General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Fairies Albums (百妖谱)

Fairies Albums (百妖谱) is a Chinese animated series adapted from the novel of the same name by 裟椤双树 (Shaluo Shuangshu). It follows Tao Yao (桃夭), the ghost doctor of Taodu who treats only yaoguai, or demons, and never humans, as she travels the land with the young monk Mo Ya (磨牙) and the snake demon Liu Gongzi (柳公子), healing demons and telling stories of the human world.¹ The first season, produced by Haoliners (绘梦动画), premiered on Bilibili on April 25, 2020, and the series has since run for five seasons, an announced animated film, and a live-action drama.²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Original work	Novel by 裟椤双树; unit-based zhiguai (strange-tale) stories in which each demon's case carries a human emotion or regret¹^•⁴
First season	12 episodes, produced by 绘梦动画, directed by 董易, premiered on Bilibili April 25, 2020²
Season 1 reception	140 million plays, 5 million followers, and an average 9.3 rating from 41,000 viewers on Bilibili⁵
Series standing	First four seasons exceeded 600 million cumulative plays with a Douban score of 8.7⁶
Award	Season 3, 京师篇 (Jingshi Arc), won the Gold Award for Best Series Animation at the 19th China Animation Golden Dragon Awards in 2022⁷
Live-action drama	Directed by Guo Jingming (郭敬明) for iQiyi, filming began August 11, 2026, starring Deng Wei (邓为) and Ai Mi (艾米); 36 episodes expected in 2027⁸^•⁹

Spoilers

Premise and structure

The story is set in an ancient China where humans and demons coexist. Tao Yao, the ghost doctor of Taodu, holds the principle of treating demons but not people, and she carries the golden bell that identifies her trade. She travels with Mo Ya, a small monk, the little fox demon Gun Gun (滚滚), and Liu Gongzi, a snake demon inhabiting a human body. Each stop on their journey brings a demon patient whose ailment reflects a human wound: a fox that destroys its own cultivation, a mayfly that lives a single day, a dragon seeking its own worth, a guardian spirit keeping a promise of love.¹^•⁵

The series is built as a unit drama: season 1 told six demon-and-human stories at two episodes per story, and later seasons keep the same episodic form while adding a loose through-line, the search for the lost Book of Hundred Demons (百妖谱) itself.⁵^•¹⁰ Director Dong Yi (董易), who was 28 when the first season aired, said he valued the series' focus on ordinary people's warmth and coldness seen through the eyes of demons, and that he removed most of the novel's comedic passages to emphasize a more reserved, distinctly Chinese emotional register.¹

The animated seasons

Season 1 (2020). Produced by Haoliners Animation and streamed exclusively on Bilibili, the first season drew a million followers within two hours of launch and reached 140 million plays, 5 million followers, and a 9.3 average rating from 41,000 viewers. The "Shujin" (漱金) and "Qingji" (庆忌) arcs, in which a bird possesses a dead soldier to comfort his mother and a demon waits decades to deliver a letter, were singled out for their visual storytelling.⁵^•¹¹

Season 2 (2021). The second season kept the same narrative method but drew controversy among novel readers and general viewers over its adapted plots. Its final rating stayed above 9, yet views, heat, and word of mouth fell short of the first season, a shortfall the industry outlet ACGx tied to adaptation problems and to weaker source material in some arcs.⁵

Season 3, 京师篇 (2022). The party travels to the capital to follow the scent of the lost book, and Tao Yao takes work as a stable hand in the household of the powerful Si family. This season won the Gold Award for Best Series Animation at the 19th China Animation Golden Dragon Awards in 2022.⁷^•¹²

Season 4, 司府篇 (2024). Produced by bilibili with CMC MEDIA and again directed by Dong Yi, it premiered on Bilibili on February 23, 2024, ran 12 episodes, and follows the group's continued search for the book as they treat demons including Andao, Baizhi, Fengguo, Shuhu, Fengsheng, and Dunyu. By April 2024 the series as a whole had passed 520 million plays, 7.383 million followers, and a 9.8 rating on the platform.¹²

Season 5, 洛阳篇 (2025). The fifth season moved the search for the lost book to the city of Luoyang and was released on August 8, 2025.³^•¹³

An animated film version, written by Wei Hua (韦华) and produced by Duolabimeng and Bilibili Film, was filed for production in April 2025; it follows a girl named Tao Yao who shelters a demon calling herself "Big Miss" and sets out to uncover the secret of the book.³

International release

The series has been distributed outside China on Crunchyroll, the Korean platform Laftel, Singapore's meWATCH, and Southeast Asia's Ani-mi Asia.¹² Japanese-dubbed versions of seasons 1 and 2 aired on Fuji TV's B8station block in 2024,¹⁴ and the Japanese dub of season 3 premiered there on October 7, 2026, with Nao Tōyama as Tao Yao, Sōma Saitō as Mo Ya, 河西健吾 as Liu Gongzi, Hiroshi Kamiya as Si Kuanglan, and Daisuke Ono as Si Jingyuan; the dub was produced by Fuji TV with sound production by Tohokushinsha.¹⁵

The live-action drama

In August 2026, iQiyi announced a 36-episode live-action adaptation as an S+ tier project, directed by Guo Jingming and produced with Zuoshi Culture (最世文化) and Jishiyu, with filming beginning August 11, 2026 in Hengdian and Puyuan.⁸^•⁹ Deng Wei plays Si Kuanglan (司狂澜), the second son of the Si household, and Ai Mi plays Tao Yao; the two had previously co-starred in The Immortal Ascension (仙台有树). Lin Ziye plays Mo Ya and Yan An plays Liu Gongzi.⁸

The adaptation drew debate before release. The drama promotes Si Kuanglan, a popular supporting character who appears late in the novel, to lead male role and strengthens the romance line, and some novel readers worried that Tao Yao's independent "big female lead" arc and the healing unit-drama core would be diluted into a costume romance. Others noted the screenwriter Ge Rui's work on The Eight Hundred and the production scale as reasons for confidence.⁴ A first look at Deng Wei's unretouched character frame, posted by Guo Jingming on August 17, 2026, trended widely and was broadly praised for fitting the character's cold, reserved persona.⁴ The series is expected on iQiyi in 2027.⁹

Reception and context

The animation's standing rests on two consistent measures: a Douban score of 8.7 and cumulative Bilibili plays above 600 million across the first four seasons.⁶ Commentators have called it a "Chinese-style Natsume's Book of Friends", a comparison Dong Yi rejected as superficial, arguing that the characters' temperament, the emotions, and the underlying Chinese and Japanese cultural values differ substantially.¹ Critics have placed the work in the long Chinese tradition of demon tales such as Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio and In Search of the Supernatural, in which writers used strange creatures to reflect social reality and popular hopes, and noted its theme of reverence for all things and harmony between humans and the myriad beings.⁵^•⁷ The franchise is also cited as a rare case that has run the full chain from novel to animation to live-action drama in the current zhiguai production wave.¹⁶

References

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