Yo-Kai Exercise Number One

About

“Yo-Kai Exercise Number One” (Japanese: ようかい体操第一, Yōkai Taisō Dai-Ichi) is a song for a Japanese role-playing video game Yo-Kai Watch^[1] produced by LEVEL 5. Since the TV anime series for the title started in 2014, this song has been a popular subject for singing/dancing covers and a well-used musical resource for MAD videos on the Japanese video sharing service Nico Nico Douga (NND).

Origin

The song “Yo-kai Exercise Number One” was originally made for a promotional video for the 1st title of Yo-Kai Watch released for Nintendo 3DS on July 11th, 2013. Then, the TV anime series for Yo-Kai Watch started in January of the following year and the song was used for the ending theme in the first 24 episodes. This anime ending version was sung by a Japanese idol group Dream 5.^[2] For the main target ages of the title, this song featured simple melody lines and danceable choreographies.

Left: 2013 official promotinal video | Right: Dream 5 Dance edition

Spread

This catchy song succeeded to earn a much popularity among kids along with the title itself which became a big social phenomenon in Japan.

In addition to this, this song became to a popular subject for tributes and parodies on NND in the summer of 2014. There were 2 remarkable videos that led to a substantial increase in popularity of the song on NND. One was a cute dancing cover posted to both NND and YouTube by a famous niconico dancer Manako (まなこ) on August 12th.^[3] This girl was an ex-member of DANCEROID^[4], a dance unit formed by famous female niconico dancers and officially supported by niconico and Japanese major music company AVEX. The other was a Z-Kai CommercialMAD called “Z-Kai Watch” posted on August 16th. Each of them had earned over half-million or one million page views within its first month. And the amount of tribute/parody videos for this song had increased to over 1000 in the following month.^[5]

Niconico Z会ウォッチ
Left: Manako’s dancing cover | Right: Z-Kai Watch

Various Examples

Dancing Covers

Niconico 「ようかい体操第一」歌って踊ってみた。タイ焼き屋Niconico 【全部俺らで】ようかい体操第一【やってみた】
Niconico 【彩羽真矢】妖怪体操第一【踊ってみた】
Left: Attack on TitanCosplay | Right: Former Takarasienne^[6] Maya Ayabane

MAD Videos

Niconico 修造ウォッチNiconico 気違ウォッチ
Left: Shuzo Matsuoka | Right: Chargeman Ken!
Niconico 粉砕ウォッチNiconico ののむら体操第一
Left: Toei Spider-Man | Right: Ryutaro Nonomura’s Crying Appology

Search Interest

External References

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