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dollsandmasks · 2 years ago

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Hello, Youkai Watch fandom, today I bring you this.

I stumbled upon this alignment chart by accident, please tell me who made it if you have their info so I could credit them.

This alignment chart uses characters from Youkai Watch Shadowside and Forever Friends (mostly Shadowside, it's just this one guy from FF), and you can see I was scraping the barrel to fill some slots. It was very fun, though, and made me rewatch some episodes I haven't touched in a while, which is always a good thing. Also, I decided to only add one character per slot, the one who fits best in my opinion ( unless the characters are practically a single unit, such as the Onimaro Trio), but that ended up pushing some major figures to the side (like, for example, Keisuke and Akinori would both be Benefactors, and Fukurou and Douketsu would both be Soldiers, but I had to choose one for each category). I know that some characters don't really fit in these narrow slots, some are up for interpretation (how much do we really know about the Onimaro Leader or the corrupt royal advisers who framed Kuuten?), and some might be me misremembering the shit out of a show I'm in love with. If you have anything to add, please feel free to do so!

Here's the list, top left to bottom right, as well as some thoughts on their placement. Beware of spoilers, though, because it gets very spoilers!

Crusader - Tsukinami Touma. The post-movie Touma, obviously. He is a genuinely good guy who fights for what's right and is associated with sword imagery, what else can you say. Also, the reason he attacked the police station while under the influence of the Onimaro was because they made him believe the police weren't doing their job right and Touma was the only one who could fight crime efficiently, which means he must care about upholding the law, making him Lawful, alignment-wise.

Nurturer - Himeno Ayame. She is the kindest soul ever and doesn't want anyone to get hurt under any circumstances. She is the the only person on the show who is consistently nice to everyone, even the team's punching bag (Micchy, that is). And she is pretty social to boot.

Benefactor - Arihoshi Akinori. He is a free-roaming magical detective who will do illegal shit to solve a case, but will also do completely legal shit to solve a case, because he likes helping people and doing the right thing. Good for him.

Hero - Amano Natsume. I mean, who else would it be? She is literally the hero of this story, and she will try to deceive the villains by giving them chocolate bars instead of sacred swords, and I'm also not sure how legal jumping into that river from the movie was, she could have been fined for that if it didn't literally save a kid's life.

Vigilante - Jibanyan. All those Nyan Reno movies must have been one hell of an inspiration. He is a free spirit indeed, I mean, aren't all cats free spirits? And he is rough around the edges, but undoubtedly heroic and kind, and he will take on the supernatural law enforcements if they try to hurt someone who's dear to him.

Protector - Arihoshi Mitsue. She has high morals (some accidental dog-and-frogslaughter aside) and follows both the common Japanese laws and the laws dictated by the supernatural realm. She is not actively heroic (she tried her best during the movie, but at her age, she probably shouldn't have), but she is both a protector of tradition and a protector of the new generation of our spirit world doo-gooders. Respect the granny!

Counsellor - Whisper. Who else is there to give counselling to our leads if not the all-knowing butler himself? Whisper respects the laws of Youmakai, and appears to be working for Enma directly in the movie (I wonder if he still does during the show itself, that would explain where the detective agency gets the money to buy all these chocobars), but, as we can see from his past in the first anime, he is no stranger to barging into the royal palace and demanding laws be changed so he could keep hanging out with a friend. His relative closeness and complete lack of respect for Enma in some cases (the You-Tube prank and the Halloween boink come to mind) seems to indicate that he would be the most likely youkai to actually talk to Enma about changing the laws of the Youmakai if he disagrees with them, instead of following them begrudgingly (making him Lawful) or straight up breaking them (making him Chaotic).

Philosopher - Komasan. Why would a dog even care about laws? Also, he gives me general philosophical observer who would rather muse about the world around him than change it vibes. He is still a good doggo who will fight for his friends when they are in danger, and he follows his morals, but he will pay no respect to the silly human laws that forbid sentient creatures from urinating in the streets. Let him live, goddammit!

