Pokémon Panic | It's Super Effective!

0:00 i wanna be the best there ever was to beat all the rest yeah that's my cause the pokemon franchise as we know it launched in 1996 in the form of a humble pair of game boy games pokemon red and green since then it has grown into the highest grossing media franchise of all time out earning mickey mouse star wars and the marvel cinematic universe that yellow rat with red cheeks has ruled the pop cultural landscape for the 20 odd years since and with sword and shield recently becoming one of the top three highest earning sets of games in the series history it doesn't look like pokemon's domination will end anytime

0:45 soon but pokemon hasn't always been a media darling in fact it's early years were plagued with intrigue moral panic and a lot of concerned parents so how did pokemon go from being a pop culture juggernaut in the making to a subject of fear and confusion this is the story of pokemon panic pokemon gotta panic to kick things off we have to go back to december 1997 about nine months before the anime series debuted in the united states by then pokemon was already airing its 38th episode in japan and it was one for the history books because when the notorious computer warrior porygon episode aired tragedy struck viewers across

1:32 japan were treated to a sequence of rapidly flashing red and blue lights when pikachu used an electric attack what should have been nothing more than an exciting few seconds of television turned into a national panic when over 700 people were stricken ill with symptoms including seizures vomiting and eye irritation as a result 685 children across japan were affected and shares of nintendo fell by about almost five percent the pokemon anime was also put on hiatus for four months while nintendo and olm the anime studio behind the series tried to figure out what the hell had happened to this day computer warrior porygon has never been aired on tv again

2:19 unfortunately it was computer warrior paragon that really brought pokemon to the international stage yikes two days after the episode aired the new york times read the headline tv cartoons flashes sent 700 japanese into seizures the name of the show pocket monsters doesn't even get mentioned until the 10th paragraph but even so this was one of the first times that pokemon got the attention of the american press and it wasn't a great first impression the anime eventually returned to air with broadcasters airing a pokemon problem inspection report to explain the cause of the incident and apologize for it if you have three minutes to spare give it a watch it's got a friendly ass lady explaining why

3:05 red and blue lights at 24 frames a second caused the illness while being surrounded by pokemon plushies despite the investigation and apology the computer warrior paragon debacle was just the first of many many times when pokemon would come under scrutiny if you grew up in the us in the late 90s and were a fan of pokemon trading cards you probably know what i'm gonna talk about next yes the trading card games which hit the scene shortly after the video games and anime was the subject of school teachers are within months of its debut the ripple effect of the card game's release was felt on playgrounds across the country kids were getting emotional over losing their valuable cards and parents had concerns too and in september 1999

3:52 two mothers teamed up to file a lawsuit against nintendo of america saying that their kid's new obsession was more than just a passionate hobby but straight up gambling in their minds the process of buying more and more packs of cards in the hopes of getting a dragonite was much like the lottery a little too much like lottery for their liking of course they could have just stopped buying their kids pokemon cards but um you know yeah we'll leave we'll leave that that that logic for another day oh also um the act of buying a bunch of mystery things so you can have a chance to win another thing sounds oddly familiar with something uh

4:38 that rhymes with matcha anyhow still the pokemon black market thrived on the playground at least according to sensationalized stories from the time in october 1999 the la times described the phenomenon as trading pits all across the country pokemon cards were banned from schools according to officials they were disrupting learning and poisoning playground friendships clearly pikachu was just tearing people apart from the inside teachers and parents also blame the missing homework and missing the school bus on kids preoccupation with the cards one principle not sensing the irony said it's just become such a monster a pocket monster you might say

5:25 oh also some of y'all might already know this but pokemon cards have been a hot commodity for a while and now they're only getting more and more popular fun fact did you know that a 1999 first edition charizard holographic pokemon card in its peak mint condition is worth up to 300 000 us dollars so yeah if you've ever gotten your card taken during school i think you're i think your teacher owes you a lot of money meanwhile the core concept of the franchise itself was causing debate as well as you probably know pokemon is a game where you capture different monsters form bonds with them and level them up through battles with different trainers and wild pokemon now the games constantly reinforce the fact that through these battles you help

6:11 the pokemon grow and the pokemon help you grow you know the lyrics you know you teach me and i'll teach [Music] you know um you know like the original uh not everyone thought that was a good thing though one disgruntled mother wrote into the washington post calling it animated fighting a writer for the l.a times said the whole competition between trainers starts to look like fighting the honolulu star bulletin described matches like a cross between professional wrestling and fighting lacking another reference point many would compare these fictional battles actual illegal and cruel real-life animal competitions gotcha and if you felt like you could maybe go to the movies to take a break

