TB038: Cyber Soldier Porygon

"Cyber Soldier Porygon"
Information
Series	Pocket Monsters, Pokémon the Series: The Beginning
Subtitle	Pocket Monsters
№	38
Opening(s) and Ending(s)	Japanese Opening Aim to Be a Pokémon Master Ending Fantasy in My Pocket
Staff credits	脚本(きゃくほん) (Screenplay) 武上純希 (Junki Takegami) 絵(え)コンテ (Storyboard) 井硲清高 (Kiyotaka Itani) 助手(じょしゅ)監督(かんとく) (Assistant director(s)) 井硲清高 (Kiyotaka Itani) 作画(さくが)監督(かんとく) (Animation director(s)) 志村隆行 (Takayuki Shimura)
In other countries
Japan	Title でんのうせんしポリゴン Official Den'nou Senshi Porygon Literal Den'nou Senshi Porigon (Cyber Soldier Porygon) Airdate December 16, 1997
Japan	Title でんのうせんしポリゴン Official Den'nou Senshi Porygon Literal Den'nou Senshi Porigon (Cyber Soldier Porygon) Airdate December 16, 1997
South Korea	Title 전뇌전사 폴리곤 Jeon-noe Jeonsa Polligon
South Korea	Title 전뇌전사 폴리곤 Jeon-noe Jeonsa Polligon
Anglosphere	Title Cyber Soldier Porygon
Anglosphere	Title Cyber Soldier Porygon
Details
Main	Ash Ketchum, Misty and Brock
Recurring	Jessie, James and Nurse Joy
Character(s) of the Day	Professor Akihabara
Pokémon	Ash's Pikachu, Team Rocket's Meowth, Ash's Bulbasaur, Misty's Psyduck, Jessie's Arbok, James' Weezing, Porygon (Two: Professor Akihabara and Team Rocket's), Ninetales, Magikarp (flashback)
Badges or Classes
Title cards
Japanese
For other title cards, see here and here

— (Japanese: でんのうせんしポリゴン, Hepburn: Den'nou Senshi Porygon, trans. Cyber Soldier Porygon) is the 38th episode of Pocket Monsters of Pocket Monsters (1997 series).

This particular episode has been linked to cases of epileptic seizures caused by strobe lights flashing red and blue. Due to this, it was banned globally from airing or being released on home video due to safety risks, was only aired once, and is considered officially non-existent in marketing outside of Japan.

Synopsis

Ash and his friends travel to Matcha City and find at the local Pokémon Center that there is something wrong with the Poké Ball transmitting device. To find out what's wrong, they must go inside the machine, where they meet a strange Pokémon named Porygon, who is the key to get Team Rocket (and themselves) out of the cyberspace.

Episode plot

Our heroes journey to the Pokémon Center to help Pikachu rest. While there, they find Nurse Joy frustrated due to an issue surrounding the Pokémon Transport System. She explains that the transporter allows her to send Pokémon from one place to another quickly, but that recently, the transported Pokémon are getting lost in transition, and at the other end, the wrong Pokémon comes out. Due to this, she called in the Pokémon Transporter's inventor, Professor Akihabara to fix it. Brock theorizes that this could be the effects of a computer virus. Ash misunderstands this as per usual, thinking that the machine has a medically diagnosed human-contracted virus. Professor Akihabara disregards this as impossible, telling them that he designed it too well for it to be a computer virus. However, as he digs deeper into the cause, he seems to panic and rushes out of the Pokémon Center without a word. After this, the Heroes go to Professor Akihabara's lab to figure out what the issue is. While there, they find a giant transporter designed for not just Pokémon, but people! Professor Akihabara explains that he had been working on this along with a prototype cyber Pokémon named Porygon. He states that his work had been stolen by Team Rocket, and that the reason Pokémon are going missing as explained above was due to them having been stolen by Team Rocket. Professor Akihabara states that he could send in an anti-virus, but he fears doing so would kill Team Rocket and the Pokémon inside. He decides to send Ash and friends in there instead to defeat Team Rocket against their will. Within cyberspace, they ride upon Porygon's back to find the virus Team Rocket put in, characterized by a roadblock sign. Team Rocket sees them coming and sends out Arbok and Wheezing, but Porygon defeats them. Jessie and James then send out the prototype Porygon that they had stolen to do battle with Ash's Porygon, but in the end, it is sent blasting off along with them after Pikachu hits it with a Thundershock. However, just as this happens, they're assaulted by something else. It turns out that Nurse Joy hired another technician to upload an antivirus which is now destroying foreign bodies (humans included) without bias. Team Rocket and the heroes attempt to escape, but Team Rocket is shot down. Ash and his friends rescue Team Rocket and their Porygon just fast enough to survive it, though the lab is destroyed by an explosion. Team Rocket go on to thank Ash, fleeing soon after. The Heroes then make their way back to the Pokémon Center, where Nurse Joy informs them that the transporter is working again. The heroes decide not to tell her that she almost deleted them by accident.