Rebel - Micchy. Acts without thinking? Check. Suffers the consequences? Check. Mantains a moral standing? Check. Would totally wear a leather jacket with a word "Rebel" etched onto the back? You betcha. I mean, many superhero comics and tokusatsu shows, which he is clearly a fan of, have rebellious protagonists who do the right thing and have high moral values without necessarily following the rules or staying in their lane, and many are at odds both with the criminals and with the law enforcements. Micchy himself has a delinquent background and would totally use underhanded tactics if necessary, but he is still a good guy and a self-professed hero. This guy is everything to me.

Trickster - Junior. Fudou Myouou Boy fits here too, to a lesser extent. Junior is still a little kid, so he views the world as a fun game to play, and being raised in a detective agency where exciting things tend to happen on a weekly basis is clearly affecting his development. He can be mischevious and cause minor trouble (including, but not limited to, eating someone's ark or cheating, like, twelve or so kids out of their Yu-Go-Oh! cards), and trickstery kinda comes with being a cat, but he is still a benevolent creature and will use his powers for good, even if using them for good means scaring a guy half to death (especially if it means scaring a guy half to death).

Judge - Lord Enma. Even with his throne usurped, he is still a just and honorable ruler who cares deeply about the safety of Youmakai and is willing to sacrifice himself to protect it. He is the law, or at least was the law before Lord Kaira took the throne for himself, but even then, saving Youmakai came first for Lord Enma, and getting his throne back came, like, third or so, he didn't even bother with it in the end. Nurarihyon could be in this spot as well, at least at the time of Shadowside, but the absolute shitshow that was his time as a consort in the second movie of the first anime makes me see him as more "Lawful Disaster" or "Lawful What the Fuck" than "Lawful Neutral". There was nothing neutral about him at the time, and even during Shadowside, his devotion to everything Enma kinda takes the neutrality out of him.

Soldier - Douketsu. Fukurou could be in this spot as well, but Douketsu had considerably more screen time than him, so I went with the teach. Fukurou can never win, can he? My poor owl child. Anyway, Douketsu is the devoted type. His moral compass is based entirely on what's best for the Oni clan, and, specifically, for Shutendoji. Shutendoji's wish is his command, and, even if he does not approve of his master's actions (see the Ayame/Jorogumo disaster for reference), he will always be there for him, will follow his every whim, and is more than willing to die for him (which he eventually does). Showing compassion to anyone but his fellow Oni clan members is out of the question, kidnapping little kids is the least he would do for his master. I wonder if his colleagues ever noticed anything strange about him during his short gig as a school teacher.

Undecided - Komajiro. Frog. That's it, that's the reasoning. He frog. Baby froggo. Dat boi. Why would he have morals, why would he follow the law? He loves his brother and is a friendly little creature, but he is more than capable of revenge, both petty and not-so-petty, and you will get your eye gouged out if he doesn't like you. This is what happens when you give a frog magical powers. Frogs cannot discern between good and evil, they don't need to, they are above that. Praised be the frogs. O shit waddup.

Rogue - Mitsumata Mizuchi. The Mitsumata Brother who did not grow out of his delinquent phase, but might begin to change his ways soon - not because he wants to be good or doesn't want to be evil, he just wants his brother to respect him. Laws, morals and alignments don't mean much to him, but his pride as a Mitsumata does, and so does his family (even if his reunion with an estranged brother did end up with a girl crying and a factory getting blown up). I don't think this guy respected a single law in his entire life, if he did not break a law, it means he just wasn't feeling like it on that particular day. His plan to get his brother's attention was to kidnap a girl, tie her to a chair and write a ransom note. I'm starting to think that watching too many movies and then poorly imitating them is a Mitsumata family trait.

Free Spirit - Ogu, Mogu and Togu. I'm including all three because they are an inseparable unit and play the same role in the story. While technically part of the malicious virus hive mind, they are not particularly motivated to do good or to do evil, they just float around doing what they are told, get attached to a guy and then help the guy in any way they can because they like him, whether it is by fighting the good guys, fighting the bad guys, performing a self-sacrifice or coming back after the self-sacrifice to float around once again. They even develop enough personality to get separated from the hive mind, all while not being technically good or bad. They literally become free spirits, after spending their entire lives as non-free spirits. Godspeed.

