Even though I admit the series has potential to grow, there's just a lot that it never seemed to realize about how different the market and target audience is here. Even when taking daily afternoon airings into account, Disney XD now seems to be treating the show like an afterthought after the initial push, in favor of other IPs such as Star Vs the Forces of Evil, Gravity Falls, Star Wars Rebels, and other anime such as Beyblade Burst and their acquisition of broadcasting Pokémon after 10 years on Cartoon Network (the Sun and Moon series will be making its official debut in May).
For the sake of argument, seeing as how it's been two years since I started covering the anime; I will be omitting the segment featuring the Gnomey (which again, is one of the few decent parts of the series for me) and getting right to the meat of things. I will also be giving the theme song a miss, since I've already said enough about it. Let's open up "Katie's Yo-Kai Butler" and talk more about this.
We open on a very nice shot of the town, which; despite the "Codomo" billboard (a play on "kodomo," literally "child" in Japanese and the cell phone carrier Docomo) giving away that the town is an analog for one in Japan, not Idaho; is very well-done. Again, despite not being a big fan of the show in general, I will give credit to the animation where it is due. OLM has never been one to skimp the animation department even for a glorified commercial, and the environments like almost like photographs in how detailed they are.
Inside his home, Nate is playing his 3DS despite the fact that his place is in total disarray. Admittedly, it's not too bad; especially since I have bigger fish to fry in this episode.
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| That man is playing Galaga, thought we wouldn't notice. |
Of course, Whisper is less than pleased at the mess; especially when Nate blows his nose and throws the used tissue in his general direction. Of course: if it's not toilet humor or fart jokes, it's boogers. Disregarding the most recent dub episode's casual attitude about Nate wetting himself, what is it about the Japanese and boogers? Zill from Zelda: The Wind Waker, Cubchoo, now this? At the very least, Whisper seems as irritated as I am about the matter. Maybe it's just me, but I need more than a yokai that makes people pick their noses all the time to work with (this week's episode is going on the pile of ones I'm not doing for that reason).
Despite Whisper's nagging for Nate to clean his room, he just continues the same spiel, and Whisper decides to go to bed instead.
The next morning, Whisper wakes up and notices everything looks different; and smells different. Rather than a messy arrangement, everything is in order! The place smells less like dirty socks and half-eaten chips and more like clean linens and roses!
Of course, Whisper seems confused about the situation presented to him; even if it doesn't seem that bad to me.
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| Who's the president in this time? "Ronald Reagan." Ronald Reagan?! The ACTOR?! Then who's vice president?! JERRY LEWIS?! |
All joking aside, things are further complicated when it's revealed that they're bunking with Warunyan (screw you, Viz, I'm not going to call him Baddinyan.).
He then guzzles two chocolate bars at the same time. That joke wasn't funny in "Here Comes Roughraff," and it's not funny here.
All things considered, this episode is at least tolerable, largely because Katie isn't a total moron like the other members of the cast. She's who I played as in the game before I traded it back in towards Pokémon Sun and Moon (Psychic Specters being localized doesn't change anything about my plans, and I will tell you more in a moment).
Whisper even goes so far as to question whether or not it's all a dream. Remember this line: it will be incredibly and irritatingly important later.
He even outright says "the only way this makes sense is if this is a dream!" I am inclined to disagree, and not just with what I have to say about that line later. Even at this age, I often have dreams that involve Darth Vader riding a Charizard while the Power Rangers are piloting their Zords into battle. Others involve surfing on asteroids while trying to grab a rare crystal. Yet, somehow, things make less sense when I'm awake than when I'm dreaming.
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| I loved my previous life, I had so many things going; I thought it would be easier. |
Whisper then asks Katie to pinch him, and she complies by stretching him like a piece of taffy. Apart from what I have planned later, you could also try to find your totem; failing that, see if anyone in that math test from the Gnomey segment showed up to class naked. That might work.
We then get a redux of the first episode, with Katie instead of Nate; again, loosely following her path in the game.
Good as the animation is, it's more or less a role rehearsal of the meeting in the pilot. In the words of my associate, Mr. Enter: "We've done all this before!"
