>>29029969Honestly it's probably because the name alone sounds weird. Pokemon, you get, they're pocket monsters. But what's a "yokai"? Unfortunately, in spite of the wealth of information at their disposal, today's youth would rather brush it off than look it up. On the flipside, in Japan, you'd hear about yokai in the same terms you'd learn about fairy tales in the west, so there's literally no learning to be done.
It is very much a major Pokemon rival, perhaps more than Digimon ever was, but ONLY in Japan, for that reason. Cultural disconnect's a bitch.
