A weekly look into American otaku culture

Reuters recently reports on how the American film “Babel” is currently creating a stir in Japan. The film shows a series of events from around the world and how they are all connected in some way or another. One of the stories takes place in Japan, and examines the story of a deaf mute schoolgirl. The role provided an oscar nomination to the Japanese actress, and so her performance was heavily anticipated when the film was released last week in her native country.

But with in the first couple of days, there were 15 reported cases of nausea caused from watching the film. The scene in question involves the Japanese girl going to a dance club. The scene lasts for a minute and involves a light strobing effect to show the chaos with in the dance club. This scene has forced the film’s distributors to provide warnings on the movie’s website and on the film’s movie posters.

The film has been shown in over 40 different countries, and yet Japan is the only nation to have reported difficulty with watching the film.

Why is Japan the only country with this problem?

My guess is that the Japanese still fear the effects from the Pokémon Shock.

For those of you that don’t know, the Pokémon Shock is an event from ten years ago in which strobing effects from an episode of Pokémon caused hundreds of reported cases of nausea and epileptic seizures. Since the event, anime has been shown with a warning message advising the viewer to watch the show in a well-lit room. Animators have also ceased with using all forms of strobing effects in their shows.

Yet the recent uproar over “Babel” is a clear indication that the Japanese still fear the affects that modern visual media has over the human body. While they can no longer blame anime or video games, the dance club scene provided the perfect placebo for getting everyone sick to their stomach again. Given the fact that the film has never had any problems before, it is ridiculous to start saying that it has always been dangerous.

But as ridiculous as it is, I do recall having the same uneasy fear when I saw the dance club scene when the film came out in America last year. In fact, when I watch any pre-shock anime featuring strobing effect, I do wonder if it is possible to get a seizure from watching it. Looks like I still fear the shock as well. But that is a shame, because the strobe effect is probably one of the coolest things you will ever see on film. That’s why it was used in “Babel”.

The Pokémon Shock is something that killed a little bit of the creative potential in all of Japanese anime. I only hope that “Babel” doesn’t provide the catalyst for killing amazing visual effects in cinema as well.