Ask John: Has Any Anime Ever Included Subliminal Imagery?
Question:
Has anime ever had any subliminal messages?
Answer:
I’m only aware of one “legitimate” instance of accused subliminal imagery appearing within anime. Japanese television broadcast standards prohibit “subliminal” imagery, defined as any imagery imperceptible to the natural naked eye. However, the original broadcast version opening animation sequence for the 2004 Area 88 television series included a few frames of an image that appeared to be a nude female figure. The image appears for roughly one second, making it only debatably noticable to the naked eye. The image gained noteriety among Japanese viewers almost immediately, and broadcaster TV Asahi had the opening sequence edited for episodes 7-12 to remove the controversial image.
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I don’t know if they’d qualify as “subliminal”, but I’ve found plenty of single frame superdeformed gag shots in SAILOR MOON, especially when characters collide and the screen flashes colors for a second. I think they were more meant as fun little bonus things to find for fans who bought the Laserdiscs (assuming they had Laserdisc players that could freeze-frame CLV discs) than meant to warp their minds. PROJECT A-KO also has a few.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/FreezeFrameBonus/AnimeAndManga