TV Tokyo in April 1998 with "PM('97)039", which was preceded by an explanation broadcast regarding the incident. Following the incident, Porygon2 and Porygon-Z have never appeared in the anime.
- The intense alternating red and blue flashes throughout the episode, as its film was played at 24 frames per second, each color flickered at 12 Hz, which is a standard speed seen in actual strobe lights. These sequences ranged from 0.5 to 4 seconds in duration, with the problematic sequence running for 4 seconds.
- Coincidentally, the rapid strobe light-like flashes themselves are very similar to bright visual effects commonly seen in older video games released up to that point. Cases of seizures by them have occurred as early as 1981.
- Since the episode was banned worldwide, OLM decided to edit every rapid flashing scene for the first 37 episodes from the TV series, dim the lighting, reduce the use of flashing visuals including in the opening theme, and use these changes as a base for future episodes to preemptively prevent health issues. This edit was used as the base of the English dub and all reruns and re-releases in Japan.
- Flashing images, especially those with red, should flicker slower than three times per second. If the image does not have red, it still should not flicker slower than five times per second.
- Flashing images should not be displayed for a total duration of more than two seconds.
- Stripes, whirls and concentric circles should not take up a large part of the television screen.
- Certain scenes were dimmed down, slowed down, or a combination of both in order to conform to the guidelines set up and make the audiences not to have seizure, after the Pokémon Shock incident.
- This episode also infamously holds the Guinness world record for "Most Photosensitive Epileptic Seizures Caused by a TV show".
- Ironically, the colors of the flashes, red and blue, match the international Generation I releases Pokémon Red Version and Pokémon Blue Version.
- Bright flashing lights, rather than in brightly lit room, are actually the most dangerous in dark environments and the TV itself (or other displays) being on high brightness/contrast, where the effect is enhanced, and therefore greatly increasing the risk of epilepsy.
- The episode itself has been referenced in pop culture shortly after its release, with some adult Western shows, specifically The Simpsons and South Park, created episodes of their own ("Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo" and "Chinpokomon", respectively) making fun of the Pokémon Shock.
- As such, when the anime series came to Hulu in Japan, Hulu did not post this episode in their archive and there is a note saying" "Season 1, Episode 38 is not available in accordance to our company intentions." Since all episodes (excluding episode 1) on Hulu are based on their initial broadcast on TV Tokyo, the previous episode did show a preview of this one despite being banned. This episode is also not listed on the official website.
- The official websites, specifically episode guide on the official Pokémon website and the old version of the English version Pokémon website (which lists all episodes including banned ones in the dub) fail to recognize this episode. However, the updated Season 1 list (which simply omits numbers and summaries for the banned episodes) skips from 37 to 39.
- Also, the numbering lists in Japan used on on Kids Station's upcoming rerun scheduling and the series listing on Amazon, however skip from 37 to 39 to recognize that this episode is missing, thus recognizing this episode's existence, even though it is never shown, and Netflix also skips from episode 37 to episode 39 the same way. Kids Station and Amazon Prime, however, replaced the preview at the end of the previous episode with the one for "Pikachu's Goodbye" in its place.
- The preview at the end of the previous episode was not changed to "Pikachu's Goodbye" in the Mandarin dub unlike the Kids Station reruns of "Ditto's Mysterious Mansion", and this episode's preview was left in and dubbed (with this episode officially titled 電腦戰士3D龍 (Traditional)/电脑战士3D龙 (Simplified)), even though this episode was not aired in Chinese. The episode itself was never shown in the Mandarin dub, however.
- According to Maddie Blaustein on the Serebii forums, 4Kids did dub this episode. Eric Stuart also stated in 2016 that the episode was dubbed. Contradicting these statements, Veronica Taylor has said in an interview that they never dubbed it and would never be dubbing it. However, in another interview, she acknowledged that she was actually unaware on whether or not it was dubbed and that Eric Stuart would know more about it since he was the voice director for the anime at the time. Rachael Lillis also said that she was not sure as whether or not the episode was dubbed.
- There are also indicators that 4Kids was never licensed the episode for dubbing or distribution in the first place.
- The versions received by 4Kids were from the post-Porygon incident edits as of 1998, and the series dubbing did not start until after this incident.
- Even though the Pokérap skipped Wednesday due to this episode's disappearance, using the Tuesday variant in "Ditto's Mysterious Mansion" and the Thursday variant in "Pikachu's Goodbye," the footage shown in the Pokérap for Porygon was not from this episode, instead using generic artwork with a background behind it, whereas footage from the 35th episode of the series was used for some Pokémon, including Tauros, in spite of not being dubbed. 4Kids was given the distribution rights to use footage from the latter, however it was ultimately not dubbed due to network television censorship of scenes depicting gun usage.
- The dub's "Who's that Pokémon?" segment for "A Way Off Day Off" uses a different voice for Porygon from this episode, even though its Japanese and English names are the same.
- There are also indicators that 4Kids was never licensed the episode for dubbing or distribution in the first place.
- Official sources are often misquoted as confirming that 4Kids reduced the intensity of the flashing effect and that the episode was banned by the government. Neither of these are confirmed to be the case.
- Alongside the anime itself, Generation I games released internationally have some moves such as Thunderbolt or Hyper Beam have their flashing effect shortened due to this episode's incident. Even Nintendo gaming media as a whole no longer allows rapid flashes, as it has since become much stricter at preventing more problems.
- This is the last episode of the Japanese version of the Pokémon animated series to have the TV Tokyo's red circle logo and the チュッ! text during the opening credits and the ending credits due to removing the TV Tokyo's red circle logo and the チュッ! text from the opening credits and the credits in the next episode.
- On September 19, 2020, the official international English Pokémon Twitter account posted a tweet that read "Porygon did nothing wrong", likely as a reference to this episode, and modern consensus that Porygon was a scapegoat due to Pikachu being the franchise's mascot. The tweet has since been deleted.
Mistakes[]
- After Pikachu attempts to shock the floating head, Misty's hair is a darker shade.
- While the two Porygon fight, one of Misty's shoes is colored green.
- When everyone first arrives back in the real world, Porygon is seemingly floating in mid-air above Misty's head. However, one cut later, it is between Misty and Brock.
- When Porygon goes unstable, Bulbasaur's pupils are missing.
See also[]
Notes[]
- ^ This title was given in the Next Episode Preview attached to PM('97)037 during the original Mandarin dub run. The episode itself never aired in this language.
- ^ Kanji equivalent: 「電脳戦士ポリゴン」
References[]
- ^ (1997). Animedia (January 1998 issue). Gakken.