Overlord - the owner of NGEI, the power plant from the Robonyan 00 episode. His secretary also included because I couldn't be bothered to take a screenshot where he would be alone. A corrupt businessman who wants money and power, unsafe work practices be damned. You've seen these guys in the real world, now you get to see one on the screen. Not the strongest bad guy around, one combined effort from Whisper and Junior is enough to scare him into submission, and he gets his just desserts by the end of the episode. I know that the description says "bending" the law, and the guy clearly broke some laws in managing his power plant to get arrested at the end of the episode, but he fits otherwise, and bending the laws without technically breaking them can still get you in legal trouble if your power plant catches on fire and a group of kids nearly die. Shit, or was it a factory, not a power plant? I'd fact check if my browser didn't have a lethal amount of tabs open already.

Socialite - Lord Kaira. He wanted to lead all right, and lead he did. I don't think he was even that bad at it, like, everything bad that happened during Shadowside mostly took place in the human world, and the whole Soranaki kerfuffle wasn't even his fault. Nurarihyon is responsible for more ridiculous lawmaking than Kaira ever was, as far as we know. Lord Kaira's problem wasn't how he ruled, it was how he came to power (starting a coup and throwing a guy into a prison because he was more popular back in youkai school), and how he cared about power more than he did about effectively protecting his people (either that, or he genuinely believed he would just assimilate Fudou Myouou's power and slice Oni King Rasen in half effortlessly like a potato or something). On a sidenote, do we ever learn what kind of a human-youkai hybrid he is? Was he born from a youkai parent and a human parent, was he a human who somehow turned half-youkai, is he some weird magical amalgamation which resulted from some youkai scientists playing God? Either way, it clearly gave the guy some self-esteem issues that need to be adressed.

Schemer - the Onimaro Leader. You know, the guy from the movie who manipulated a lonely kid into doing lots and lots of crime, just so he could merge with Rasen, effectively stopping to exist in the process. We don't learn much about him, but he is hellishly good at manipulation (all of his scenes with Touma made me gawk at how good he was at reading that kid) and seems to be fairly smart and logical for someone whose goal is incomprehensible to humans. Like, why would you even want that? My theory is that all Onimaro are aspects of Rasen, one way or another, and the Leader represents his smart, logical and cunning side, you know, the traits that are kind of needed to be a competent king. This would mean that Ogu, Mogu and Togu represent friendliness, empathy and having an open mind, and these are the only three Onimaro he did not absorb. Says a lot about the guy, doesn't it?

Nomad - Shien. Yup, we are entering the Forever Friends zone, because it still counts as Shadowside, kinda, sort of, same game! He is a prince who hates his dad and wants to prove himself while also being a dick about it, and a lot of political and family drama follows, resulting in many senseless and tragic deaths among the common folk. You know, just like with real life monarchies. Also, Shutendoji was there, and it made things worse (of course it made things worse), and then Soranaki attacked, and Amaterasu of all youkai was there for some reason (it lasted for three seconds and he had, like, three lines of dialogue), and we ended up getting a baby Enma as a result. This movie was something else, I'm telling you. Anyway, Shien had zero respect for anything and anyone, ever, and his second life as Lord Enma is a big improvement (his second-second life as Hikage Mao is an improvement as well, he manages to be a background character for 214 episodes of the first anime without making it known that he can see youkai, despite everything that was happening around him in the classroom. A true legend).

Psychopath - Jorogumo. Hello, my favourite spider lady! We've all heard about women's rights, now get ready for women's wrongs. She does not. Give. A fuck. Morals can fuck right off, she will suck a guy's soul from his dead skull, and she will commit identity theft while commiting a different identity theft (theftception) to manipulate a simp into doing dirty work for her, and she will ridicule him every step of the way, and she will endanger all lives, any lives, as long as she gets to do what she loves (murder and consumption of human flesh). There has never been a better depiction of "gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss" as a character, and that phrase originated long after Shadowside came out. I love how she got to hang out in the opening credits long after the gang had defeated her. That's how much of an impact she had on everything, all while not being even remotely connected to the Soranaki drama (if she was present during Shuka and Kuuten's time, though, she would totally meddle with them to make sure the drama gets even juicier and everyone suffers even more, all while pretending to be Shuka's bff, friendship bracelets and all. I want a fanfic of this, not gonna lie).

