Yōkai Watch
A guide to Level-5’s Yōkai Watch, the 2013 role-playing game that grew into a major Japanese media-mix franchise of animation, manga, and toys.
Folklore & Mythology
Yōkai
Yōkai is a broad and changing Japanese category for uncanny phenomena, strange presences, fantastic beings, and the forms used to depict them.
Oni
Oni are powerful demonic beings whose roles range from punishers and enemies to converted protectors, comic figures, and ritual targets.
Yūrei
Yūrei are spirits of the dead whose unfinished attachments, violent deaths, or improper treatment keep them present among the living.
Kappa
Kappa are Japanese waterside beings whose diverse local traditions were consolidated into the familiar image of a small creature with a head dish.
Tengu
Tengu are mountain beings whose changing forms connect Buddhist warning, bird imagery, ascetic practice, martial legend, and local protection.
Kitsune
Kitsune are foxes in Japanese tradition whose roles include animal, shape-shifter, trickster, spouse, possessing agent, and messenger of Inari.
Kami, Yōkai, Oni and Yūrei
Kami, yōkai, oni, and yūrei are overlapping Japanese categories distinguished by relation, ritual, origin, and narrative function rather than appearance alone.