NovaBrunswick
Canada Connoisseur
Throughout its 23-year run, the Pokémon anime has fallen foul of the censors a few times, which has ended up with some episodes being heavily edited, attracting controversy, or even outright banned. Here are some of the most famous (infamous?) examples of episodes which were banned or were controversial:
Do you know of any other banned or controversial anime episodes?
- Electric Soldier Porygon - The "seizure" episode that sent over 700 Japanese kids (and some adults) to hospital. The offending scene was a sequence of rapid red-and-blue flashes caused by some missiles being blown up with a Thunderbolt. Since then, Porygon and its evolutions have never been seen in the anime again, except in small cameos, even though it was Pikachu who caused the seizure-inducing effect and not Porygon.
- Beauty and the Beach - The scene where James disguises himself as a woman (with inflatable breasts!) has made this episode notorious amongst the fandom. While it was initially banned, the episode did air on Cartoon Network in 2000 as a "lost episode", only to seemingly disappear from the airwaves again. As well as the aforementioned scene with James cross-dressing, a creepy old man also tells Misty that she reminds him of his granddaughter (the Japanese version is even less subtle, with the old man saying he's looking forward to having fun with her in eight years' time).
- The Legend of Dratini - This episode was banned due to a scene where the Safari Zone warden points a gun at Ash and his friends. Although it was meant for comic effect, it was seen by the English dubbers as being too dark for a children's show, and also taking America's problem with gun violence into consideration. The banning of this episode caused a huge plot hole in the English dub, as this was the episode where Ash caught 30 Tauros, which caused some English viewers to wonder where he got 30 Tauros from.
- Holiday Hi-Jynx and EP250 - At the time of the episodes' first airing, there was a controversy in the US alleging that Jynx was a racist stereotype of African-Americans, because of her black skin. While Holiday Hi-Jynx did air again with Jynx redesigned to have purple skin, EP250 was banned and never aired in English since the producers felt she was too significant to the storyline to be cut out completely.
- BW023 and BW024 - This two-parter was meant to be the big showdown between Team Rocket and Team Plasma. However, in 2011, when the episodes were about to be aired, a devastating earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, and they were pulled from the air as a result. The episodes have since been retconned out of the anime's continuity, meaning they will never be aired again.
- SM064 - This episode of the Sun & Moon saga was banned due to Ash painting himself with what looked like blackface to disguise himself as a Passimian. Blackface is a racist depiction of African-Americans, making this one of the most recent episodes to be banned.
Do you know of any other banned or controversial anime episodes?
