Ah, the Internet is a wonderful place, especially this viddy heavy 2.0 version. There was a time when if you wanted to see the Pokémon episode that gave 685 Japanese children an epileptic fit you'd have to get in touch with some grubby urchin who just so happened to have a piss poor fifth generation VHS dub. Ugh. You'd probably even have to give him money too. Not even scale money like £10, weird banned infamy money like £40.
The episode in question: Denno Senshi Porygon (Electric Soldier Porygon) was the thirty-eighth show in the original run of the Pokémon TV series. Porygon was naturally dumped from syndication, and worldwide distribution, after putting hundreds of kids in hospital. Ailments ranging from: headaches and vomiting to blindness and being very unconscious. Ouch!
What caused such a hideous reaction?
Allow Wikipedia to fill you in:
"About 20 minutes into the episode, there was a scene in which Pikachu stops some vaccine missiles with its Thunderbolt attack, resulting in a huge explosion that flashed red and blue lights. Although there were similar parts in the episode with red and blue flashes, an anime technique called "paka paka" made this scene extremely intense, for these flashes were extremely bright strobe lights with blinks at a rate of about 12 Hz for approximately 4 seconds in almost fullscreen and then for 2 seconds outright fullscreen. At this point, viewers started to complain of blurred vision, headaches, dizziness and nausea."
Here's a frame by frame breakdown I managed to source from a Japanese website. Brutal!
Thankfully in this electro borders sans world, I can just go on youtube and rustle up a clip. A low resolution clip with dreadful non-seizure framerate, but free nonetheless. I really wouldn't watch this if flashing lights give you headaches. You can feel your eyes straining to adjust even at this pathetically encoded broadcast approximation.
No comments:
Post a Comment