Bai Yao Pu

Despite its unconventional score, Bai Yao Pu is a captivating and charming donghua that seamlessly blends fantasy, humor, and heartfelt moments within a beautifully animated world.

The series follows Bai on her journey through a realm teeming with spirits, magical creatures, and peculiar happenings. The animation stands out with its soft pastel palette and intricate character designs, which infuse the fantastical world with a sense of warmth and enchantment.

The story strikes a perfect balance, offering whimsical humor while exploring deeper themes such as friendship, self-discovery, and the connection between humans and spirits. Though set in a supernatural universe, the series never loses its relatable ... warmth, making it an enjoyable experience for viewers of all ages.

Yaoguai in this world have supernatural abilities, but their emotions are all too human, and they can suffer from ailments from emotional trauma, which can exhibit in supernatural ways. Tao Yao is a traveling spirit doctor who can heal these spirits if she understands the underlying trauma; really this is a story device for doing a deep dive into background story of the yaoguai. Although this show is about yaoguai, by using these poignant experiences we are looking at the human soul, with all the flaws. The side characters are the heroes of this story and the main focus of this show. They are laid ... bare for us, and we feel their pain or their relief. Over and over, my eyes tear up from how beautiful everything is.

The story has a general formula that it follows throughout the series. It is structured as a series of self-contained arcs which are, for the most part, 2 episodes long. The first part has our main gang traveling and encountering some new characters in strange circumstances, with a bit of mystery or trouble. The second part explores the central arc character's past and are generally the more emotionally moving parts. The way I describe it might sound repetitive, but each arc has been strong, with quality writing. I would call it "biepisodic", as you can rearrange the arcs without affecting too much of the story.

The arc characters get plenty of development for the arc they are in, but the main characters actually hardly get any development. So the side characters really are the stars of the show.

I'm currently watching season 3, and it's still going strong.

Here's the thing, there is a reason that more anime enthusiasts don't talk about Fairies Album too often. The story is reminiscent of Violet Evergarden and Kino no Tabi, that episodic structure, the heartwarming bittersweet lessons learned along a journey. Stories that most people (who enjoy the genre) respect.
The animation is nothing to scoff at-beautiful nature scenes, expressive character designs, solid intros and outros.
The overall vibe of Fairies Album reminds me a lot of Heaven Official's Blessing, not a shocker considering they're both donghua produced by Bilibili in 2020 with similar plot lines of thwarting mystical creatures.
So, why aren't more people watching ... it? All the other anime I have compared it to have a ton of logged "watched" or "plan to watch" on MAL.
I think that problem is the translation/localization of the subtitles on Crunchyroll for English speakers. The quality is so poor that it's hard to become immersed in the story that I'm pretty sure is a masterclass in emotion. There a typos every now and again and the translation itself is often either too formal or childish. Sometimes a casual conversation seems stilted because of the ultra serious/literal dialogue, and other times I'm left feeling like the characters are babies because they speak in half sentences. It's clunky, it's awkward.
So maybe I'm a little uptight about it, but I'm sure it bothers some other people too.
I can't speak for any of the viewers who watched Fairies Album with different subtitles. They also subtitled it in Dutch, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Arabic, and more.
It's kind of *tragic* to me that more people probably won't see past its flaws to experience the story and the art.