Yo-kai Watch Jam: Yo-kai Academy Y

AmanitaJT★ 6

This show is... extremely inconsistent in its quality. It can go from some really cool moments and episodes to some of the worst in the span of a single episode, and it does get really jarring. Let me be clear, this IS a kid's show, so I'm not gonna judge it like it's high art, but its comedy is pretty poor since the start and towards the end it starts getting repetitive. A lot of poop and fart jokes, a lot of characters being stripped to their underwear, Jinpei mishearing words, yada yada... it gets annoying. When the story moves along (Which does take a while. Be warned,it is VERY slow in the start), it is actually pretty interesting. It introduces a ton of characters with real potential, but it just doesn't realize them... A lot of characters end up just getting a single episode of development and it's kinda left at that. Chiaki, Kyubi, Nozuchika... They're all interesting characters as shown in their focus episodes but that's not really worth much when they're relegated to background filling for 90% of the series. In fact, basically every character other than Ranto, Jinpei and eventually Mataro get relegated to background filling in the later parts of the series due to the power scaling going out of whack. What's the point of introducing as many characters as this series does just to not do anything with most of them? The show starts picking up at the Elzemekia arc and it's pretty consistently good until the end of S1. It had some cool moments, and Elzemekia is a good antagonist. The ending was kinda underwhelming and slightly rushed, but it wasn't terrible. Now, season 2's pacing WAS, in fact, terrible but I'm pretty sure they got told they had to wrap it up in 10 episodes so I'm not gonna fully blame them for it. It was fun up until midway through. The second half was kinda boring, and the final fight was underwhelming again... at least it's short and not 53 episodes long like the first season. About the fights, since I just forgot to mention them til now. They were fine. The only fight that really stuck out to me as really good was the Earth Walker vs Fudou Riser fight in S2 (and it's unfortunately cut short...). This show's animation isn't awful by any means but I don't think its budget was suited for actual fight scenes. Aaaand that's kind of it. The show isn't awful but it's not exactly amazing either. Its highs are pretty high and its lows are pretty low. It's a fun anime overall, but I don't think I'd even watch it again.