After the December 16th broadcast of "Cyber Soldier Porygon," all anyone on Japanese TV wanted to talk about was Pokémon. The show was plastered all over TV news shows over the next few weeks and quickly became a major international news story.

But rumor has it that some news stations actually aired an unedited version of the scene in question, and that these re-broadcasts triggered a second wave of seizures among children. The idea is that children who maybe missed the initial broadcast were exposed to the unedited footage in the days that followed, triggering seizures in those who didn't necessarily have a chance to catch the episode "live."

The source of this rumor seems to stem from this Reuters piece from December 1997 entitled "Monster" TV cartoon illness mystifies Japan.

Other children were stricken when they watched TV replays of the offending scene in news reports on the earlier victims.

CNN repeats the claim in their "Japanese cartoon triggers seizures in hundreds of children" piece. The article has a publication date of December 17th at 4:15 am EST, or 6:15 pm JST, roughly 24 hours after the episode aired. It cites Reuters as a contributor.

Some other children were stricken later, when watching excerpts from the scene in TV news reports on the earlier victims.

The BBC also made this claim on a news report that same day, December 17th. It's at the 44 second mark:

monkey

More children had fits when excerpts were replayed on the news.

All of these reports, and then the ones that would follow for years and years later, make a single sentence statement about reruns triggering a second wave but then don't bother to elaborate any further. Because of this some very key pieces of information are missing:

• What network(s) allegedly aired the uncut footage?
• Which news shows?
• What time?
• How many children were a part of this "second wave"?
  

I haven't seen any Japanese language news sources make the claim either. A Japanese page "TV Animation Document Museum" (TVアニメ資料館) mentions a 42 year old man in Nagareyama City, Chiba and a 15 year old boy in Beppu City, Oita losing consciousness after watching a VHS recording of the episode but that's not really the same as catching it on a live news broadcast.

A few years later the book Pokémon Story (ポケモンス トーリー) came out in Japan and provided a timeline of how reporting on the incident went down in Japan. From Page 7 of my translation:

この事故の第一報を伝えたのはNHKで、テレビ、ラジオとも、午後８時代の定時 ニュースから報道し始めました。民放ではテレビ朝日系のニュースステーションが取り上げ、共同通信社も午後10時過ぎた第一報を配信しました。テレビ東京 自身は、午後11時からのニュース番組 『ワールドビジネスサテライト』 のなかで、「ポケットモンスターを見た子どもたちが、気分が悪くなり、全体で約200人近くが病院に運ばれています。事実関係を調べています」というコメ ントを放送しました。

The first news channel to report on the incident was the public broadcaster NHK, who first mentioned it during its regular TV and radio news broadcasts at 8 o’clock that night. TV Asahi stations were the first commercial broadcasters to pick up the story, and the Kyodo News Service made its first report after 10 o’clock that night. TV-Tokyo, meanwhile, made its initial report during its 11:00 PM "World Business Satellite" broadcast with a statement that said "Children who watched tonight's episode of Pocket Monsters have fallen ill, with around 200 people being taken to the hospital. We are looking into this incident."

Is it possible that maybe one of these broadcasts were the ones that allegedly reran the footage? As far as I know none of these TV news reports (the 8:00 pm NHK broadcast, the TV Asahi broadcast, the 11:00 pm TV-Tokyo broadcast) have ever been archived online so we can't really say for sure. But the very next sentence in the book makes it seem like no, no they weren't:

この間、マスコミ数社から放送素材 (放送した番組や問題となった個所の映像) の提供を求められましたが、テレビ東京は断っています。当然の対応でした。

During this time, multiple members of the mainstream media reached out to TV-Tokyo for materials from the show (either the actual episode itself or just the scene in question) but the network denied those requests. This was the obvious response to make.

While TV networks did indeed have access to footage from the episode in question, literally every single Japanese TV news broadcast I've been able to find from this time period refrain from showing the seizure-inducing scene as-is. Instead, they opted to depict the footage as a series of still images.

The December 16th broadcast of Fuji TV's "News Japan" depicts the scene as a series of still images.	The December 17th broadcast of TV Asahi's "Super J Channel" likewise does the same, depicting the scene almost like a slideshow.

If news reports from this early in this incident's news cycle were able to determine that re-showing potentially dangerous footage is maybe not the best idea ever then it's highly unlikely any other network would have either.

At this point, anyone who wants to claim that Japanese news reports caused a second wave then they're going to need to provide some details and/or the actual news report itself. Otherwise I think it's safe to go ahead and mark this rumor as "false."

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