Yo-Kai Watch, a popular video game and cartoon that is taking Japan by storm, was developed right here in Fukuoka. “We worked hard to market it, but it’s been a bigger hit than we expected,” said Akinori Hino, the president of Level Five, a Fukuoka-based game developer. The main character in Yo-Kai Watch is a fifth grade boy named Keita. After saving one Yo-Kai (“spirit”), he is given the power to see spirits and goes about befriending them. The game was released for Nintendo DS last July and topped one million units shipped by April of this year. The cartoon began airing in January, and shops can’t keep the related merchandise in stock. Hino says they aimed to create a “modernized Doraemon”. Whether Yo-Kai Watch can last as long as Doraemon remains to be seen, but Level Five’s effective cross marketing has been extremely successful so far. Source: Nishinippon Shimbun 5/20
