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| Courtesy: IGN.com |
This has long been the subject of debate, and it definitely bears further examination with how both series has fared so far. I will do a follow up piece depending on how Blasters performs; but for now, I will be going over several points where Pokémon has been able to succeed outside Japan, where Yo-Kai Watch has struggled and offer some suggestions at how the latter franchise can improve their strategy based on the former's continued success. Let's get this started.
1. Release Timing
The first roadblock that the series faced was the timing of its domestic release. Even though neither they nor Pokémon had any new main games in their home country, the development of Generation VII had many expecting the series would fill the void; becoming a successful game with a new fandom in the process when it launched in November 2015. None of this happened, with the game selling just 71,000 units at launch and only selling 440,000 copies as of this writing. Despite being offered to players waiting for Sun and Moon, people instead went with the spinoff Super Mystery Dungeon. Despite the flak Activision gets, it can't be denied the success of Call of Duty: Black Ops III ended up putting the series on rocky ground right out of the gate. This is a lesson that was not heeded for the next games, and I will come back to this point later.
2. Media Landscape
With the media landscape of the 1990s, things were definitely ripe for the breakout of Pokémon in both Japan and the world as a whole. While many people within Nintendo believed in the games, virtually everyone in the industry at the time expected them to fail. To say they were wrong would be putting it mildly. The Game Boy was thought to be at the end of its life cycle, but Red and Blue gave it a second wind that was further compounded by Yellow not long after. The anime series also helped incubate many a youngster's fascination with the franchise and the medium, and the amount of merchandise at the time was simply unbelievable. I had numerous toys and apparel alone, such as a pair of velcro shoes that had the image above on them. While there was a decline after the initial wave of popularity; it definitely struck at the right time. By contrast, Yo-Kai Watch faced many more challenges when it was first localized in 2015. In 1998, for the most part, most people still went to the same movies, watched the same TV shows and played a lot of the same games. In 2015, however, the niche markets in play were much more diverse and distinct; which made it much harder for a new series to stand out. There will be more details on these points further down the list, but long story short: by the time Yo-Kai Watch got a US release, Pokémon had already been around for more than a decade, and they knew how to give people what they wanted; certain segments of the fandom be damned.
3. Different Gaming Culture
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| Courtesy: YouTube user RGE |
I know this point has come up before, but it definitely bears repeating to make absolutely sure people understand how the contrast between the two has made it easy for Pokémon to succeed outside Japan and how it's been much more difficult for Yo-Kai Watch to gain a foothold. While the relaxing atmosphere of Yo-Kai Watch has often been praised among fans and the press, general audiences and most JRPG players were not looking for that. Being used to the more adventurous world and battle action of the Pokémon series, I was among many who were unimpressed by how the series handled the concept of making the town itself an adventure. While not a bad premise, the execution definitely contributed to the troubles the series has had gaining a foothold outside Japan. This was further compounded by how myself and others found Level-5's previous RPG, Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch took a lot more risks in dealing with many of the same concepts. The sequel on PS4 also ended up getting the critical and commercial success that many expected Yo-Kai Watch to have. In short: the relaxing atmosphere of Yo-Kai Watch was a good fit for its home country, but it wasn't something that mainstream audiences in the US had much interest in. As I've pointed out before, the contrast can also be explained by how popular certain character designs are. In Japan, characters made by Square Enix tend to be more popular, since they resemble fashion models with pretty faces and silky hair. In the US, characters like Kratos from the God of War series tend to be more popular, who has a muscular build, a shaved head and a goatee, even as of the latest game this year. Yet, differences in gaming culture are just one more piece of the puzzle that Yo-Kai Watch has had among its problems in the US.
4. Unrealistic Expectations
This is one of the major issues that has dogged the series from day one even before it launched: many people in and out of the fandom had rather unrealistic expectations about how it would actually perform. It also doesn't help the line between what's a divisive statement and what isn't is so thin in this day and age. If more people had said "this is an interesting new series from Japan," that wouldn't have been a problem. Instead, many people claimed the series would be "the next Pokémon" based on the success it was having at the time; which only further compounded the problems of gaining a foothold outside Japan when the results were below these lofty expectations. It won't be the last time I will address this either, as it will definitely come up again, I must also reiterate that this was the exact opposite of how people expected Pokémon to perform in the 1990s, and it won't be the only time that analogy will come up either.
