Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Pokemon and its related controversies over the years

Alright, I'd consider this the first real fun and interesting read to whoever stumbles across this blog.  I should preface this by stating the following facts, this site is called the blog of the geedork because I feel there are a lot of qualities that make me both a geek and a dork.  One of such qualities is that, after over a decade, I'm still a fan of the pokemon series.  I don't play the series quite as much as I used to, and very rarely have caught any episodes of the series anymore.  But I still have fond memories, and the series will never be completely gone from my life.  So without further ado, I bring you the meat of this post, the following things are controversies that have occurred around the pokemon series over the years.  I actually posted this not long ago on a forum I frequent, but I feel that a place like this could make a great permanent home for this post:


Gambling
Oh no, the pokemon card game is like any series of cards you collect, each pack is random, so you don't know what you'll get, but this is pokemon! Therefore they are encouraging kids to keep spending money in a gamble to get the pokemon card they want.  Indeed this was the thought process behind a parents' group that attempted to sue Nintendo and Wizards of the Coast (manufacturer of the card game).  In fact, in the European release of the Platinum game, the gambling corner still has the slot machines, but they are non playable, unlike all other international versions of the game and the games before it.

Satan is your leader
Indeed, some fundamentalist Christian groups have accused Pokémon as being linked to Satanism.  For a list of very ridiculous reasons including the fact that pokemon evolve, and that some are of the psychic type, but perhaps the funniest piece of evidence is the fact that part of the pokerap (song at the end of the first season of pokemon) when played backwards sounded like it was saying "I Love Satan."  Check the vid below to hear for yourself.  It actually kinda does, but like most all backmasking "discoveries, this is most definitely on accident.



Thats my likeness your parodying and ruining

(I can see it, do you?  :roll:)
The story is this: In November 2000, Uri Geller, a psychic
who claims to be able to bend spoons, tried to sue Nintendo for $100 million US, claiming that Kadabra, known as Yungerer in Japan, was an unauthorized parody of himself. Besides Kadabra's use of bent spoons to enhance its Psychic powers, the katakana for its name, ユンゲラー, is visually similar to the transliteration of his own name into Japanese (ユリゲラー).   He claimed: "Nintendo turned me into an evil, occult Pokémon character. Nintendo stole my identity by using my name and my signature image."  The lawsuit was thrown out, but since 2003, the pokemon never appeared on a card again.

Racist! Pokemon is Racist!
This pokemon is Jynx as it appeared when the game first launched:
This is Jynx as it appears now:

The story is that Carole Boston Weatherford, a cultural critic, claimed that Jynx, which had recently appeared in an episode of the show Holiday Hi-Jynx, was a negative racial stereotype of African-Americans. She chiefly compared Jynx to the racist characters in Little Black Sambo, and further compared Jynx to Mr. Popo of the Dragonball franchise, a character who is also potentially offensive in his design. This episode was then banned from international airing, and the change you see above then took place in all releases of the games and the anime following the complaint.  Short appearances of the character in the anime were cut from international broadcast, but I believe it was dubbed back in after they recolored her to a purple face rather than black face.  Most interesting though is the belief that some fans hold that Jynx was never racist to begin with, but rather Jynx is more likely inspired by ganguro, a Japanese fashion where girls tan heavily, bleach their hair, and apply large amounts of makeup, instead of a black stereotype. Most people who support this theory base it on Jynx's long, straight, blonde hair, a common attribute of ganguro fashion.

[b]Pokemon is converting our Muslim children![/b]
Some outspoken, fundamentalist Muslims claimed that Pokémon is a Jewish conspiracy that is intended to brainwash Muslim children to make them renounce their faith. These same groups claimed that the word "Pokémon" is a phrase that means "I am Jewish", with the claimers and their followers generally unaware of the franchise's Japanese origin. The "Evolution vs. Creationism" conflict was also commonly brought up. In 2001, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, who is the highest religious authority in the kingdom, issued a fatwā banning the Pokémon franchise, claiming it encourages gambling and promotes Zionism.  Despite the initial banning, which quickly wiped away Pokémon merchandise, especially the card game, from markets in Saudi Arabia, Pokémon video games quickly returned to be sold normally, but under much less demand from local consumers.

Kids can't handle the stuff they put in the original anime
Oh yes, 4Kids (original dubbing company behind the series in America) was scared of controversy in the show, so some of the stupidest, mundane footage was cut out of the series (in addition to the Jynx clips), often this had to do with violence such as the following:

Misty slaps Ash after he tells her that he's okay, presumably because of his apparent lack of care for Pikachu.   Misty hits Brock with a log because he says "to be continued..." rather than beginning the episode.   A Carvanha (a fish pokemon) hits Ash in the back of the head.

but then there are instances like the following that were banned with probably good reason... warning, this seriously is disturbing:


which brings me to the first episode to be banned in its entirety in America:
Beauty and the Beach
In this episode, the female characters all enter a beauty contest. Team Rocket also enters, with James donning a suit with inflatable breasts. One scene of the episode involved James showing off his artificial cleavage for humorous effect, taunting Misty by saying, "Maybe when you're older, you'll have a chest like this!". In one scene, he puffs up his breasts to over twice their original size.

