Controversies with Pokémon

Amaury, you don't get it. It's hard to do that many edits. The point isn't that they banned the episode, the point is that it was perfectly justified. OKAY, I admit it MAY have been a hasty desision made from panic, but even THEN, the edit they planned to use in the dubbed version wasn't much better.

 

Amaury . . . I don't know if i'm getting through to you. Okay, so imagine you are a parent. Imagine your child dies from watching this episode. Would you really not care if they kept airing the episode, even with the changes? You would be absolutely fine with the thing that killed your child to remain on air? I'm saying that the parents who lost their children, not only them even the one's who's children were hospitalized had the right to want the episode banned. Pokemon had no right to continue airing the episode at that point. There were no other options that would take away the pain that all those parents felt.

 

Hey Hero--you forgot the banned episode with the guy with the gun. I forgot what it was called, but it was banned it for violence.

 

Here's a couple of interesting facts about the strobe light effect:

It blinks at a rate of about 12 Hz for approximately four seconds in almost fullscreen, and then for two seconds outright fullscreen

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 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.

It flashed for 4 seconds. 240 Color changes. 240. It's bad. VERY bad.[DOUBLEPOST=1356595391][/DOUBLEPOST]

It's not really prominent to me. Tom and Jerry did much worse as far as violence goes.

 

I'm honestly not trying to come out as heartless, because I'm not. My beliefs are different.

I apologize if I'm offending anyone, though.

What was their version?

Like I said, I'm not trying to sound heartless, because I'm not, but, honestly, not really. I mean, yes, I would be sad, but I wouldn't go out and make a big stink about it.

Take the September 11 attacks, for example. There were two episodes of Pokemon that were temporarily banned and one episode that had a temporary name change (A Scare in the Air -> Spirits in the Sky). After things calmed down, they were unbanned and A Scare in the Air got its original name back.

In regards to the parents and the banning of it, it wasn't the entire episode that caused the deaths, it was only one scene from it, so if you want my opinion, it's quite silly to be against the whole episode rather than the scene that caused the dilemma.

 

It's just the principle of the matter. The parents suffered a terrible loss, and I think that one single episode of Pokemon being banned was no where near enough to make up for that. In my mind it's surprising that Pokemon wasn't banned in general over this event, not that I would be happy to see Pokemon banned or anything.

I don't see any problem with the name of that episode. That's really unrelated to the case at hand. The name was changed simply for being a bit to close to the September 11 attacks. They didn't want to cause an uproar. However, in the case of the Porygon episode, they caused the deaths. There was no changing it to stop an uproar, the damage was already done at their hands.

Pokemon fans should in fact be grateful that it was only a single episode that was banned, and not the entire series.

 

I really don't think that Pokemon is a big enough problem in real life. :/

 

Just because they don' t show any blood doesn' t mean they aren' t fighting. Why do you think you get a game over screen when your whole team is wiped out ? No, having ways to magically bring them back to perfect health doesn' t make pitting them morally okay. The fact that Nintendo addressed this issue in later games is an admittance of its fridge horror potential in and of itself.

Thankfully, none of this matters because it' s just a frigging game/cartoon. In the eyes of a child the pokemon fights are akin to a card game, most of them don' t actually realize what the subtext is and those who do probably healthily dismiss it as cartoon nonsense.

Here' s a list of fridge horror in pokemon : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fridge/Pokemon

There' s a high chance some kids would interpret such a warning as an "I dare you double dare you to watch it", not to mention they might miss the warning. Besides, as Nights already mentioned that episode is just bad publicity the creators themselves would gladly do without. Baning it is simpler, cheaper, more respectful, and it doesn' t prevent anyone to understand the overall story. Win win win win.

 

It's not a problem in real life at all, except for the banned episodes that caused problems in one form or another. If they were smarter about how they animated the episodes it might have been fine, but in general, Pokemon really isn't a problem at all in real life. People just like to complain about things either for attention, or just because they don't like the way it is

 

There's also the other two options I had there.

And, yes, it causes issues with the storyline when they ban episodes. Take The Legend of Dratini, for example. Ash's Tauros came out of nowhere.

 

He's only used the leader of his herd like, what? 3 Times? Most people that were old enough to remember that from back then and don't know about the episode being banned are old enough to understand that stuff happens off-screen. So, no, they didn't come out of nowhere, they were simply caught off-screen.

 

It wouldn' t hide the fact that this episode would be a painful reminder for some people. Don' t take me wrong, I hate censorship in general, this one instance in particular just doesn' t bug me given the circumstances.

And yes, censorship in general might harm the narrative, but I was talking about this episode in particular.

Whose decision was it anyway ? For all I know the show creators might be the ones who decided to take that episode down.

 

I don't disagree that things can happen off-screen, but Ash catching them and meeting Dratini were a major part of the plot, and they wouldn't have something major like that happen off-screen.

 

Not the way they mentioned it in the dub. They just said Ash caught them when he went to the Safari Zone. They never mentioned anything else. If they had mentioned Dratini, then yes, it would have caused more issues.

 

I was mostly going by this, where it said it caused continuity problems.

 

Wikipedia's unreliable though. You can't base something with that as your only source.

 

Dragon Ball Z is more violent than Pokemon. I mean, c'mon--do you see people complaining about Dragon Ball Z?

 

Not really. They require sources, and if no sources are provided, any material that isn't sourced is removed.

 

I did, actually. DBZ was much more censored in my country than Pokemon ever was. The bloodiest parts were systematically cut out, some episodes didn' t even make sense as a result. They also cut that Hitler cameo in one of the OVAs. Apparently in the US the big taboo was nudity, when kid Goku was naked (which happened quite often) they either cut it out (as in the DBGT opening for instance) or drew trunks to hide those pesky dragon balls.

I' d argue that Pokemon is just as violent as DBZ (if not more). Sure, there' s no blood in Pokemon, but that' s just sugar-coating, what matters is the "good guys" morality since they' re presented as role models. Besides, if you ask me not being graphic is the pernicious choice, at least when it' s bloody it' s honest.

 

But they can't blame Goku for being naked. He had to be naked because he lived in the forest, right? And c'mon--Goku had a monkey tail--which meant he wasn't human. Maybe half, but still...