General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

My Undead Yokai Girlfriend (僕の愛しい妖怪ガールフレンド)

My Undead Yokai Girlfriend (僕の愛しい妖怪ガールフレンド, Boku no Itoshii Yōkai Girlfriend) is a Japanese live-action comedy-drama series produced as an Amazon Original for Prime Video, in which a lonely, game-obsessed university student accidentally summons a yōkai, a supernatural creature from Japanese folklore, and becomes spiritually bonded to her.¹ The eight-episode series premiered on March 22, 2024, with an exclusive worldwide release on Prime Video.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Format	Amazon Original scripted series, 8 episodes of about 30 minutes each³
Premiere	March 22, 2024, exclusive worldwide streaming on Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories¹^•²
Creators	Original script by American screenwriters Yalun Tu and Zack Hines; directed by Takahiro Miki⁴
Lead cast	Hayato Sano as Tadashi "Hachi" Inukai; Ai Yoshikawa as Izzy; Takashi Sorimachi as Detective Tadayoshi Inukai⁵^•⁶
Premise	A yōkai girl bound to a student by a magical hex while pursuing a 500-year revenge mission⁷^•⁶
Setting	Kyoto, with additional filming in Kobe and Kishiwada⁸^•⁹
Reception	IMDb 7.0/10; Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer 97% (3 reviews); Filmarks user score 3.6/5¹⁰^•¹¹^•¹²

Spoilers

Premise

The story follows Tadashi Inukai, nicknamed Hachi, a game-loving university student who is bullied at school and mocked as a "loser." His friend Tanuki shows him a strange post on social media presenting itself as a "love spell," and Hachi performs the ritual one night. The ritual is cursed, and instead of romance it summons Izzy, a beautiful yōkai who becomes spiritually bound to Hachi.¹³

Izzy is not an ordinary girlfriend material candidate: she is a fox yōkai carrying a mission of revenge against a human family that has festered for 500 years, and she sustains herself through physical relationships with men.¹^•¹⁴ In the first episode she kills Hayato Ippei (一本木隼人), revealing the frightening yōkai beneath the romantic-comedy surface.¹⁵ The people around Hachi are drawn one after another into Izzy's revenge plan, and Hachi's father, Detective Tadayoshi Inukai, investigates a mysterious murder case with his subordinate, the rookie officer Tanko Suzuki.⁶

The series mixes genres deliberately. Amazon's own description calls it a yōkai fantasy love comedy with battles and mystery, and critics noted the pairing of a shy, nerdy college kid with a strong female warrior as the engine of both the humor and the action.¹³^•¹¹

Production

The project was announced on March 30, 2022, at "PRIME VIDEO PRESENTS JAPAN," the first press event Prime Video Japan held to present its strategy and lineup. Director Takahiro Miki described it at the time as a battle-fantasy love romance combining yōkai, which he called a uniquely Japanese culture, with otaku culture, telling the story of a yōkai girl bearing a 500-year revenge mission and an otaku male student.¹⁶ Filming took place in 2022.⁸

American writers, Japanese material. The script was written by the American screenwriters Yalun Tu and Zack Hines, who had developed the concept for close to ten years.⁴^•¹⁷ Miki said he was surprised when he first read the script because it lacked the "slightly odd Japan drawn by foreigners" he expected; the yōkai names and the depiction of the yōkai world were thoroughly researched. He said his aim was to make an oriental culture work that neither only Japanese nor only American audiences would find funny, without awkward localization.⁴ Miki, known for live-action adaptations of manga and youth romance films such as Boku wa Asu, Kinou no Kimi to Date Suru (2016) and Tonight, Even If This Love Disappears from the World (2022), directed all eight episodes.¹^•¹⁸ In an interview he cited the Spider-Man films as a reference for the action and pacing.¹⁹

Cast. Hayato Sano, in his first world-distributed drama lead, plays Hachi, and Ai Yoshikawa plays Izzy, taking on battle scenes despite having no prior sports or action experience.²⁰^•¹ The supporting cast includes Takashi Sorimachi as Detective Tadayoshi Inukai, Yukiya Kitamura, Antony of the comedy duo Matenrou as Hachi's friend Tanuki, Anna Ishii as Officer Tanko Suzuki, and veterans such as Naoto Takenaka and Mari Natsuki.¹³^•⁶ The theme and insert songs are by the band Wednesday Campanella (水曜日のカンパネラ).¹²

Locations. Kyoto serves as the story's city, and location support records show university library, lecture-hall, and professor's-office scenes shot in Kobe, along with important scenes at Kobe Customs.⁸^•²¹ The Kishiwada city government in Osaka Prefecture has also documented filming at the city hall main building and annex.⁹

Release and reception

Prime Video announced the exclusive premiere on March 22, 2024, in more than 240 countries and territories, describing the series as a collaboration of Japanese production with an original script by Yalun Tu and Zack Hines.² All eight episodes were released at once, and TVmaze lists the series as ended after one season.²²

Critical response was favorable on a small base: the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer stood at 97 percent from three reviews, with Joel Keller of Decider calling it funny without trying hard and praising the central pairing.¹¹ Audience measures were more mixed. IMDb users gave the series 7.0/10 from roughly 670 ratings, with individual episodes scoring between 8.3 and 8.8 on that site's unweighted episode scale.¹⁰ On the Japanese review service Filmarks the series averaged 3.6 out of 5 from 1,007 user reviews, with 64 percent of reviews in the 3.1 to 4.0 band.¹² Common Sense Media rated the show 15+ for fantasy violence, moderate sexual content, and strong language, while noting that the series reverses usual gender roles, with the shy, careful Hachi paired against the strong, brave Izzy.²³

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026