6:58 from all this gambling complaining and fighting you were about to be sorely surprised pokemon the first movie was released in american theaters in late 1999 a triumphant end to what had been an extremely successful first year in the united states and primetime news covered it in an msnbc segment entitled pokemania a term that would become quite common the pokemania segment is notable for a few reasons it's a perfect time capsule of a simpler days and if you wanted a nostalgia trip i suggest check it out we get to see kids loading up plastic bags full of pokemon cards purchased at their local toys are us a toy expert named ira galin assures viewers that the trend has at least another year before it goes

7:45 stale and anchorman brian williams poses this burning question is pikachu going to be the furby of 1999. and finally an actual child psychologist says that parents should not let their kids be near any aspect of the franchise because as she says the message is violence this plea did not work out very well though so many kids were out of school the first day of the film's release that they dubbed it the pokeflu burger king also wanted to get a piece of this pokemon fever and a promotion worth 22 million dollars burger king distributed tens of millions of little pokeball themed toys with their kids meals i'm sure some of you watching at home remember these toys they were part of a massive promotion

8:31 and there were 57 different toys to be had but you may not remember those massive recall that happened after several children tragically suffocated because of a dangerous design flaw with the pokeballs the toys came in that is a lot heavier than the other stuff we've talked about but it shows that not all pokemon panic was hysteria burger king circulated news of the recall in national tv ads in pediatricians offices and ers and in thousands of its restaurants uh with that sad chapter behind us we can dip back into the sort of pokemon panic we've grown used to questionable moral outrage sure parents teachers and even some psychologists had a problem with pokemon but they had nothing on the various religious groups who decided that

9:17 thou shall not enjoy pikachu was the 11th commandment one common criticism was that the pocket monsters themselves were akin the demons which um sure another issue is that pokemon promoted darwin's theory of evolution which i guess is bad also i love imagining how someone saw this and when by the gods that's darwin theory of evolution some people even took issue with the way the game sounded comparing the game's sound effects to the sound of children chanting but that's not all other religious folks were concerned with the game's portrayal of ghosts and channelers or people that could channel spirits which you might remember from

10:04 the creepy pokemon tower section of the game others found pokemon objectionable simply because it came from japan and had references to the culture there which you can actually get a little taste of in one of our two part videos about anime localization come check it out and finally people took issue with what we can all agree is a blessed part of the pokemon series a poker rap because according to them if you play the poker rap backwards you can hear the words i love you satan now i i played the poker rap backwards and i can safely say that it does not say i love you satan maybe i don't know maybe you can hear who knows anyhow so who could stop this wave of religious paranoia who is

10:50 powerful enough and respected enough that people who hear i love you sing in an anime jingle would listen to them none other than the final boss of christianity pope john paul ii himself yes in the wake of the first pokemon movie's debut in england the vatican assured its followers that pokemon just wasn't worth worrying about the vatican went as far as saying that pokemon had no harmful moral side effects and stating that the game was built around friendship that's right pope john paul ii knew pokemon existed and that given his blessing so that's gotta be the end of you know the story right you know the the pope was like pokemon or chill and you know you all need to settle down anyway pokemon transition from being the

11:37 hot new franchise gobbling up all the money in the world to a pop culture mainstay that um still gobbled up a bunch of money now pikachu is earned arrest don't you think well things did seem pretty good for a while new games were released new pokemons were revealed ash ketchum traveled around the world and all in all things became pretty routine but a little over a decade after the first wave of pokemon panic peta would put pokemon in its crosshairs and released pokemon black and blue a parody game coinciding with the release of the non-parody games pokemon black 2 and white 2. the copyright lawsuit waiting to happen took nintendo to task for the way pokemon had been treated over the years

12:22 rehashing the argument that trainers battling pokemon was tantamount to animal abuse you'll be shocked to hear that pokemon black and blue was not a very pleasant game to play in general but it couldn't have come at a worse time because if the black and blue game creators had done an ounce of research into pokemon black and white or its sequels they would have learned that the moral ambiguity around capturing and battling pokemon is the literal theme of the games pokemon black and white centers on an organization trying to free pokemon from their masters the main argument of the plot is proving that the bond between pokemon and trainer is good natured and special after all and that isn't the first time this poke haters complaints have been