Debuts

Character

• Professor Akihabara

Pokémon

• Porygon
• Ninetales

Move

• Conversion
• Sharpen

Trivia

Who's That Pokémon? / Dare da?

• Porygon's silhouette in Dare da?
• Porygon in Dare da?

1/2

• "Who's that Pokémon?:" Porygon (unaired outside of Japan)
• This episode is most often referred to as "Electric Soldier Porygon", a common mistranslation which results from misinterpreting the episode's title as 「電の戦士ポリゴン」 instead of the proper 「電脳戦士ポリゴン」.
• The episode is infamous for using visual effects that caused seizures in a number of viewers, an incident known as the "Pokémon Shock" (ポケモンショック Pokemon Shokku, or sometimes also called the Porygon Shock ポリゴンショック Porigon Shokku) by the Japanese press. 685 viewers were taken to hospitals soon after the scene was shown at 6:51 PM JST, but only two people remained hospitalized for more than two weeks. Due to this, the episode has been banned worldwide and TV Tokyo puts warning labels on their Thursday evening anime series telling people not to sit too close to their TV screen and to watch in a brightly lit room.
  • After the shock, the Pokémon anime went on hold for four months, and it returned on TV Tokyo in April 1998. Because of this, Porygon2 and Porygon-Z have never appeared in the anime by a bad flash.
  • Since the episode was banned worldwide, Nintendo decided to edited every rapid flashing scene from the TV series, removing them, and making them darker and being slower, to re-edit the earlier episodes, and for future episodes, so the TV audiences should not have seizures.
    • Flashing images, especially those with red, should flicker slower than three times per second. If the image does not have red, it still should not flicker slower than five times per second.
    • Flashing images should not be displayed for a total duration of more than two seconds.
    • Stripes, whirls and concentric circles should not take up a large part of the television screen.
    • Certain scenes were dimmed down, slowed down, or a combination of both in order to conform to the guidelines set up and make the audiences not to have seizure, after the Pokémon Shock incident.
  • This episode also infamously holds the Guinness world record for most Photosensitive Epileptic Seizures Caused by a TV show.
  • As such, when the anime series came to Hulu in Japan, Hulu did not post this episode in their archive and there is a note saying "Season 1, Episode 38 is not available in accordance to our company intentions." Since all episodes (excluding episode 1) on Hulu are based on their initial broadcast on TV Tokyo, the previous episode did show a preview of this one despite being banned. This episode is also not listed on the official website.
    • The official websites, specifically episode guide on the official Pokémon website and the old version of the English version Pokémon website (which lists all episodes including banned ones in the dub) fail to recognize this episode. However, the updated Season 1 list (which simply omits numbers and summaries for the banned episodes) skips from 37 to 39.
    • Also, the numbering lists in Japan used on on Kids Station's upcoming rerun scheduling and the series listing on Amazon, however skip from 37 to 39 to recognize that this episode is missing, thus recognizing this episode's existence, even though it is never shown, and Netflix also skips from episode 37 to episode 39 the same way. Kids Station and Amazon Prime, however, replaced the preview at the end of the previous episode with the one for "Pikachu's Goodbye" in its place.
  • The preview at the end of the previous episode was not changed to "Pikachu's Goodbye" in the Mandarin dub unlike the Kids Station reruns of "Ditto's Mysterious Mansion", and this episode's preview was left in and dubbed (with this episode officially titled 電腦戰士3D龍), even though this episode was not aired in Chinese. It is unknown if a Chinese dub was actually produced for the episode itself, however.
• According to Maddie Blaustein on the Serebii forums, 4Kids did dub this episode. Eric Stuart also stated in 2016 that the episode was dubbed. Contradicting these statements, Veronica Taylor has said in an interview that they never dubbed it and would never be dubbing it. However, in another interview, she acknowledged that she was actually unaware on whether or not it was dubbed and that Eric Stuart would know more about it since he was the voice director for the anime at the time. Rachael Lillis also said that she was not sure as whether or not the episode was dubbed.
  • There are also indicators that 4Kids never received this episode, as the versions received by 4Kids were from the post-Porygon incident edits, and the series dubbing did not start until after this incident, whereas the official Pokémon websites, including an old version of the English one that lists all the episodes banned in the dub, do not list it as "episode 38", in order to treat this episode as non-existent. Further supporting this, the footage shown in the Pokérap for Porygon was not from the episode, it was artwork with a background behind it, whereas footage from the 35th episode of the series was used for some Pokémon, including Tauros, even though it wasn't dubbed. Finally, the dub's "Who's that Pokémon?" segment for "A Way Off Day Off" uses a different voice for Porygon from this episode, even though its Japanese and English names are the same, indicating that they never had access to the original Japanese audio for its voice.
• Official sources are often misquoted as confirming that 4Kids reduced the intensity of the flashing effect and that the episode was banned by the government. Neither of these are confirmed to be the case.
• This is the last episode of the Japanese dub of the Pokémon anime to have the TV Tokyo's red circle logo and the チュッ! text during the opening credits and the ending credits due to removing the TV Tokyo's red circle logo and the チュッ! text from the opening credits and the credits in the next episode.

