User:Hijiri88/sandbox

Reception

The original Yo-kai Watch game received a score of 36/40 from Famitsu, with its sequel Yo-kai Watch 2 also scoring 36/40. Yo-kai Watch 2 won the Grand Prize in the Japan Game Awards. It also won 3 other awards: The Best Sales Award, and two Excellence Awards (for the 2nd game and its third version). In 2014, Yo-kai Watch's manga in CoroCoro Comic won the 38th Kodansha Manga Award in the Best Children's Manga category. In the following year, it also was awarded the Best Children's manga at the 60th Shogakukan Manga Awards.

Series mascot Jibanyan was at the center of the 2014 World Hobby Fair artwork, was chosen as the kids goodwill ambassador of the Hawaii Tourism Board in Japan in 2015, and was one of the 8 "Olympics Ambassadors" for the 2020 Summer Olympics.

When the anime first aired, in 2014, the franchise became popular in Japan. By February, the first game, which originally sold only 53,654 copies, was at over 500,000 shipped and the anime was surpassing Pokémon in the TV rankings; being compared to it and being dubbed the "Pokémon Killer". By the second game's release, the first game had sold 1,195,287 copies and the second game surpassed that at release at 1,316,707 copies. The third version also impressed, at 1,244,171 units.

Even Level-5's president, Akihiro Hino, was surprised by the game's popularity. "While I did believe that it would get its break, honestly, to have it come this far, where the children of Japan would get so hopped-up on Yo-kai, to the point where all the goods would sell out, is something I didn't expect." They were the second most popular characters in Japan, in a survey by Video Research Ltd. Explanations for its popularity ranged from catchy songs and dances, to being something parents and kids could enjoy together, to "weird adults" not being interested in it. Hino himself said that it was the relatable characters and situations relatable to modern kids that made it popular.

This also translated into toy sales, racking in 55.2 billion yen for Namco Bandai. Yo-kai Watch toys were frequently out of stock; people having to wait in lotteries to get a Yo-kai Watch and search hard for medals. Other merchandise had to wait longer because of the long licensing wait times. This demand made it the second highest product in Nikkei Trendy that year.

It was a top seller in many other areas as well: The Yo-kai Watch Guide was the number one book in 2014, its first theme song, Geragerapo no Uta, was the number 50 song on the Oricon Singles Chart, and the movie had the highest opening of any Japanese film since 2000. Yo-kai Watch even had a special segment on Kohaku Uta Gassen, Japan's most viewed music program.

By 2015, sales had started to fall to numbers ranging from around a quarter to 1/8 of what they were the previous year. Prices were cut and there was less visible excitement among children. By the time the third games were released, in 2016, it was on a downward slope with the game launching with about half of what the second games did, with 632,135 units and the third version of the game launched with half of what the first versions sold with 337,979 units. The toy sales were 10.4 billion yen in toy sales and estimated to be at 6.3 billion yen in 2017. This was largely due to hype building for two games that were coming from Nintendo's Pokémon franchise, the Pokémon Go smartphone app and Pokémon Sun and Moon for the 3DS.

In addition to the wake of Pokémon's renewed popularity, analysts had a few other theories on why Yo-kai Watch was falling. Ken Hōri of The Business Journal and Ollie Barder of Forbes thought it was mainly distribution issues; products that were ordered from the summer vacation were over stocked, because of the six-month waiting period for copyright approvals. Another reason he had was that the toys had incompatible medals with later watches, leading to a loss of interest. Barder and Sato of Siliconera also mentioned oversaturation, with it being Sato's main focus.

Unlike in its native Japan where it experienced a short period of great popularity, Yo-kai Watch had an overall underwhelming performance in the United States. Although it got off to a promising start in that region, with the original game selling at least 400,000 units there as of 2016, the sequel, Yo-kai Watch 2, sold less than 200,000 copies in comparison. Meanwhile, Disney XD's English broadcast of the anime series has estimated only 100,000-300,000 viewers per episode, and was removed from the network's schedule in 2017. Despite the franchise's unsatisfactory western response, it maintains a cult following with attempts to revive the franchise such as #SaveYoKaiWatch which trended on Twitter. The franchise is also popular in Europe, with the original game's sales out pacing the Japanese release as of October 2016.