February 2, 2009 -

Your host, Jack, enjoys the company of Prinplups.
Welcome to the Pokemon Report. We only tease because we love. And we love Pokemon a LOT.

Listen, your mom ruins everything. Her and her PTA, and ideas about what's best for you have made it so that you can't enjoy the horrifying things that pour out of Japanese media every day. She even got to Pokemon.

I'm pretty sure it was moms that led to the ban of all things Pokemon in Saudi Arabia for "enslaving the minds of children." And I'm almost positive it was moms that started the Baptists campaigns against Pokemon for encouraging the theory of evolution.

And I know it was your mom who made sure you never saw any of these episodes of Pokemon. Sure, one of them sent kids to the hospital, and one of them makes light of child endangerment, and a few of them make me want to vomit until my stomach turns inside out, but… what was my point here?

Oh yeah, I hate your mom. And since she's not here, and you're old enough (oh please tell me you're old enough and I'm not going to get in trouble), I've compiled the most famous, and scariest banned episodes of the Pokemon anime. So enjoy.

And please don't tell on me.



Electric Soldier Porygon
Reason for banning: It tried to murder the children of Japan

The most famous of all the banned episodes. It actually made national media and scared parents into freaking out about cartoons in general. During one of the battles, red and blue colors flash on the screen, which in turned triggered seizures in hundreds of children in Japan. TV Tokyo also went back and edited past episodes to tone down flashing light effects (you know, just in case you made it through 37 episodes without triggering a seizure through pure luck). The episode was supposedly recorded in English, but it was never aired. This has also lead to conspiracy theories that Porygon has pretty much been banned from the anime, despite the fact that it was actually Pikachu that caused the flash. Poor old Porygon. The episode really is inoffensive and the flashing lights are innocuous, unless you have epilepsy. Hey if you have epilepsy or something, you probably shouldn't hit play below. Like seriously, I can't have any of my readers dying.





Beauty and the Beach
Reason for banning: Inflato-boobs

It's not so much the crossdressing in this episode that got it banned. James has gone all drag queen on numerous occasions over the course of the show (and for the record, he seems to like it). Other characters have also had their crossdressing moments. No, see, what makes this particular bout of gender confusion unsuitable for American children are those two jiggling, inflatable fun bags protruding from Jame's chest. The dude has huge tracts of land here, people. And if the idea of a male character getting bigger boobs than any other character in the show wasn't offensive enough to the average soccer mom, the many scenes where James flaunts his acquisitions certainly put it over the edge. And poor Misty! Like she doesn't have enough of a self esteem problem, but then to see a guy show up, waggle his gigantic fake bosoms in her face, and then get a better reaction form the mostly male crowd? That's gotta suck.