Even if you have never played a video game in your life, you know what Pokémon (1997) is. Whether you’ve been a fan since its debut three decades ago or a parent with kids who love Pikachu, Eevee, and Charizard, it’s almost impossible to escape. There are dozens of successful video games, a lucrative trading card game, a plethora of merchandise, and, of course, a whole host of movies and TV shows. Its appeal is universal, and rarely, if ever, does the Pokémon Company cause controversy (Dexit notwithstanding).
However, there have been a handful of episodes from the anime that have been banned from the West. You won’t be able to find these episodes on Netflix, the Pokémon Company’s website, or any other streaming site for that matter. Some of these episodes are so controversial that they’ve been scrubbed from existence entirely, never to be seen again. So, in honor of the franchise’s 30th anniversary, let’s take a look at the most controversial episodes of Pokémon that were so polarizing they were banned, from least to most controversial.
6. ‘Satoshi and Negatukesaru! Touchdown of Friendship!!’ (S21, EP21)
Nowadays, Pokémon rarely makes as many glaring censorship errors as it did when it first began airing. The Pokémon Company is very aware of its multicultural appeal, so it tries to be as sensitive as possible when depicting culture, but it slipped during ‘Satoshi and Negatukesaru! Touchdown of Friendship!!’
The title is a mouthful, and astute readers may know that the episode calls Ash by his original Japanese name, Satoshi. That’s because while the episode did air in Japan, it never aired anywhere else, mostly thanks to Ash’s behavior in it. In the episode, Ash decides to don a disguise to fit in with a group of Passimian Pokémon that effectively function as monkey football players. However, in order to do so, Ash dons blackface, which definitely raised a lot of eyebrows in the West. What was meant to be a fun little episode that channeled an excitement for football like NFL Rush Zone (2010), instead was seen as racist, pulled from airing, and was never to be seen again. It’s a shame, too, since, personally, Passimian is a pretty good Pokémon.
5. ‘The Legend of Dratini’ (S1, EP35)
The world of Pokémon rarely has any violence in it. There are evil teams out to take over the world, but even when the show gets dark, it does so in a cartoonish way, which makes episodes like ‘The Legend of Dratini’ stand out all the more.
The controversy mostly stems from one person, a surly old man named Kaiser. Kaiser is the manager of the Safari Zone, but he ruins the fun by pointing a revolver at Ash’s face numerous times in the episode. Guns have always had a sketchy history in animation, and some anime go to extreme lengths to edit them out, like in Yu-Gi-Oh! (2000), where two men are shown to menacingly point at a kid instead of pointing guns at them. Seeing an old man shove one in a child’s face at point-blank range can understandably be a bit uncomfortable for a series that is meant to be kid-friendly. What makes this episode stand out more than ‘Satoshi and Negatukesaru! Touchdown of Friendship!!’ is that this episode actually has ramifications for the anime’s continuity. In this episode, Ash is able to catch a herd of Tauros, but to people in the West, we never knew how he was able to do so, and it’s all thanks to Kaiser and his realistic revolver.
4. ‘Beauty and the Beach’ (S1, EP18)
Team Rocket has always been an iconic part of the anime. Even when later villainous teams would appear and take the spotlight, you can always count on Jessie, James, and Meowth to be around to provide some comic relief. That got taken a bit too far, though, in ‘Beauty and the Beach.’
Beach episodes are nothing unusual in anime. Whether it be Sailor Moon (1992) or Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005), most children’s shows tend to have at least one episode where the character gets to play around on the beach and have fun. The same is true for ‘Beauty and the Beach,’ and even Team Rocket gets involved in on it. However, since James decided to join a beauty contest, he also decided to put on an inflatable body suit with gigantic breasts. That’s what most people tend to remember about the episode, but the extra layers of discomfort come when, in certain dubs, an old man was ogling over Misty’s appearance in a swimsuit. At the time the episode aired, Misty was 10 years old, so combine that with James’ gender-bending breasts, it’s no wonder why the episode was banned in the West.
3. ‘Tentacool & Tentacruel’ (S1, EP19)
‘Tentacool & Tentacruel’ is an unusual episode for a lot of reasons. When it initially aired, there was hardly any controversy surrounding the episode, but it didn’t take long for people to feel pretty awkward about its imagery.
The episode mostly centers around a horde of Tentacool and a giant Tentacruel attacking a city as our heroes try to stop them. It’s a clear send-up to kaiju movies like Godzilla (1954), but shortly after 9/11, the episode was seen very differently. Watching a giant monster destroy skyscrapers and a major city hit a bit too close to home for some, and the episode was banned. It may seem reactionary, but keep in mind that this wasn’t the only instance of movies and television changing their content because of 9/11, like how the marketing for Spider-Man (2002) had to be altered because of the prominence of the Twin Towers. It would eventually return to circulation… only to be banned again in 2005 after the events of Hurricane Katrina. Seeing Tentacruel and an army of Tentacool flood a major city may have been a wee bit triggering. The episode isn’t banned anymore, but it’s still bizarre just to think that an episode of Pokémon was banned not once, but twice!
2. Any Episode Featuring Jynx
If you were to ask a seasoned Pokémon veteran what the most controversial Pokémon of all time is, chances are, they’ll say Jynx. In the games, it’s a fairly solid Ice-Psychic Pokémon that is a good member on any team, but in the anime, Jynx is nothing but problematic.
There was a time when any episode that featured Jynx was aired, it was banned. Why? Because Jynx, at least in her first appearances, had a depiction that wasn’t too far removed from the racist “mammy” caricature as seen in movies like Gone With the Wind (1939). She was a short Pokémon with big red lips, a completely black face, and often served her human trainers. Such a depiction was obviously not the Pokémon Company’s intent, but until Jynx was redesigned for Pokémon Gold/Silver’s release in the West in 2000 to be purple, all episodes featuring her original color scheme were banned. The most famous of these episodes was ‘Holiday Hi-Jynx,’ an episode where a plethora of Jynx serve as elves for Santa, but the same goes for ‘Stage Fright!,’ ‘The Mandarin Island Miss Match,’ and ‘The Ice Cave!.’ Bottom line, if an episode featured Jynx, then there’s a good chance it was banned.
1. ‘Electric Warrior Porygon’ (S1, EP38)
Plenty of Pokémon episodes have been banned around the world, but usually for regional reasons. For example, ‘Tentacool & Tentacruel’ may have been banned for a time, but outside the United States, hardly anyone bats an eye at the episode. But there’s one episode that is so controversial that it only aired once and then was banned immediately afterwards in all territories.
But what made ‘Electric Warrior Porygon’ so infamous? It’s because of one scene in the middle of the episode where Pikachu, not Porygon as some people incorrectly believe, lets out an electric shock and, thanks to the flashing lights from the explosions he caused, produced a strobe light effect that gave hundreds of Japanese schoolchildren epileptic seizures. The event was known as “Pokémon Shock,” and the series had halted production for four months, was forced to feature content warnings in Japan for years, and endangered the anime from being localized in the West. The episode was parodied by The Simpsons (1989) and South Park (1997), and became a well-known bit of pop culture even if you weren’t an avid Pokémaniac. Other Pokémon episodes may be polarizing, but ‘Electric Soldier Porygon’ was actively a danger to people’s health and well-being.
