#OPINION: Y School Heroes Is The Hidden Jewel in the Yo-Kai Watch Crown

“#OPINION: Y School Heroes Is The Hidden Jewel in the Yo-Kai Watch Crown”

jinpei, yokai
Image via Netflix

Imagine a Pokémon show where Charmander and Squirtle are reincarnated as human schoolkids who look kiiiiind of like their pocket monster versions, but also have their own brand-new monster pals with which they can fuse to create half-human, half-Pokémon hybrids. So they can fight aliens. And their school can transform into a giant robot. And there are fart and poop jokes, and famous YouTuber cameos, and philosophical discussions on death. And the human Charmander and Squirtle are joined not by a human version of Bulbasaur but by some random kid, which despite everything I’ve just written, somehow feels like the craziest part of this carnival of madness.

y school heroes main characters
Image via YouTube

Did you do it? Did you imagine all of this? Congratulations. You should now have a pretty good idea of what the weird Yo-Kai Watch spin-off, Y School Heroes (2019–2021), is all about. The even weirder thing is, this might be Yo-kai Watch at its finest. Really.

The original Yo-kai Watch games and anime had a pretty simple premise. All around us there exist supernatural creatures known as yokai that influence our lives in unique ways — like by making us irritable or annoyingly chatty or causing us to fart uncontrollably. The first 2014-2018 series was primarily that (at least in the beginning), putting a lot of emphasis on silly humor based largely on Japanese puns. Y School Heroes (also known as Yo-kai Watch Jam – Yo-kai Academy Y: Close Encounters of the N Kind), on the other hand, opens with a YouTuber asking his viewers, and consequently, those watching the show: “What do you think happens to us after we die?” cutting to images of people crying over their dead loved ones before segueing into the YT-er’s views on the structure of the afterlife. This immediately tells you this spin-off is nothing like the Yo-kai Watch you know.

y school heroes
Image via Netflix

Y School Heroes is set at a school, the mysterious Y Academy, and is centered around creatures from the original game/anime reincarnated as humans. The main characters include Jinpei Jiba (based on the cat yokai Jibanyan), Sandayu Koma (based on Komasan), and Mataro Tamada who, again, is just some random kid not based on any previous yokai and, again, it’s still SUPER WEIRD. They all eventually gain the ability to transform into hybrids of humans and yokai, vengeful ghosts, and aliens so they can fight evil. And, yeah, their school building can transform into a giant robot, which is definitely bizarre, but what exactly makes the show “Yo-kai Watch at its finest?” Two things.

First, the tone of Y School Heroes is very consistent with the original Yo-kai Watch anime, only taken to impressive extremes. For example, the latter had its share of toilet humor, literally, with characters like the yokai Fidgephant which makes you want to go to the bathroom. Or the Poofessor, who inserts symbolic “trivia poo” into your head causing you to spout off useless, wrong knowledge like Cliff from Cheers. All fine and good. Y School Heroes takes that up a hundred notches with, say, Episode 3, which is all about one character being stuck in a loop of constantly stepping in dog poo. That’s the entire plot. In another episode, through a series of weird events, another character … gets his head stuck in the behind of the school principal. In yet another episode, through a series of even weirder events, a squirrel yokai farts into Jinpei’s mouth.

y school heroes
Image via Netflix

Yo-kai Watch also had the occasional nod to American culture, like with the very brief cameo of a Steve Jobs parody and his “myPhone.” Y School Heroes, always upping the ante, has an entire episode about Y Academy’s filmmaking student George Rukasu and his action-hero star Ikarino Rambo, a puntastic name that sort of translates to “Rambo of anger” and works on two levels since "rambo" is already Japanese for “violence.” Basically, what Yo-kai Watch flirts with, Y School Heroes commits to with zeal. But, in the end, it’s still the same world the first anime set up. Only … more. So much more.

Ikarino Rambo, Y School Heroes
Image via Netflix

The second reason Y School Heroes might be the best Yo-kai Watch series is that it’s a self-contained world. The 2014-2018 anime had its share of strange scenes, from time travel to a yokai being made president of a company to a yokai who used to be a human but died in a freak accident and became a dog with a human face, only when he tries to live like a dog, everyone assumes he’s just a crazy old man so they keep putting him in jail. And that’s funny. But, see, the adventures of Manjimutt or the yokai CEO stories are completely unrelated to the adventures of the main character Keita (Nate in the English version). They are contained to separate vignettes that focus only on the yokai, and there is nothing wrong with that, but Y School Heroes keeps all of its action and weirdness in one place: Y Academy.

It makes it easier to get into this world because it feels less fragmented. It feels like a more finished, more focused product. For those reasons, even though it was nothing like the original series, Y School Heroes might just be the best Yo-kai Watch show ever, and that’s even without mentioning the amazing opening.

Have you seen Y School Heroes? What did you think of it? Is it really one of the best Yo-kai Watch shows ever? Let us know in the comment section!

Cezary writes words on the internet. You should follow him on Twitter.

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