Hermes Draper's List: Mythbuster on The Pokemon Episode That Caused Seizures

• • Rumor has it that an episode of the popular kid's TV show Pokemon caused over 600 young children in Japan to have epileptic attacks.

• (Japanese: でんのうせんしポリゴン Computer Warrior Porygon, though commonly Electric Soldier Porygon) is a somewhat notorious episode of the Pokémon anime, due to the fact that on its single airing in Japan on December 16, 1997, over six hundred Japanese children suffered seizures, vomiting, irritated eyes and other symptoms due to a flashing strobe effect.
• The episode was never commercially released or re-broadcast anywhere in the world due to it being banned by the Japanese government.
• The scene which caused the seizures was a fifteen-second section in which Pikachu used an Electric attack on some vaccine missiles. The explosion was shown as a bright flashing object which alternated rapidly between red and blue.
• The seizures caused by this episode caused OLM to drop the strobe effects from Pikachu's electric attacks. For years following the incident, a disclaimer was broadcast at the beginning of all Japanese television shows, precautioning viewers to not sit too close to the television screen and watch it only in a brightly lit room.
• This episode also gave the Pokémon anime the dubious title of "Most Photosensitive Epileptic Seizures Caused by a Television Show" from The Guinness Book of World Records.
• Before the series restarted, a special report was aired on April 11, 1998 titled 検証番組 アニメ　ポケットモンスター問題検証報告 Inspection program: inspection report of the anime Pocket Monsters problem.
• Despite Pikachu being the one to launch the seizure causing attack, Porygon has never had an important role in another episode since, while Pikachu has appeared in every Pokémon episode to date, barring side story episodes.
• The seizures caused from this episode have dubiously made the Pokémon anime a frequent reference when discussing Japanese anime and its quick action and flashy effects. Numerous television shows and movies have made parodies with notable references by The Simpsons in the episode "Thirty Minutes over Tokyo" and South Park in the episode "Chinpokomon".
• According to Maddie Blaustein, 4Kids Entertainment did in fact dub this episode, reducing the speed and intensity of the flashing explosion to make it safe, but the episode has still never been shown because of the worldwide ban placed on it by the Japanese government.
• Following the results of the Japanese premiere, this episode has never aired anywhere else in the world.

8 more annotations...

• • On the evening of December 16, 1997 approximately 700 people around Japan were rushed to hospitals and treated for various acute symptoms. The patients were mostly children with convulsive seizures provoked by watching a popular animated TV cartoon, pocket-monsters (Pokemon). It was founded that most of the seizure occurred in the critical scene where there were alternating red/blue frames at 12 Hz lasting four seconds. This occurrence of Pokemon appeared to be related to whether patients have photosensitive seizures. The sufferers may be previously known patients of photosensitive epilepsy, or healthy individuals with first seizures.
• • To elucidate the causal factors of the pocket-monster incident, study Teams were formed by TV-Tokyo, National Association of Commercial Broadcasting (NACB) in Japan and Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK) in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MHW) Study Team as well as Advisory Team from the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications.
• • The NACB and NHK Subsequently formulated guidelines for production of animation programs. The Pokemon series was thus able to again broadcast four months after the incident.
• • The Pokemon Episode 38 was broadcast at 6:30pm to 7:00pm on December 16, 1997. Pokemon had been a very popular television program in Japan and was aired by six TV stations, Including TV-Tokyo. It has a 16.5% share of the audience in the time-slot. It was estimated that 4.15 million families over large areas of Japan watched the said episode. 
• • With the onset of seizures, many were brought to hospitals with most having recovered on arrival. About 200 patients were admitted to the hospitals with two patients being admitted for more then two weeks.
• • After the Pokemon incident,the following recommendations for viewing TV have also been stressed to children to prevent photosensitive seizures. (1) Watch Tv at a distance of more than two meters. (2) Watch TV in well lit room. (3) Don't watch images that occupy the whole TV screen. (4) Manipularte TV images with a remote-control while sitting at some distance.(5) Cover one eye with your hand when you notice flickering  TV images. (6) Avert your eyes from TV images when you feel something is wrong. (7) Don't watch TV in poor physical conditions, such as insufficient sleep, fatigue, and constipation. (8) Don't watch TV for prolonged periods of time. 

4 more annotations...