Dominator - the corrupt advisors who framed Kuuten. This is the only slot that I have genuinely pulled out of the depths of my ass. How much do we even know about these guys? Why did they frame Kuuten? Were they worried that he was getting too much influence in the Youmakai court due to being Shuka's lover? Were they planning to set Shuka up with a different suitor to further their political agenda? Did Kuuten do something to anger them, maybe he vetoed a law he shouldn't have or crossed paths with the wrong politician? Was there genuinely a plot to kill Shuka's father, and the advisors decided to frame Kuuten to cover up the true culprit's ass? Were the advisors themselves behind the assassination plot? Or... Maybe the advisors genuinely believed that Kuuten was scheming behind their backs, but they had no evidence so they faked it in fear that Kuuten will go through with the assassination while they are too busy trying to catch him red-handed, and it was their distrust of him, not genuine malice, that got him killed. Either way, I needed someone for the Dominator slot, so let's go with the assumption that they framed Kuuten because they were evil, and were most definitely methodical and intentional while doing so. Honestly, I'm not even sure if it's them in the picture I used, or just some youkai they hired to get rid of the pesky Kuuten supporters. That's how vague the Kuuten situation is. Real world history tends to do that too, actually.

Sociopath - Shutendoji. Let me make this clear, the alignment chart uses the term as a description of a character archetype, I'm not trying to actually diagnose Shutendoji with sociopathy or anything. He clearly needs therapy (don't we all?), but I'm not sure if that would be the right diagnosis for him, same as I'm not sure if an actual medical professional would diagnose Jorogumo with psychopathy (they would probably get eaten by her before they could finish the assessment). Anyway, this guy had an agenda (to put Shuka back in charge of Youmakai, whatever it takes), and he sacrificed everything for this agenda. We don't know if it was his personal decision or if he was raised like that by the Oni clan and just trying to finish what his ancestors had started; we don't know if he genuinely believed that life would be better for everyone under the Oni clan's rule, or if he just wanted to have political power and saw Shuka as the only way to get it. His devotion to Shuka is almost fanatical in nature, his one-track mind makes him miss obvious signs that Something is Wrong, and everything about him screams "a kid who got brought up in a literal cult and does fucked up things because he doesn't know any better", but does that absolve him of responsibility for, well, everything that happened? Not really. Also, by the time we last see him in Shadowside, his two closest friends and allies are dead, his plan has failed, he has nowhere to go and he plans on drowning his sorrows in alcohol so he wouldn't have to face the existential dread of having failed the task that he's been preparing for his entire life. The tragedy of Shuka gave birth to the tragedy of Shutendoji, and time will tell if it, too, will result in a Soranaki-level threat that some kid with a magical watch will have to fix in a hudred years or so. Jiba Jinpei's descendants better get ready.

Malefactor - Oni King Rasen. The first trial our heroes had to face on their journey to Time Timely. The monarch who actually does something, that something being smashing stuff, throwing girls into rivers, shooting blood spikes at people and generally being an evil piece of shit. He is so mindlessly evil, it's kinda hard to hate him, unless you consider him and the Onimaro Leader to be parts of the same personality, then yes, he is very hateable. Also, his defeat made for a very entertaining kamishibai play by an obscure, but highly talented artist Mike Shadowside. Look, I'm referencing my own old posts now. It's time for me to go to bed, and, thankfully, we are almost done.

Anarchist - Shiroda, the thug from the first episode. At first I misremembered his name as Sorada and wanted to have an entire bit about how him being the first enemy of the series proper was a subtle foreshadowing for Soranaki, but alas, my bad memory is to blame. Anyway, he is a criminal who does criminal things criminally and beats eleven year olds with a chain. A disgrace to all anarchists everywhere, good thing the ghost of a little boy who looks inexplicably like Kujo Jotaro got him beat up.

Destroyer - Soranaki. The grief of a wrongly accused and executed innocent which took shape and went apeshit on everything, but especially his ex-girlfriend. Destruction of beauty and life, indeed. He wants to take away lives the same way his own life was taken away once. Tokio Ubaune from the first movie of the first anime had something similar going on, but her scope was not nearly that big, and her ex actually had nothing to do with it, yet he becomes the reason she changes her ways in the games, which is kind of another parallel to Soranaki. I guess the Amano family is just doomed to keep dealing with bitter spirits who are murderously angry about getting wrongly accused of crimes they did not commit and dying in prison as a result (an understandable reaction, not gonna lie), and the best solution just happens to bring their long dead ex to them so they could make up.

