*** 「シオンタウンの音楽」 ("Song of Shion Town") "Lavender Town Tone" Analysis (+ "Ghosts in the Machine" Analysis)
ライサンダー・ゴエトとレジロ (Version 2.2 2/12/99
Part 1: http://www.cornus.lensig.net/index538a.html
Part 2: http://www.cornus.lensig.net/index538b.html
Part 3: http://www.cornus.lensig.net/index538c.html
Appendices: http://www.cornus.lensig.net/index538d.html

Overview [$OVR]

The phenomenon of the "Lavender Town Tone" is a legend that involves a bizarre spate of medical cases and deaths from around the country that have been connected to the "Pocket Monsters" (Pok?mon) series of games, in particular the first two games of the series, "Red" and "Green". Though the event is largely unheard of due to disclosure laws for companies based in the Kyoto Prefecture, there is a large amount of information that has been brought into the open by a number of dedicated individuals, including 関 内直 (Seki Uchitada) 伊勢 満朝 (Ise Mitsutomo) and 佐藤 治情 (Satou Harue), to whom this page is dedicated. Thanks also go out to 安藤 景忠 (Andou Kagetada) for providing images and animated .gifs of the visual phenomena. This analysis will discuss the other phenomena that is often confused with the "Lavender Town Tone", known as "White Hand Sprite", "Ghost Animation" and "buried alive model", as well as the semi-related developer-tag that was inserted into the game, and how to safely perform these "easter eggs" in post-first wave cartridges.

History of the Game [$HIG]

The first cases of the "Lavender Town Tone" and associated events were reported a few months after the release of of "Pocket Monsters Red and Green" for the handheld "Game Boy" videogame console. These videogames were wildly popular with children between the ages of seven and twelve (their core demographic), which was no doubt one of the reasons why the "Lavender Town Tone" had the level of severity that it did. In the game, the player takes on the role of a "Trainer", whose task it is to capture, tame and train wild creatures called "Pocket Monsters" for battle. These games, and the two newest additions to the series, "Pocket Monsters Gold and Silver", an anime, manga, figurines, a collectible card-game and home console games have resulted in Pocket Monsters becoming a multi-billion dollar franchise. In one part of the game, the Trainer comes to a small, out-of-the-way place called "Lavender Town" (シオンタウン). This town is one of the smallest hamlets in the game (aside from the Trainer's own home town), and possesses very few of the services available to the Trainer in every other city in the game - indeed, the location would be unremarkable were it not for the "Pok?mon Tower" (ポケモンタワー) located there - a colossal building that holds the graves of hundreds of deceased Pok?mon. It is theorised that, because of this location in the game, at least two hundred children lost their lives, and many more developed sudden illnesses and afflictons - and this does not consider the vast waves of unreported illnesses or deaths whose cause went unnoticed.

History of the Pathology [$HIP]

It was not until Spring/Summer of 1996 that the cases that would eventually become linked to the Lavender Town Tone began to surface. The earliest record of the acknowledgement of the effects of the Lavender Town Town that the author could find came from an internal report made in June 1996 by the company Game Freak Inc. (株式会社ゲームフリーク), which was then leaked by one of its former employees, Ms. Satou Harue. In it, an employee gives a list of names, dates and symptoms - records of children between the ages of 7 and 12 who had suffered various medical problems as a result of playing Pocket Monsters Red and Green versions. Some records are listed below, with the full listing in Appendix A [here]. (It should be noted that entries in the Appendix also include symptoms borne not from the "Lavender Town Tone" [an audio phenomenon] but from the so-called "White Hand Sprite", "Ghost Animation" and "buried alive model", all of which were visual phenomena that provoked similar but distinct symptoms. More details on Part Two [here]).

The document that was circulated internally was the first time that these incidents had been connected with the Pocket Monsters videogames - until then, the cause had not been discovered or diagnosed by medical professionals. Indeed, it is uncertain how the company themselves managed to find the cases related to the event without seeking advice from health services.

Pathology Detail -- "Lavender Town Tone" [$PAT]

The predominant symptoms related to what would become known as the "Lavender Town Town" included headaches and migraines, bleeding from eyes and ears, mood swings and irritability, addiction to the games, unprovoked violence, withdrawal and unresponsiveness, and in approximately 67% of cases, suicidal tendencies. However, these symptoms only manifested in children between the ages of 7 and 12 years old who had reached the area in game known as "Lavender Town", most of whom were revealed to have been wearing headphones or earphones while playing the game (see Appendix A [here]). As it turns out, the developers of the Lavender Town area had sought to make an area that would "leave an impression on the player", according to Seki Uchitada, who was a member of the development team. Seki claimed that at the time of development, a number of the team were interested in making Lavender Town a little different to the rest of the game.
"The Pok?mon Tower is a visible result of that," Seki told ゲームの次元　（"Game's Dimensions" Magazine) in an interview earlier this year. "That, and the fact that Lavender Town is so different from all the other cities in the game: it is smaller, it has fewer people occupying it, it didn't have a gym... and, of course, the music was very, very eerie. In fact, in the first version of the game, we were told to slightly change the song played in the background of Lavender Town ... because our manager told us it would make children upset. The music used in subsequent versions is different." Either Seki was unaware of the full impact of the Lavender Town Tone, or was vastly underexaggerating how "upset" children would get - no more is said of the music in the article, but there are mentions of Lavender Town's other macabre features (see below).

What Seki failed to disclose to Game's Dimensions Magazine was that the music used in the first-wave release of Pocket Monsters Red and Green was formulated out of an experiment in "binaural beats": using slightly different frequencies of sound, each frequency played in one ear through earphones or headphones, various psychological effects can be induced upon the listener. In most versions of the first wave releases, this resulted in the player feeling uneasy, apprehensive, and mildly disturbed. However, for upwards of two-hundred children, it provoked a variety of disturbances in the brain that went undetected purely because it was undetectable by fully developed human ears - instead, only children fell victim to the tones , resulting in psychological and physiological problems that in some cases led to death - many of which were suicides.

However, the "Lavender Town Tone" only accounts for some of the problems that afflicted those unlucky enough to get first wave cartridges. Though they are not as well known, there are a variety of visual effects used in Lavender Town that also brought about severe medical issues in children, some of which are still capable of being produced in games after the first wave.

Part 2 >