Epileptic-Friendly Filter

Full power! — Halved brightness.

In an effort to avert Epileptic Flashing Lights many broadcasters (particularly in anime) require a dimming effect to be used in high-intensity scenes. This became commonplace following an especially nasty incident where the Pokémon anime caused widespread seizures across Japan.

Sometimes these filters are removed for DVD re-releases, since the regulations demanding them only exist for TV broadcasting. In these cases Content Warnings may be added instead.

When this shows up in a video game expect it in the form of an accessibility toggle or a reduced animation setting.

Compare Brightness Shadows, which is another situation where bright lights can counterintuitively make scenes darker.

Nearly always an Enforced Trope.

Examples

Anime & Manga

• Fate/stay night [Unlimited Blade Works]: This filter is applied when Saber attacks the gorey personification of the grail with the full power of Excalibur.
• Kuroko's Basketball: The series repeatedly dims the lighting during some fast camera work basketball games.
• My Hero Academia: The screen is darkened when All Might shows up to fight the sludge monster at the beginning of the series, and again in multiple occasions such as whenever Present Mic uses his Quirk or in many fights involving Todoroki (such as his fights against Bakugo and Midoriya in the school festival).
• Pokémon: The Series is the Trope Codifier. After the “Electric Warrior Porygon” episode caused the series to be pulled off the airwaves, the show would return with scenes showcasing things like Pikachu blasting people with Thunderbolt with a dimmer filter on these scenes. Western dubs were based on the edited version.
• Pretty Cure:
  • The Netflix dub of Smile Pretty Cure!, Glitter Force, has scenes such as Transformation Sequences darkened in order to avoid causing epileptic seizures in viewers. This is not the case in the original anime.
  • The same goes for the Netflix dub of Doki Doki Pretty Cure, Glitter Force Doki Doki, which has certain scenes lowered in brightness to avoid triggering seizures in viewers. Like in Smile Pretty Cure, this is not the case in the original anime.
• Seiyu's Life!: During a transition cut to a baseball game via a fire lighting in Seiyu's eye, the screen darkens.

Film — Live-Action

• In The Andromeda Strain, Dr. Leavitt has epilepsy that is triggered by a flashing light; however, the production design specifically engineered the lights to not do this to the audience.

Video Games

• Beat Saber has several filters for the light shows that can either turn down the strobing effects or disable them entirely for photosensitive epileptic players.
• Castlevania: Circle of the Moon: The strobing Pillar of Light that leads to the final boss becomes solid in the Advance Collection.
• Flight Rising:
  • Shock Switch, one of the minigames, can be played in a "reduced visual effects" version, which removes the electricity flashes.
  • In the Coliseum, there are options to turn off certain animations, which include "weather effects" (e.g. the lightning flashes in the Thunderhead Savanna), as well as flashes/shakes when a teammate or enemy is hit.
  • The World Map has an option to disable animations/visual effects, mainly due to some of them having flashing/flickering effects. When the World Map was updated in 2021 to include animations, the announcement post mentioned that having this toggle was for players of the game who were sensitive to these visual effects.
• Mother Series: While all Nintendo 3DS and Wii U Virtual Console games have a dark filter over them, the releases of EarthBound (1994) and (in Japan) Mother 3 have particularly intense filters, as battles in the series are known for having particularly flashy and colorful psychedelic effects. Concerns over epilepsy were one of the primary reasons that it took over twenty years for EarthBound to get any kind of rerelease in the West, so the systems' ability to implement the filter allowed an opportunity to finally reintroduce the game to audiences.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Super Mario Bros. 2: During its conversion from Doki Doki Panic, the speed of the waterfalls was drastically reduced for this reason, as the original speed made them a risky sight for the eyes of photosensitive players (especially since the water-themed levels 3-1 and 5-1 have huge waterfalls, thus making almost the entirety of the current screen display them).
  • In the GameCube version of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, the Black Chest Demons cursing Mario was shown as a flash of light covering the entire screen. The Nintendo Switch remake changes it to Mario being struck by lightning, to reduce the amount of flashing light on screen.
• Zelda II: The Adventure of Link: The Monochromatic Impact Shot displayed when Link dies makes the screen display flashing lights in the NES version. While the effect is kept in the Collector's Edition version released on the GCN, all subsequent rereleases of the game eliminate the flashing effect due to health concerns.

Western Animation

• Star Wars: The Clone Wars: During some lightsaber fights the screen is briefly dimmed as many lightsabers are swung in a rapid fashion. This is especially noticeable in fights featuring General Grievous, as he wields four lightsabers and is able to rapidly rotate them in full 360 degree arcs, all independently of each other.

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