13:08 addressed in the games themselves you know the gambling thing pokemon originally had a trainer classification called gambler one that they'd eventually phase out along with other gambling aspects because the panned european game information organization figured that people might not be thrilled about it after the seizures the pokemon anime would never use that type of animation again the card games doesn't promote bullying or stealing cards no matter how many trading pits supposedly popped up on playgrounds heck the pokemon series doesn't promote mean behaviors of any kind and nearly every single episode ends with folks getting along and the violence well ash ketchum can't stop getting into plot lines where he learns not to push his pokemons too hard and

13:54 take good care of his injured ones okay so we're good right it's been settled and that pokemon is awesome and that it isn't the moral scourge of pop culture right oh yeah all right we haven't talked about pokemon go you already know that pokemon go is one of the most famous mobile games of all time by 2020 it had over 1 billion global downloads and has grossed 3.7 billion dollars in revenue which is more than every shrek film combined just to give you context shouts out to shrek i learned all the words the smash mouth hit single all-star thanks to shrek but with every popular new thing comes a lot of panic first of all people have to be

14:41 told to stop playing pokemon go near railroad tracks or other dangerous places they also had to be told to stop playing the game while driving because of course thousands of people were doing that and these warnings weren't exactly undeserved two men fell dozens of feet off a cliff and had to be taken to the hospital after being distracted by pokemon go a woman was killed in japan by a driver too focused on pokemon go to watch the road but pokemon go mishaps weren't only user error the holocaust museum in washington dc tried desperately to get poke stops removed from their premises because that's definitely not the place to be thrown pokeballs but the most unintentionally quaint backlash comes from a belgian

15:27 town called gerb gerbis gerbis gerbis which banned groups of 10 people or more in certain areas why because people were all clustering around making noise and taking up all the parking spaces while playing pokemon go so why has pokemon inspired such varied forms of panic over the last two plus decades why have people made such a big deal about a game where you gather a team of six critters and walk through the weeds with them well in some specific cases a big deal needed to be made the anime episode that caused seizures set a standard for safer animations on one of the most popular cartoons on television the burger king incident forced the company to rethink the way they made kids toys and the u.s consumer protection and safety commissions took a deeper look at their guidelines as well now the

16:13 script was meant to end here but i have i have some issues that i need to speak on the real controversial aspect that no parent committee or any popes have even talked about and that's how in pokemon kids are just sent out of their homes at like 14 to go get these pocket monsters that are definitely not pocket sized well well some are but most of them aren't harmless i'll tell you what also think about how crazy it is think about how crazy it is that a 14 year old can just go out and catch god and apparently god is is a normal normal type also all the ghost type pokemons have terrifying descriptions and stories like uh benett from third gen is just pokemon chucky uh drift loon

16:59 from 4th gen looks cute right well this thing apparently tries to lift up children and send them to their deaths and gengar from the original first gen has an interesting pokedex description on pokemon moon it says it apparently wishes for a traveling companion since it was once human itself it tries to create one by taking the lives of other humans hmm so gengar was human so i looked into this so there's a quite a bit of ghost type pokemons that are said to be from the spirits of dead people also speaking of that kadabra is also rumored in the pokemon universe to have once been a boy with great psychic abilities that was turned into a pokemon so it begs the question are all cadabras just little akira level

17:46 esper kids turned pokemon or do cadabras clone themselves who the hell knows uh anyhow i forgot what i was going with this um but listen uh this is the end of the pokemon panic video it's time for the classic ending talk you know the you know the drill if you haven't clicked the subscribe button uh press that and uh uh once these uh rectangles pop up you know you can check out check them out check out some other videos that we have i hope you guys have a good one and let me know down in the comments uh which is your favorite pokemon now i don't have a like the number one best pokemon in my uh my book but i do love slack off they are simply adorable and i respect the way they live their

18:32 lives uh now i shall end this with the pokemon rap i want to be the best king jolteon dragonite ghastly ponyta period polygraph butterfly catch him catch him gotta catch them all pokemon i'll search across the land the far and right release from my hand the power that's inside bend the mark poliwag nidorino gold dug ivysaur grimer victor bell voltres needle king farfetch abraha jigglypuff kingler reichhorn wigglytuff catch him catch him gotta catch them all gotta

19:18 catch em all pokemon