• On the evening of December 16, 1997, millions of people all over Japan gathered in their homes to watch Pokemon (episode #38). About 20 minutes into the program there was a scene of a rocket explosion that flashed red and blue lights at a rate of about 12 times per second.    This explosion scene was mixed with about five seconds of flashing lights from the eyes of "Pikachu," a popular Pokemon character. Suddenly, viewers started to complain of blurred vision, headaches, dizziness and nausea. Some people even had seizures, convulsions and lost consciousness. A total of 685 children (310 boys, 375 girls) were taken to hospitals by ambulances. Although many children recovered during the ambulance trip, more than 150 of them were admitted to hospitals. Two people stayed in the hospital for over 2 weeks!
• Scientists believe that the flashing lights triggered "photosensitive seizures" in which visual stimuli such as flashing lights can cause altered consciousness.  Although scientists know that approximately 1 in 4000 people (0.5 - 0.8% of children between 4-14 years old) are susceptible to these types of seizures, the number of people affected by this Pokemon episode was unprecedented.
• Soon after this unfortunate incident, Japanese television broadcasters and medical officials got together to find ways to make sure this never happened again. They established the following guidelines for future animated programs:
• Flashing images, especially those with red, should not flicker faster than three times per second. If the image does not have red, it still should not flicker faster than five times per second.
• Flashing images should be displayed for a total duration of less than two seconds.
• Stripes, whorls and concentric circles should not take up a large part of a TV screen.
• Italian scientists have detailed an abnormal brain response to flashing lights in people who suffer from photosensitive seizures.  For both normal volunteers (average age, 15.2 years) and photosensitive volunteers (average age, 18 years), they examined the brain's electrical response to changing light patterns. The researchers found that in normal volunteers, as the flickering lights increased in contrast, the response of the brain increased. At high contrast levels, the brain's response leveled out. The brain response in photosensitive people also increased with higher contrasts, but it did not level out at the highest contrast levels (see figure on the right; data adapted from Porciatti et al., 2000). This was especially apparent when the lights flashed at rates between 4 and 10 times per second. The scientists believe that the brains of photosensitive people have a defective or absent mechanism that controls the reaction to visual information. This may have caused the seizures associated with the Pokemon episode (#38).

5 more annotations...

• This report summarizes background material presented to a consensus conference on visually provoked seizures, convened by the Epilepsy Foundation of America.
• A comprehensive review of literature was performed. Results: Photosensitivity, an abnormal EEG response to light or pattern stimulation, occurs in ∼0.3–3% of the population. The estimated prevalence of seizures from light stimuli is ∼1 per 10,000, or 1 per 4,000 individuals age 5–24 years. People with epilepsy have a 2–14% chance of having seizures precipitated by light or pattern.
• In the Pokemon cartoon incident in Japan, 685 children visited a hospital in reaction to red–blue flashes on broadcast television (TV). Only 24% who had a seizure during the cartoon had previously experienced a seizure.
• Photic or pattern stimulation can provoke seizures in predisposed individuals, but such stimulation is not known to increase the chance of subsequent epilepsy.
• Seizures can be provoked by certain TV shows, movie screen images, video games, natural stimuli (e.g, sun on water), public displays, and many other sources.

3 more annotations...

• A Japanese television network called in  doctors, psychologists and animation experts to find out why  a popular cartoon triggered seizures in hundreds of children  nationwide.
• More than 700 people, mainly school children, were rushed to  hospitals Tuesday after suffering convulsions, vomiting,  irritated eyes and other symptoms after watching "Pokemon," a  popular cartoon based on Nintendo's "Pocket Monsters" video  game.
• Two-hundred people, from age 3 to a 58-year-old man, were  still in the hospital Wednesday with epilepsy-type symptoms  more than 24 hours after the showing, the Home Affairs  Ministry said.
• The network said it plans to cancel next week's show if the  cause of the incident remains unclear.
• TV Tokyo programming division manager Hironari Mori said the  offending section passed inspection before broadcast, but in  hindsight "we believe there may have been problems with  presentation and production technique."
• TV Tokyo imposed a health warning on future episodes,  telling viewers that watching installments of "Pokemon" could  cause fainting and nausea.
• Other TV networks said they were studying their cartoons to  see if they posed a similar risk of "Pocket Monsters"  sickness.
• Dr. Yukio Fukuyama, a juvenile epilepsy expert, said that  "television epilepsy" can be triggered by flashing, colorful  lights. Though the phenomenon was observed before television,  photosensitive epilepsy, as it is also called, has become far  more common as TV has spread. The same symptoms have also  been observed in children playing video games.

6 more annotations...

• • 
    
    
    
    This is just to show a japanese website about the subject and If you want to read it all you have to do is google translate it.
• 『ポケットモンスター』第38話を検証する

• Clip taken from Season 1, Episode 38 - Electric Soldier Porygon/Dennō Senshi Porygon