The episode did later air in America being promoted as a lost episode, but, it was heavily edited, and there were no scenes involving James and his inflatable breasts, to my understanding the lost episode has not aired again since its first airing.

this brings us to the second episode to be banned in its entirety in America:
The Legend of Dratini
This is again an example of 4Kids overreacting to violence in the anime, but this time it was the threat of violence rather than the actual act.  Though perhaps you can understand the merit behind the banning of this episode.  It was banned because guns are repeatedly pointed at people threateningly at several points in this episode, including at the children Ash and his friends, and warning shots are fired.


This episode was never edited for a stateside release, and thus there lies a huge continuity issue within the show, as Ash caught a ton of the pokemon Tauros here (if you ever watched the show, its pretty rare to see him catch a pokemon to begin with, so for one to exist where he catches a lot but not air is kind of a big deal), thus leading to a lot of confusion later on when he uses the pokemon to fight in battles.

The only episode banned everywhere
This is not what you're thinking if you know pokemon history, that episode did air in Japan (and I will get to it in a little bit), this one did not.  The episode was titled "Yureru Shima no Tatakai! Dojoach VS Namazun!!", most commonly translated as "Battle of the Quaking Island! Barboach VS Whiscash!!"  The episode was originally set to air in Japan on November 4, 2004, but was skipped due to the episode's similarities to the Chūetsu earthquake on October 23, 2004. The episode was later postponed, but was skipped in rotation order and eventually discontinued. While most of the other episodes were either not dubbed for English-language release or taken out of English-language syndication rotations, this episode of Pocket Monsters Advanced Generation was the first episode to be banned inside Japan prior to its first scheduled airing.

Syndicated episode banned in America post 9/11
These episodes had aired in America, but they were taken out of syndication after September 11th.  Two of them were just banned because of the names of the episodes and nothing more: The Tower of Terror and A Scare in the Air.  The third episode was banned based on content where a giant pokemon called Tentacruel was seen attacking a city including large skyscrapers.  The ban on these episodes have since been lifted.

Pokemon are Nazis (apparently in addition to being Jewish)
Members of the Jewish community accused Nintendo of using an offensive image in the Japanese version of the trading card game on a card:

Is that red thing a swastika??  No... but thats what people believed and it certainly does look like it.  But if you know the history of the symbol, you know what it really is, first of all this one faces left and is not angled, knowing that, you will know that this is really a Manji, the Japanese name for a Buddhist and Hindu symbol, 卍, usually representative of admirable qualities such as peace or intelligence or strength, depending on clockwise or counter-clockwise direction of the arms.  Regardless, the card was banned, and never seen in any cards after.

In the Diamond and Pearl games, the pokemon Registeel appears like this:
However, in the European version of the game and all game releases since, the pokemon appears like this:
Of course you can probably understand why the change was made, just interesting they ever had him in that pose to begin with.

Now the two most serious controversies related to pokemon:
Pokemon killed two children
In 1999, as a promotion for Mewtwo Strikes Back, the first film in the franchise, Burger King released a series of promotional toys in handheld Poké Balls with their Kids' Meals.  Not long after these toys hit the fast food chain, 2 young toddlers suffocated (in different instances but from the same exact situation) when they covered their mouth and nose with half the pokeball cutting off oxygen from the children, and they died.  Burger King recalled all the toys initially and later rereleased them without the pokeball.

Finally, the most infamous pokemon controversy to date:
Anime causes seizures, many many seizures
"Dennō Senshi Porygon", literally "Computer Soldier Porygon", although most commonly translated as "Electric Soldier Porygon", aired in Japan on December 16, 1997 at 6:30 PM Japan Standard Time.  20 minutes into the episode, there is a scene in which Pikachu stops some vaccine missiles with its Thunderbolt attack, resulting in a huge explosion that flashes 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. A few people even had seizures, blindness, convulsions, and lost consciousness, Japan's Fire Defense Agency reported that a total of 685 viewers, 310 boys and 375 girls, were taken to hospitals by ambulances.  Although many victims recovered during the ambulance trip, more than 150 of them were admitted to hospitals. Two people remained hospitalized for over 2 weeks. Some other people had seizures when parts of the scene were rebroadcast during news reports on the seizures. Only a small fraction of the 685 children treated were diagnosed with photosensitive epilepsy.
After the airing of "Dennō Senshi Porygon", the Pokémon anime went into a four month hiatus until it returned in April 1998.  The episode was never aired again,making its original broadcast, its only broadcast ever.  Scientists believe that the flashing lights triggered photosensitive seizures in which visual stimuli such as flashing lights can cause altered consciousness. Although approximately 1 in 4,000 people are susceptible to these types of seizures, the number of people affected by this Pokémon episode was unprecedented.



So there you have it, a list of the biggest controversies surrounding pokemon.  Most of them preposterous, but make for great discussions.  A lot of this truly shows how scared our nation (and other cultures) are to accept cultures from other regions of the world.  Pokemon is harmless, but its also very vibrant and colorful, adults didn't understand it when it first came out, and well, we saw our culture in a state where children were embracing elements of other cultures but the parents were scared and concerned of the subject matter.  Kind of makes you think.

Anyway, I'll probably have more of these pokemon stories in the future, I find them quite fascinating.  Hope you did too.

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