Outraged Japan Moms Call For Animation Standards

Outraged Japanese mothers on Thursday demanded that TV networks adopt technical standards for animated programmes after hundreds of children nationwide suffered seizures while watching a top-rated cartoon.

More than 700 mainly school-age children were rushed to hospitals after watching bright flashing lights on the popular Pocket Monsters programme on Tuesday night.

We are gravely concerned at this escalating race, this competition by the television networks to show ever more stimulating images, targeting even children, the countrys largest mothers organisation said in a statement.

Its all commercialism. With incidents like this, we cant help but believe that this competition for ratings among the networks is encroaching even into programming for children, said Miyo Inoue, who heads the New Japan Housewives Association.

 

She called on the networks to conduct a thorough vetting of programmes from a medical standpoint to prevent a recurrence of the Pocket Monster phenomenon.

The National Parents and Teachers Association (PTA) of Japan said the incident will awaken parents to the fact that they must monitor what their kids are watching on television.

The group, which does not obejct to animated programming per se, said the Japanese government should think about legislation mandating screening devices in television sets, known as V-chips in the United States.

The method allows parents to blank out programs they do not want their children to watch.

Networks such as Fuji Television and public broadcaster NHK said they would screen all of their animated programming to ensure that it does not contain brightly coloured strobe-like sequences that are suspected of causing visually induced sickness.

An executive at a leading producer of animated programming said the Pocket Monster incident will probably lead Japan to develop technical standards for animation production. When an animated show leads to kids ending up in emergency rooms, networks and animation production companies have to re-examine what they are doing, said the executive, who declined to be identified.

Japanese animation is a mutli-billion dollar a year industry and cartoons have dominated television programming and movie theatre line-ups for decades. Many Japanese animated films and programmes are popular outside of Japan.

Network executives said the Pocket Monster incident would not cure Japan of its animation addiction or lead to a cut in the amount of time devoted to animated programming.

But they said parental concern was likely to lead networks and production companies to more carefully examine the quality of animated fare.

((Tokyo.newsroom +81 3 3432-8018 email: tokyo.newsroom zreuters.com))