The latest, and most infamous, toy-and-television craze sweeping Japan will hit the U.S. this fall when “Pokemon,” the “convulsion cartoon” that sickened hundreds of Japanese children, debuts across the United States.
When it airs in September, “Pokemon” will be in most of the country’s major television markets, with about 85 to 90 percent of the nation’s television households able to see the show.
Based on a Nintendo game, “Pokemon” is one of the most popular television programs in Japan and the latest “anime” animated series to cross the cultural divide, following “Astroboy” and “Speed Racer” in the ’70s and most recently, “Sailor Moon” and “Dragon Ball Z.” The Snowlets, the cute mascots of the Nagano Winter Olympics, are probably the world’s most visible example of anime.
“Pokemon’s” reputation precedes it into the American market; in December, about 700 Japanese children were felled by seizures, blackouts and nausea caused by an explosion scene’s flashing lights. This form of photosensitivity closely resembles epilepsy and can affect 1 person out of 200.
It’s extremely unlikely that the same epileptic episodes will happen in the United States, said Al Kahn, chairman of 4 Kids Entertainment, the company bringing “Pokemon” to U.S. television. The red and blue flashes that triggered the symptoms were inadvertently synchronized with the refresh rate, the regular invisible pulsing of a television that occurs when the stream of electrons that forms the picture is redrawn across the screen from top to bottom.
Furthermore, Kahn said, “Every episode is being edited to remove any kind of flashing that could be dangerous. And that one episode that caused the problem isn’t even being aired, so it won’t be seen in the U.S.”
Children in Japan watch television differently than their U.S. counterparts, which also could have contributed to the intense reactions. Japanese children often sit much closer to television sets because rooms are usually smaller, Kahn said. And in some cases, Japanese televisions show more detailed images with higher resolutions than U.S. sets.
“We’ve told people what we’re going to do, so they’re comfortable that it was just a technical issue, not content issue,” Kahn said.
What might be puzzling to American audiences is how the “Pokemon” mania arose, since the first mention of it in the U.S. this country was due to its unfortunate role in prompting seizures. The show is actually based on the popular Nintendo Game Boy game called Pocket Monsters, an extremely detailed version of the virtual pet craze started by Tamagotchi two years ago.
In little more than a year, about $4 billion in “Pokemon” products were sold in Japan. Nintendo plans to introduce the game to U.S. consumers in the fall, in conjunction with the show and just in time for the holiday buying season.