5. Market Saturation
While making tie-in merchandise for a TV show or video game is nothing new by any means, the amount of merchandise for Yo-Kai Watch and marketing that it had in its homeland was arguably some of the most successful that had been seen since Pokémon in its heyday. As I have mentioned before, Hasbro even handled the release of the toys in Western markets; with many expecting the series to reach a similar level of success with this in mind. It didn't. This will tie into the next point; but despite widespread marketing and distribution, the toys didn't sell as well as expected and became a staple of bargain bins and dollar stores everywhere. There is currently talk of having the licensing deals "reset," but since my closest retailers have all but cleared out the stock on hand; I have my doubts about how that will go. I know Pokémon went through something similar after the initial wave, but it's since rebounded with some of the most consistent popularity of any Nintendo IP I have ever seen.
6. Advertising Difficulty
Even though there was no shortage of advertising at first, there was always going to be some difficulty trying to convey the premise of the series to westerners. Though they definitely showed how goofy the series was, they didn't really get people to understand what a yokai was for the uninitiated. I still submit trying to divorce the series from its roots was a mistake: the companies involved have since walked back the infamous claim that yokai are not ghosts, monsters or spirits; when they are in fact all of those things. The infamous advertisements definitely explained how the yokai could cause things like forgetfulness, problems in the bathroom and passing gas in public; but it didn't really explain why potential players should care. For some, it did invoke memories of a lot of campy video game ads from the 1990s; but at the same time, there was a video game that did combine the sensibilities of Japanese media with 1990s pop culture and crossed a zeitgeist with a new IP: it was called Splatoon. This leads directly into my next point, for those of you playing at home.
7. Brand Recognition
While some commenters on the Reddit page for the series suggested the lack of "Brand nostalgia" is one advantage that Yo-Kai Watch has in its arsenal; I shall once again have to play Darkrai's advocate and state that it's actually one of the major detriments to the series outside its home country as a lack of brand recognition. While Level-5 is very well-known in Japan, they are not nearly as recognized here. To most audiences in the US, they are mainly known for Professor Layton, Ni no Kuni and the cult classic Dark Cloud games on PS2. Pokémon on the other hand, is among the most recognizable Nintendo series even among non-fans, alongside Super Mario Bros., Metroid, and The Legend of Zelda. This is vital to why the series has often struggled here, and something I will get into further in the next point. It's simple: if you're buying a game for yourself or someone you know, would you go for something that has a reliable, established brand or take a risk on something that's being so heavily-pushed despite not really being recognizable? It's an easy answer, folks; and one that's to the tune of millions of sales.
8. Misreading the Hype
As time went on, there were numerous hints that suggested that maybe the series wouldn't be "the next Pokémon" that many were hyping it as. Hype culture is not an exact science, nor is it something as simple as being "positive" or "negative." It's something that you either buy into, or you don't. Yet, despite concerns in and out of the fandom, Level-5 did not share these concerns and forged ahead anyway. Much like one of those campy old disaster films, this is the point where the vital information from scientific leaders is ignored; right before everything starts going downhill. Despite the news of how the first game sold, Hino still expected the sequels to kickstart the series in the US and help it "bloom like a flower" in the US. It didn't: Bony Spirits and Fleshy Souls sold significantly less than they did in Japan, and critical reception was much more mixed. By contrast, the 20th anniversary of Pokémon effectively eclipsed the series, with the success of Sun and Moon; Pokémon Go and the eShop releases of the original games getting the attention and success Yo-Kai Watch 2 was expected to have. It was particularly telling that not only did Hino forgo promoting Psychic Specters the following year in favor of promoting Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom for Namco Bandai instead; but was ultimately forced to admit the decline in popularity in its home country. While he did express interest in appealing to older players, that still convinced me to cancel the original plan for this article and rework it here instead. Even so, there are a couple more points that I need to address before I offer some suggestions of my own for the future.
9. Driving Away Potential Fans
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| Courtesy: YouTube user JPRPokeTrainer98 |
In a year where there were no new main Pokémon games in the US, many hoped that the release of the original Yo-Kai Watch would fill the void and become a new series for Nintendo to take advantage of the success of. Unfortunately, outside of a few individuals; that didn't happen among mainstream audiences. The game was ultimately outsold by the spinoff title Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon; and the marketing push the game received ended up backfiring. The series being hailed as a "Pokémon Killer" by many media outlets did not sit well with the Pokémon fanbase, and a nasty rivalry has formed as a result. While I'm not totally against experimenting with other series (I did get into Digimon and Yu-Gi-Oh as time went on, for example), this initial push definitely contributed to a lot of my conflicting feelings about the series; and I will get into this more in my final point. Before I do, I will point out again that just because you want something to succeed, doesn't mean it will.
10. Target Audience Uncertainty
My last point before I offer suggestions on how to proceed is regarding the target audience. Despite the claims otherwise, the design of Generation VII was not as influenced by Yo-Kai Watch as others believed. In stark contrast to what others have claimed, this interview with Go Nintendo has Shigeru Ohmori outright say that the series had little to no impact on what they were doing compared to usual feedback from audiences.
