Pokémon Shock Edits -- Episode 003 (Page 1)

After the December 16th, 1997 airing of Pocket Monsters Episode 038, "Cyber Soldier Porygon," OLM went back over the first 37 episodes of the TV series and re-edited them to reduce any strobe lights, flashing, quick background color changes, or any other special effects that even slightly resembled the types of images that sent all those children to the hospital during the "Pokémon Shock" incident. This was probably done both out of an abundance of caution as well as an attempt to show the public at large that OLM and every other party involved was taking the incident seriously.

Thankfully, the versions of Episodes 2 - 37 that the Japanese Hulu site has of the series are all the pre-Porygon edits, meaning it is now possible to do side-by-side comparisons of the changes made. Below is a gallery of those changes. The 1997 original broadcast version is on the left while the 1998 re-edit is on the right.

WARNING

The animated gifs below contain rapidly flashing images that may potentially trigger seizures for people with visual sensitivities. While there was never any issues reported when the "unedited" episodes originally aired in Japan back in 1997, and the gifs presented here are all kept at a small 300 x 225 pixel size, viewer discretion is still advised.

If you are concerned about viewing such images then please navigate away from this page immediately.

- Dogasu's Backpack

Episode 003 "Get Pokémon!" (A Part: Getting Caterpie)

This stock animation of Satoshi throwing a Monster Ball at the camera is slowed down.

The amount of time the ball spends in the foreground is reduced significantly.

The beginning part with the close-up to Caterpie's face is removed, which is weird because I wouldn't think black and dark green would be considered a "dangerous" combination...?

Satoshi's victory pose is slowed down and the movement in the background is frozen.

Various quick changes are slowed down for the 1998 re-edit.

Anytime the characters throw anything at the screen the animation is slowed down to reduce the amount of time we spend looking at full screen quick cuts.

The electricity around the Pocket Monsters logo is removed.

Previous (Episode 002, Part B)

Next (Episode 003, Page 2)