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Japanese 'Toon Apparently Triggers Mass Seizures
From Japan, an answer comes: Sometimes.
More than 700 youngsters, ages 3 and up, have been treated there for epileptic-like seizures after apparently being made sick while watching a popular cartoon series Tuesday night on TV Tokyo. Reports placed the number of children still hospitalized today at between 120 and 200.
Each victim was a viewer of Pokémon, an animated series based on Nintendo's Pocket Monsters games. The convulsions seem to have been triggered by the depiction of an explosion, followed by five seconds of blinking red eyes flashed by the show's lead character, Pikachu, according to Reuters News Agency.
"It gave me a headache. Lights kept flickering in my eyes, then I felt sick," 14-year-old Hiroshi Kobari told the Japanese newspaper Mainichi. "It was like getting...carsick."
"Television epilepsy" is how one doctor explained the phenomenon to Reuters--seizures caused by bright flashes of light from a TV set. The condition isn't fun to experience--or witness--but it's not dangerous, with swift recoveries expected in most cases, the physician told the wire service.
The problem Pokémon was broadcast at 6:30 p.m. Tokyo time on Tuesday night. The blinking-eyes sequence aired about 20 minutes into the installment--an episode about a child and a monster battling an anti-virus computer program from within the computer.
"During editing, that particular portion didn't call my attention or bother me," producer Takemoto Mori told the Associated Press. "I'm really sorry that the kids got sick watching their favorite cartoon."
Today in Japan, another outbreak of seizures occurred as children watched videotapes of last night's episode. In response, a video store chain pulled all rental copies of Pokémon from its shelves.
As a further safeguard, the episode will not be aired on 30 other Japanese stations that have yet to carry the show. TV Tokyo is also considering canceling next week's program if experts can't pinpoint exactly what it was about the episode that made the kids sick.
Lest we forget the boob tube can indeed sometimes cause health problems, let it be noted that this is not the first time a TV show, or personality, has been blamed for inducing seizures. In 1991, an American woman's brain disorder was linked to Entertainment Tonight coanchor Mary Hart's voice.
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