It hooks you as a goofy gag machine and then Komasan wanders into the big city, orders a soft serve, whispers "Oh my swirls," and you're suddenly emotional about a country lion-dog. That's the trick here: the anthology-segment format lets it fire off three unrelated bits an episode, so Manjimutt getting arrested again for being a poodle with a man's face sits right next to something quietly sad. Jibanyan is the mascot but he's also a cat who got hit by a truck and now spends his afterlife body-slamming trucks and losing, every time. Whisper is the best kind of sidekick, a self-declared Yo-kai expert who is visibly reading the answers off his Yo-kai Pad. Two hundred plus episodes and it never once pretends to be about more than Keita's neighborhood, which is exactly why the Gera Gera Po dance is still stuck in your head.

A mysterious capsule machine in the woods changes everything for primary school student Keita Amano. Out of the capsule comes Whisper, a ghostly yokai freed after 190 years of imprisonment, who becomes Keita's butler and protector. Whisper hands him a special watch that reveals yokai, supernatural creatures normally hidden from human eyes, each with its own powers. With the watch, Keita can summon any yokai he has befriended and draw on their abilities. Alongside Whisper and the twin-tailed cat spirit Jibanyan, he runs into mischievous yokai around town, sorts out the trouble they cause and makes friends with many of them along the way. The series mixes lighthearted comedy with supernatural adventure, and Keita's encounters teach him lessons that help him grow.