She then shows him her Yo-Kai Watch, which was in the game and even had a girl's toy variant; yet when the prototypes and packages of more showed up at Toy Fair, the toy was highly conspicuous by its absence at Hasbro's displays. That, and again; the company seems to be treating it like an afterthought in favor of expanding their lines for Transformers: The Last Knight, Marvel Legends and Star Wars (with plenty of stuff for The Last Jedi and the 40th anniversary of the saga, as well as expanding their successful lines of The Force Awakens and Rogue One tie-ins). Must have been all the shelfwarmers that shops in my area are stuck with despite numerous markdowns. I would do a toy plug joke, but it's not worth it this time.
Whisper is confused that it's a pocket watch rather than a wristwatch, and then suggests he's in a parallel universe; even going to explain what the concept is! Oh for fuck's sake, I know what a parallel universe is; and I'm fairly certain the target audience does too! Also, this plot thread was more entertaining when they did it in Back to the Future Part II.
Katie's father calls her downstairs, and Warunyan asks Whisper "what're you lookin' at, bub?" as he continues binging on chocolate. Wolverine, he is not.
Anyway, apparently Katie's mother has been inspirited by No Way (the episode that introduced him is on the "maybe" pile); and as a result, is refusing to cook, clean or do any housework of any kind. Given the events that have transpired over the past few months, I'm just going to play this music.
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| If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding! How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat? |
Katie then summons Goldenyan to engage No Way, and again, I appreciate the fact that she doesn't act like a lobotomized Yungoos every time she encounters a problem. This episode is actually a fairly good template for what would happen if the series were about her, as it should have been. The fact that the likes of Katniss Everdeen, Black Widow, Furiosa, Rey and now Jyn Erso have been admired by both male and female audiences alike definitely would suggest there wouldn't be a problem with having her as protagonist. Be a lot better than Inaho's mugging.
Yet, Goldenyan doesn't want to fight for reasons that are basically the same requests for me to stop covering the series. Sorry, I do not bend to the will nameless trolls; and I will not stop my work on this before I'm finished. With this, Katie has to find another yokai to fight off No Way. Here's an idea: why not use Shadow Venoct? He's just dicking around in Katie's closet despite how powerful the yokai is in the game!
Instead, Katie just resorts to a more direct approach, playing handball on No Way with Whisper like a discount Elmyra Duff! Well, at least it's not another joke about bodily functions; but I've seen better.
Of course, the events of the episode are effectively retconned as just being a dream that Whisper had all along. Figures, every time this anime has a potentially interesting story; it's backstory, a dream or just outright not taken advantage of.
Katie's Yo-Kai Butler" is a slight step forward for Yo-Kai Watch, and one of the few episodes that I actually find somewhat decent. Overall, though, I still can't recommend the series over the multitudes of other options around. I think what Nate says in the tail end of the episode said it best: "I'm too tired to care."
Given how talk still persists of the third game being localized, I still submit that might not happen if Psychic Specters doesn't sell well here. Given how the series hasn't become the Pokémon killer many were expecting (even the fans have said that comparison was unfounded to no end), many people are trying to determine what went wrong. Some have suggested that the market in the US didn't have the right environment for the game after being raised on Pokémon and other entries in the "mon" subgenre. Others claim that it was sabotaged by forces outside the fanbase. Given how I didn't know how to feel about it last year, I can now go with Occam's razor: the simplest explanation is probably the correct one. On that note, I submit that the West just wasn't interested in Yo-Kai Watch as much as people thought they were. Even if I were to remove the 15 million units Pokémon Sun and Moon have sold from the equation, launching Bony Spirits and Fleshy Souls against the highly-anticipated Final Fantasy XV couldn't have helped matters either.
Anyway, Nintendo plans to announce more content for the coming year at E3 in June; with the Wii U officially making way for the Switch and more games for the 3DS planned through 2018; I submit that the release of Yo-Kai Watch 2: Psychic Specters will be the last chance the series has to break out in the west. If it doesn't sell well here, that will mean that the third game won't be released in America. I also stand by what I said about the third movie: I will not recap it unless Yo-Kai Watch 3 is announced for release in North America. As for the main anime: I don't plan on doing any more until after my 300th post next month. The one-year mark will have passed by the time of the show in June, and the second season finale of the anime's English dub will be then as well. I will give the series until then to "bloom like a flower," but at this point; it seems unlikely that it will. Now, I'm going to post this, work on some schoolwork, and then work more on Pokémon Sun and Moon. My next bits of content will be in May after midterms, and you will see them after I am done with them. That will be all for now. Bang.
awesome
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