Seven recent episodes of Yo-Kai Watch have opened with these hysterical “Dark Yo-Kai Watch” skits (this anime is made up of basically “sketches” it cycles in and out) and the best thing about them is the clear reference to Gegege no Kitaro going on.
Because Kitaro USED to look like this, from the 60′s to mid 80′s:
…..And had some incredibly grisly horror content, with heinous fates befalling humans who messed with the yokai world.
But from the 90′s to today, newer “main” Kitaro series have started to avoid more gruesome themes and look more like this:
(can you even believe the girl in the red dress is supposed to be the same character in both images? wtf)
So Yo-Kai watch is kind of pulling a reversal and just NOW adding a darker, nastier, older looking AU and I don’t even need to understand a word of Japanese to enjoy these (though I did understand that Dark Keita’s Yokai name is “caterpillar man”)