maggette writes, "Some of you may remember the episode of The Simpsons entitled "Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo" [snpp.com] where the Simpsons family all has seizures while watching a Japanese cartoon show called "Battling Seizure Robots." At first, I thought this was just a humerous look at many anime shows (particularly Dragonball Z) which often have a lot of flashing going on during fight scenes. Apparently, however, this is based on an actual incident.
In Patric Drazen's book Anime Explosion! [amazon.com] he writes about a Japanese broadcast of the extremely popular anime Pokemon:
The episode broadcast December 16, 1997 included, among other scenes, someone throwing a bomb at Pikachu. Pikachu responds with his ability to shoot out lightning bolts. Both had happened often enough on television with no ill effects. However, this time the combination of the two was at just the wrong rate of strobing. It induced an epileptic seizure in about seven hundred Japanese children. Most recovered quickly, but a few had to be hospitalized overnight."
Posted by maggette at July 3, 2003 02:58 AMHmmm. I haven't finished the book. The first part is a collection of short (and some longer) essays on various themes in anime (e.g., shojo anime, religion in anime, anti-war themes, etc.). It's not terribly profound, but it's a decent introduction to someone who just wants to get a broad view of the medium. The second part appears to be a collection of essays on specific anime (e.g., Sailor Moon [projectanime.com] and Pokemon).
Posted by: maggette at July 7, 2003 06:05 AM