While this has been looked over many times online by various youtube video makers, it still acts as a springboard into the deeper aspects of the series; in my version I'll be saying why these episodes were banned and what they could've done to sort it out.
Banned due to insensitivity to a recent natural/human disaster
When a certain world event happens, it's common place to not air anything that maybe insensitive to that event, such as not airing certain horror films due to a gruesome murder. Pokemon was no exception as it took down a planned episode involving Earthquakes a few years back and more recently abandoned plans for a special Rocket vs Plasma episode as it involved city destruction which proved too insensitive to victims of the Sendai Earthquake. While the first example could easily be overlooked the fact that only now are we meeting up with Team Plasma ruins what could've been an epic story arc and whatever Best Wishes decides to throw at us now, it won't be anywhere near as good as what was planned.
Banned due to racial stereotyping
The old Tom & Jerry argument. It was suggested mostly by the west that Jynx was portrayed as a racial stereotype akin to the black face comedy routine of the early Hollywood days when in fact it was simply a take on a fashion trend referred to as Ganguro which features an extremely tanned face with lots of gaudy colorful fashion. It was enough of a problem that Jynx's skin soon turned purple. Visual media through the years has gotten away with a lot worst than Jynx; Belgian comic Tintin got away with far worst portraying the people of Congo in a less than flattering light and don't get me started on Tex Avery cartoons or Tom & Jerry's Mother Two Shoes character.
Banned due to firearms
This is a pretty lousy excuse to ban an episode but I guess having a handgun pointed to your head several times during an episode isn't going to impress the parents. Guns seem to be a big issue with kids shows so much to the point of One Piece's stupid bonk on the head 4Kids edit and yet being shot in the face with a shotgun by Bugs Bunny still passes today's censors. What really bothered me about missing this episode was a simple continuity error as this is where Ash caught all his Tauros.
Banned due to sexual content
The most frequently played banned episode "Beauty & the Beach" was banned for the infamous James' breasts scene, but I'm calling double standards on this one. Whenever James has cross-dressed it's not unusual for him to wear a pair of fake breasts to make it more believable, that's common sense, Team Rocket are masters of disguise they wouldn't make it so obvious. I'm even calling foul of the idea of large breasts mainly because of this below.
Explain to me why James' bust was banned and yet the anime's portrayal of Elite Four's Lorelei wasn't and yet her bust is roughly the same size, it makes no sense, 4Kids never even picked it up.
Banned due to epileptic seizures
The infamous Porygon episode which nearly destroyed this anime. The episode featured a lot of high intensity red & blue strobe light effects which even when I watch them make my eyes ache, so for a child not used to it, it's ten times worst. It was so bad that the anime went on a four month hiatus, episode ideas were scrapped during that time including a New Years episode that never went into production and sort of created a backlash in the show's western release, so I went through a period of "Pokemon is Evil" back in the early 00s. In retrospect this episode could've benefited from being remade from scratch, that's all. But the damage was extreme enough to not only ban the episode worldwide but to never see Porygon in the anime as long as the franchise still stands.
So that's it for this legend, I hope this was just as informative as my Nuku Nuku British dub, until next time.
