If you start hearing about something called a Yo-Kai Watch in 2016, don't be surprised: It was engineered to be the next big hit.
The Pokemon-style property has been ubiquitous in Japan since it launched in 2013, and it's invading the U.S. with a murderer's row of muscle behind it: a game from Nintendo, an animated series on the Disney Channel, toys from Hasbro.
Yo-Kai Watch is the latest in a string of hits from Japanese publisher Level-5. In most cases like this, a game might be designed first, with tie-in products licensed to different companies later. But you only need to play a little of the Yo-Kai game, read a few chapters of the manga, and watch an episode of the anime to see how different this is. The storylines and characters all sync almost perfectly. This does not happen accidentally.
"The concept was created to be something that would stay a long time in [Japan's] culture," said Level-5's president Akihiro Hino, speaking by phone with WIRED last month. Level-5 consciously sought to create the next Doraemon, Japan's next Mickey Mouse, something that would have longevity. To that end, Hino said, it had to have monsters. "Kids are really passionate about monster-like creatures," he said. "In Japan, when new games or franchises come out, whenever they have 'monster' in the title, kids get really excited about it."
To put a unique spin on it, Level-5 landed on the concept of youkai, creatures from millennia-old Japanese folk tales that aren't exactly alive, but aren't exactly ghosts, either. This gives Yo-Kai Watch a bit of a campfire ghost story feel, as all of the adorable monsters the main character collects are dead.
