Pokemon episode banned after it causes seizures in 700 children

Did you hear about the shocking reactions 700 children had to a scene in Pokemon?

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by Ellie Hooper |
Published on

Back in 1997, 700 Japanese children were rushed to hospital, after experiencing seizures during an episode of popular cartoon Pokemon.

As they sat down to watch Pikachu use his lightning powers to blow up some missiles, the tots experienced seizures caused by the flashing, bright images.

The episode was banned after the incident

As a result, the episode, known as ‘Electric Soldier Porygon’ was banned, and the entire cartoon was taken off air.

Pokemon even suffered a backlash on social media for the incident, and stocks in their company plummeted.

And now popular blog Kotaku has revealed the reason why so many kids were affected by the episode.

According to them, 1 in 4000 people suffer photosensitive seizures, and with so many people watching that particular episode (nearly 4 million), more were bound to experience symptoms.

The episode is now doing the rounds online again, but we haven’t included it here, for obvious reasons.

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