ah pokemon, a light-hearted show suitablefor all ages….well, almost. yes even the pokemon anime has fallen victimto the almighty banhammer on multiple occasions. some of these episodes are hard to find intheir original form and most haven’t seen the light of day unless you do some heavyfishing on youtube or other streaming services. hey i’m warren from censored gaming andhere are 5 banned pokemon episodes 1 - holiday hi-jinx this episode featured the appearance of avery controversial pokemon; jynx. an article was written by a woman named caroleboston weatherford who stated that jynx resembled a negative stereotype of african americans.
the character was believed to be a referenceto the story ‘the little black sambo'. this controversy caused the episode to bepulled off the air and hasn’t been shown since the year 2000. jynx was later recolored to match their currentlook in the pokemon games but the episode has still been kept locked away. jynx’s controversial appearance has alsoled to banned episodes where the pokemon makes a short cameo. these episodes are stage fight!, mandarinmadness, and the unnamed ep 250 which was never seen in english.
2 - ep035 ‘the gun episode’ this episode was banned due to frequent usesof handguns throughout the storyline. at one point the safari zone warden pointsa gun at ash’s head and in another instance he fires a gun at team rocket. this is also the only time kanto's safarizone is seen in the anime. this means, despite being mentioned in previousepisodes, english fans will never get to see ash and the gang actually go there. 3- beauty and the beach this controversial episode was heavily censoredbefore being banned altogether.
in beauty and the beach, james wore an inflatablebody suit which granted him large breasts so that he could win a beauty contest. an elderly man also stares at misty’s breastsfor a long time. in the japanese version the elderly man alsohas very questionable dialogue, with them saying that he is looking forward to havingfun with her in a few years. 4 - pikachu and pichu this pokemon short featured japanese narrator,sakai noriko, who was arrested in 2009 and later convicted of drug abuse. this incident resulted in the short beingbanned from japan and it has neither re-aired
nor been featured on any home video formatsince. 5- ep038 ‘the seizure episode’ this episode was banned worldwide after onlyappearing once in japan. it contains one particular scene where a seriesof flashing lights led to a total of 685 japanese children being rushed to the hospital withsigns of epilepsy. because of how serious epilepsy is we won’tshow it here but the incident was so crucial it took the show on hiatus for four monthsand forced the producers to go back and fix the lighting of previous episodes of the show. aside from brief cameos, porygon and its evolutionshave not made any appearances in the anime
since. and there you go, 5 episodes of pokemon thatwere taken down, and proof that even the child-friendly pokemon universe has been no stranger to controversyat times. thank you for watching.