Oh God, I'm going to have so much fun tagging all of this, aren't I?

Anyway, have a nice Youkai Watchi-chi day, I hope the time is timing timely for you.

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dollsandmasks · 1 year ago

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Holy shit, I've actually seen this happen once, in a show-within-a-show kind of way, and it was glorious.

Let me introduce you to Hana Poncho from Yo-Kai Watch Shadowside.

Long story short (spoilers for that particular episode wil be unmarked, so beware), a spirit of an old Japanese doll that was once beloved by children, but is now confined in a museum, sets off to find a new body to inhabit and have fun surrounded by kids again. She settles on possessing an animatronic mascot that was about to be introduced at a local amusement park. The mascot in question, Hana Poncho, looks like this:

The mascot's uncanny appearance, combined with the animatronic itself malfunctioning on stage due to the spirit's lack of familiarity with how to operate her new body, results in the character getting retired immediately and the possessed animatronic never used again, making the spirit haunting it very sad. Several years go by, the spirit grows desperate and proceeds to mind-control some kids into running away from home and playing with it, and it becomes this huge mess that the local teenage detectives and their talkig dog flying orange cat-shaped blob have to untangle.

But guess what? During that initial presentation many years ago, where many kids got scared... Some kids didn't. Some were thrilled with the weird uncanny flower person having a non-staged breakdown on stage. One such kid? Our teen detective protagnoist.

She even got the little Hana Poncho doll and all.

This gives everyone an idea how to market Hana Poncho to kids again without any mind-control involved. They set up all these elaborate attractions and rides around the park promoting Hana Poncho as a creepy-looking yet heroic figure that fights evil things to protect little kids, while also teaching them that looks aren't everything and it's your actions that matter, not your face, and that sometimes, being a little scared and having a bit of a thrill in a safe environment is pretty fun, actually!

It's a great success, the forgotten doll's spirit is beloved once again and has a place to belong, and many little kids discover how fun unconventional and scary-looking things can be.

As someone who grew up in the right time and place to see many attempts at sanitizing and policing kids media to remove anything even slightly scary, challenging or otherwise unmarketable, only to see modern kids latch onto adult media not always suited for them because they like the neat scary designs, and the companies purposefully creating misleading marketing to get kids to buy more merch of these very much adult-oriented mascot horror games, I think introducing the concept of something that taps into kids natural curiosity and infatuation with scary stuff, while still keeping it age-appropriate, is a very welcome thing, and I'm glad that this anime, which itself is a part of a media franchise that has "introducing kids to supernatural entities from Japanese folklore, which can often be scary and uncanny by themselves, but doing it in a fun and kid-friendly way" as its schtick, touched upon this topic.

There used to be a noticeable amount of kid-appropriate horror-themed media, from Goosebumps to Monster High, but each and every time you would see parents rioting, calling it too scary, inappropriate and un-Christian (at least that was the case where I live). Now there's a niche in childrens' entertainment, and adult properties are filling this vacuum by falsely advertising their stuff to kids.

I say, someone should make Hana Poncho a reality. Put some scary spice into children's entertainment, the next generation of goth kids will thank you later.

This, this looks like a step in the right direction, at least aesthetically.

But we can do even better.

little kids love spooky mascots like bendy and Freddy but I notice they interpret the characters as totally benevolent basically and I think they deserve good quality media that plays into that, a horrifying but objectively heroic protagonist earnestly made for really young audiences. Yeah they got venom but that's still aimed at teens to adult nerds. I guess there's probably no media company right now with the guts to openly market a slavering fanged ghoul as a friendly children's hero but it is literally what they're clamoring for.

I dunno it just feels shiftier how all these newer mascot horror games are only kind of "implicitly" for kids, like they're still made with adult sensibilities and content kids might not be all that prepared to handle yet on the down-low they're hoping to get kids buying merch. Feels off. If you want the baby market then do it unironically and honestly.

#youkai watch shadowside #hana poncho #amano natsume #vampirina #Vampirina Hauntley #mascot horror #entertainment #media #fandom

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