Yo-kai Watch: The Movie is basically an extra long episode of Yo-kai Watch and focuses on the generic moral of "friendship is important". The movie isn't exactly shy about its shameless genericness. More on that in a bit.
The story opens up with Nate and his friends going through town; all the while, things are turning giant for no explainable reason, and Nate seems to no longer believe youkai exist. Shortly in, a giant youkai named Meganyan shows up, claiming Nate to be the side-kick he's been looking for, and restores Nate's memories to him. However, the Yo-kai Watch is missing. Then suddenly a swarm of evil youkai appear and wipe out Meganyan, leaving a tip for Nate to discover the inventor of the Yo-kai Watch.
Conveniently, Nate's grandma lives in the town he was told to go to, so he uses visiting her as an excuse to search for the watch's creator. Eventually, Nate and his ghost butler Whisper (as well as Jibanyan, series mascot) discover the real body of Meganyan and help him to release his pent=up energy to return him to his normal form: Hovernyan. Suddenly, Hovernyan presents a magical stone that enables time travel and brings them back in time to find the Yo-kai Watch's creator, who happens to be Nate's grandpa: Nathaniel. Apparently after a bad moment of Nathaniel chickening out of helping a friend of his when a bully was roughing him up, Nathaniel has given up on friendship and instead looks toward being like masked rider superhero Moximous, so that he can be strong enough to protect friends before he allows himself to have any, and thus he's given up on completing the Yo-kai Watch until then.
During the next bit, Nate and Nathaniel go about their business trying to discover the whereabouts of the source of the wicked youkai who are plaguing the world, and come across Master Nyada, a cat-like yoda reference. He bequeaths the heroes with a hose, and then they're off to the villain Dame Dedtime's hideout in an ironworks. Battles occur, and it's revealed that the villains have a magical device that controls time, but that's easily thwarted with a little bit of water that they spray out of that hose they got earlier. Then suddenly, in the third act, Dame Dedtime turns into a CGI monster. And the movie points this out blatantly.
It was at this point where I knew the writers were just having fun with their jobs, knowing full well how generic it is. This movie was generically enjoyable just like the show is, so if you enjoyed the show, you'll probably enjoy the film. Not really anything else to say, really.
