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Fun Club the former Pokemon competitor "Yo-kai Watch" turns 10 years old today.

Krvavi Abadas

Krvavi Abadas

Mr. Archivist
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Yokai-Watch-10th_07-10-23-768x432.jpg

Level 5 is currently doing various promotions to celebrate the anniversary, such as free (though likely not subtitled or dubbed) online screenings of the films with director's commentary.

this was once absolutely massive in Japan for a while, with the games selling millions of copies and receiving numerious pieces of merch (including a tie-in Just Dance game, of all things.)

Nintendo even recognized the wave, and made sure to have it's localization be a 1st-party published game. while it didn't sell particularly well, it did lead to a particularly famous and absurd Nintendo Direct moment.


"Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill!"

the popularity wave eventually ended in Japan as well, but Level 5 has stated that they plan to release a new installment soon.

i didn't actually pick up any installments of the series when it was new, but i do have the actual physical Yo-Kai Watch toy thanks to Toy's R Us going bankrupt around the same time stock for those were filling western store shelves.
yokayokaiwatchs1.webp
 
I remember the game more for the dance clip, 8-4 bringing it up every other episode, and once spotting a Yokai Watch watch on a kid's wrist in the wild than I do for actually playing the 3DS demo.

It'll forever occupy a piece of my mind in the form of the eternally unanswerable question of what is harder to explain: How The Pokemon Company managed to keep its successful multi-media franchise alive throughout four decades or how Level 5 managed to burn every single one of its many successful multi-media franchises to the ground in the span of a couple years each.
 
Played the first one and enjoyed it. At the time it was being called the pokemon-killer. Heard that Level-5 tanked the franchise but never looked into how.
 
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This is actually one of those times where you go "it's only been that long?"

It feels like the series has been completely MIA for so long but was also absolutely MASSIVE in Japan not too long ago. It's ridiculous how meteoric the rise and fall of this series was. It's a real shame too, because it felt like Level-5 finally hit on the formula they tried to achieve with a lot of their other series. Just absolutely fumbled the bag in almost every conceivable way.
 
This was the biggest shit imaginable when I studied in Japan 2014-2015. Literally on every surface. Moved back in 2017 and it was completely gone lol.
 
wow

i did not realize there was a literal watch

I always assumed it was like “we’re sure watching for those yokai…”
 
My main reaction to it at the time was marveling at how utterly lame their youkai were. It feels aimed at an even younger demographic than Pokemon, and that's such an odd choice of subject matter to do that with. Are most of them even based on actual youkai? I feel like they can't be.

Also, never thought about this before, but I wonder if they spelt it so strangely for trademark purposes? I've never seen anyone else use yo-kai, even though I could sort of buy it as a weird way of expressing the elongated vowel.
 
Phosphorescent Skeleton said:
This was the biggest shit imaginable when I studied in Japan 2014-2015. Literally on every surface. Moved back in 2017 and it was completely gone lol.
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I was in Japan in 2016 and I already felt like Yokai Mania was already dying down back then

I probably saw more Thomas The Tank Engine than Yokai Watch
 
I never got around to playing any of the games, and wondered where it went.

If the library I used to work at is any indication, kids liked the manga at least.
 
The localization window in the west really makes this franchise seems a lot older than it was but also like it was brand new. That 3rd game coming out really late messes with my timeline recollection. What an absolute fumble at the goal line by level 5.
 
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I really enjoyed Yokai Watch 1-3 actually. But I really lost interest with them showing Yokai Watch 4 and dumping down on everything to turn it into a console game. And I find it allways funny how the fanbase in the west REALLY tried to hype it up as Pokemon competetion and hated everything GameFreak did... so they hated absolutelly on the Dexit but at the same time Yokai Watch 4 cutted all YOkai except 150 because they tried to change the battle system but that was TOTALLY fine because they promissed they would patch them in later. At the end, Pokemon patched in more Old Pokemon than Yokai Watch 4 ever added any old Yokai. The hypocracy in that fandom is funny. I still would like YW4 in the west, I really liked the humour, especially in the German version. But I'm not surprised YW did better in Europe than the USA because I have the feeling this super Japanese humour works better here in Europe than in the USA.
 
Stilt Village said:
Are most of them even based on actual youkai?
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I won’t pretend to know the whole Youkai dex but most of the ones I’ve seen are indeed based on “actual” youkai

Rooster said:
Every Pokemon competitor inevitably becomes a former Pokemon competitor
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Well some indies did just fine, though those are also the ones that don’t pretend (or at least their fanbases don’t pretend) they’re Pokemon killers
 
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"competitor"

almost dead right now, I hope the franchise can return as it was some years ago
 
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I never actually played any of the games but I remember when it was being pushed hard as a multimedia franchise like Pokemon, then just... disappeared.
 
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In retrospect the only notable dent Yokai Watch made on the Pokémon franchise was beating the XY anime in ratings, which caused TPC/OLM to flip out and drastically change everything with the Sun and Moon season, for better or worse…
 
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Given the state of the franchise after XY, at least on the anime side, I think it did an alright job at killing Pokemon :v
 
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