Mistakes

• After Pikachu attempts to shock the floating head, Misty's hair is a darker shade.
• While the two Porygon fight, one of Misty's shoes is colored green.
• When everyone first arrives back in the real world, Porygon is seemingly floating in mid-air above Misty's head. However, one cut later, it is between Misty and Brock.
• When Porygon goes unstable, Bulbasaur's pupils are missing.

Gallery

The heroes are at a different city named Matcha City, although Pikachu seems very exhausted

The heroes find a Nurse Joy, who is receiving various calls of something wrong about the Pokémon Transport System

Nurse Joy and the programmer, Professor Akihabara, are investigating this issue

Ash tries to imagine how the vaccine would work

The heroes have located Akihabara's mansion

Inside the mansion, they come across a holographic image of Akihabara's head

The heroes are about to enter the cyber world

Porygon appears to break their fall

Team Rocket is trying to take all the Poké Balls, although the heroes happen to arrive

After Porygon uses Conversion, it attacks Weezing

A screen of Professor Akihabara appears

The heroes move Team Rocket's barrier

Professor Akihabara shocked, knowing that anything can go wrong with Nurse Joy's plan to use a vaccine program

Professor Akihabara tells Ash, Brock, and Misty that a vaccine program is being installed

The vaccine program detects Ash, Misty, and Brock as viruses

The vaccine missiles are being fired

The portal's location

The vaccine releases a powerful beam of light, and the heroes try to close their eyes

Bug holes are created as a result of the powerful vaccine attack

Team Rocket's excitement makes Porygon go unstable

Pikachu releases an electric attack to destroy the missiles

Two of the missiles still make it through the portal, and Akihabara's mansion is destroyed

Everyone back in the real world

Back in the Pokémon Center, the Transport System is working again, as the journey continues