Moreover, the biggest roadblock the series faced here was arguably its biggest benefit in its home country: its target audience. In Japan, the series was a blend of slice-of-life and Japanese mythology. Given how yokai are almost as ubiquitous there as vampires or zombies here, it was a natural fit. Still, that ended up being a big problem here: disregarding ESRB ratings, there was a much bigger difference between the audience of young children and one of enthusiasts of Japanese mythology. Generally, your average kid in this day and age here probably won't care about yokai; and your average enthusiast of Japanese mythology probably won't derive much pleasure of seeing a giant doughnut fly around their grandmother's house. I think there was a Simpsons line that put this uncertainty best: "So, you want a realistic, down-to-earth show that's totally off the wall and full of magic robots?"
Pokémon, by contrast, did not have this uncertainty: it knows who the target audience they want to reach are, and how to reach beyond that. It's why it's a foregone conclusion that Pokémon Let's Go will do well, as will Generation VIII; and why Yo-Kai Watch 4 will potentially be a make-or-break game for the series.
My suggestions for Yo-Kai Watch to continue are largely the same as before: market the series as an alternative type of anime/game series rather than a four-quadrant series; and let things try to grow from there. If possible, lock down the new voice cast for more episodes and other content. While you may be dubbing the second movie this Christmas if online murmurs are to be believed, maybe it might be best to skip the third film (due to the cost of reshooting the live-action scenes) and go straight to dubbing Shadowside instead. If you are localizing Yo-Kai Watch 3, you need to do so while the 3DS is still being supported. I do admit that last point will likely depend on how well Blasters does at retail in the US and Europe. Given how it's launching directly against the highly-anticipated PS4 Spider-Man game, however; I wish you good luck, you'll need it.
Though I am still mulling over several pieces regarding the series next, I am going to wait until after Blasters launches to determine my next course of action. I am also giving until September 29, one year after the launch of Psychic Specters before I determine how I will end my coverage of the series. My plan is still the same: no recaps of the third or fourth movies without an official confirmation of Yo-Kai Watch 3 getting localized. Otherwise, the end will be a recap of the final episode of the original anime and the first two episodes of Shadowside. That will be all for now. Bang.
10. Target Audience Uncertainty
My last point before I offer suggestions on how to proceed is regarding the target audience. Despite the claims otherwise, the design of Generation VII was not as influenced by Yo-Kai Watch as others believed. In stark contrast to what others have claimed, this interview with Go Nintendo has Shigeru Ohmori outright say that the series had little to no impact on what they were doing compared to usual feedback from audiences.
Moreover, the biggest roadblock the series faced here was arguably its biggest benefit in its home country: its target audience. In Japan, the series was a blend of slice-of-life and Japanese mythology. Given how yokai are almost as ubiquitous there as vampires or zombies here, it was a natural fit. Still, that ended up being a big problem here: disregarding ESRB ratings, there was a much bigger difference between the audience of young children and one of enthusiasts of Japanese mythology. Generally, your average kid in this day and age here probably won't care about yokai; and your average enthusiast of Japanese mythology probably won't derive much pleasure of seeing a giant doughnut fly around their grandmother's house. I think there was a Simpsons line that put this uncertainty best: "So, you want a realistic, down-to-earth show that's totally off the wall and full of magic robots?"
Pokémon, by contrast, did not have this uncertainty: it knows who the target audience they want to reach are, and how to reach beyond that. It's why it's a foregone conclusion that Pokémon Let's Go will do well, as will Generation VIII; and why Yo-Kai Watch 4 will potentially be a make-or-break game for the series.
My suggestions for Yo-Kai Watch to continue are largely the same as before: market the series as an alternative type of anime/game series rather than a four-quadrant series; and let things try to grow from there. If possible, lock down the new voice cast for more episodes and other content. While you may be dubbing the second movie this Christmas if online murmurs are to be believed, maybe it might be best to skip the third film (due to the cost of reshooting the live-action scenes) and go straight to dubbing Shadowside instead. If you are localizing Yo-Kai Watch 3, you need to do so while the 3DS is still being supported. I do admit that last point will likely depend on how well Blasters does at retail in the US and Europe. Given how it's launching directly against the highly-anticipated PS4 Spider-Man game, however; I wish you good luck, you'll need it.
Though I am still mulling over several pieces regarding the series next, I am going to wait until after Blasters launches to determine my next course of action. I am also giving until September 29, one year after the launch of Psychic Specters before I determine how I will end my coverage of the series. My plan is still the same: no recaps of the third or fourth movies without an official confirmation of Yo-Kai Watch 3 getting localized. Otherwise, the end will be a recap of the final episode of the original anime and the first two episodes of Shadowside. That will be all for now. Bang.
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