Huyao Xiao Hongniang

True love never dies—even when it is between a human and a near-immortal youkai. Thankfully, fox spirit youkai have discovered a solution which allows a human to be reincarnated, and with the services of a Fox Spirit Matchmaker, eventually recall memories of their past life, so they can begin anew with their beloved youkai.

Enter Bai Yuechu—a powerful human Taoist who desires freedom from the ruling Yi Qi Dao League—and Tushan Susu, a small and innocent fox spirit who dreams of becoming a renowned matchmaker, despite her reputation as a colossal screw-up. After Susu literally falls through the roof and into his life, Yuechu gets dragged into helping her bring together two separated lovers: prince Fan Yun Fei and his reincarnated lover, Li Xueyang. However, not everyone wants them to be reunited, including Xueyang herself. Thrown together by fate, Yuechu and Susu will discover who they truly are... and who they used to be.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Tushan, Susu Main

Asumi, Kana Japanese

Bai, Yuechu Main

Hatano, Wataru Japanese

Li, Xueyang Main

Imai, Asami Japanese

Fan, Yunfei Main

Tachibana, Shinnosuke Japanese

Tushan, Yaya Supporting

Yonezawa, Madoka Japanese

Tushan, Rongrong Supporting

Kanemoto, Hisako Japanese

Wang, Fugui Supporting

Kirii, Daisuke Japanese

Wang, Xin Director

Cidergirl Theme Song Performance

Lin, Heye Theme Song Composition

Berry Goodman Theme Song Performance

Reviews

Jun 19, 2022

Khashishi

Recommended

I want to rate this 9 because I love this so much, but I don't think it's honest to give it more than a 7. It's tough because the good parts are so good, but the amount of random bs outnumbers the number of good parts.

The anime jumps back and forth between the present, where the main characters try to reunite reincarnated lovers, mostly by restoring their memories of past lives; and the past, which shows the original love story. For the most part, the present has all the main characters thrown together into a giant melee where everyone randomly fights each other for the ... weakest of reasons. It's absurd, and silly, and doesn't make logical sense. The story starts in the present, and the characters are all fighting before we know anything about the motivations or affiliations of any characters. Unfortunately, most of what happens in the present is just not that compelling. On the other hand, when we jump into the flashbacks of the past, we enter into a epic story of heroism and romance and tragedy. It's so good. Usually each arc focuses on one pair of lovers, and we get to see how they fall in love, and difficulties they encounter, and it's never easy. In the meantime, we learn more about the world they live in, and the past of the main characters.

I find myself crying and cherishing these stories of the past, where most of the feats of awesomeness lie.

It takes a while to get enjoyable, as the beginning is just a wild mess. It gets a lot better as you watch, if you are willing to commit to multiple seasons. The main story starts to make some sense and go somewhere, and the character pasts continue to be awesome. The quality of animation also tends to improve in later seasons. I highly suggest it if you don't mind some silly randomness.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Jul 18, 2020

Skyregalia01

Recommended

For someone who has seen a lot of romance genre anime after reading the synopsis I have taken an interest of how they express their romantic comedy story. Rather than focusing romance on the main characters Bai Yue Chu and Tu Shan Su Su that role has shifted to another pair. Moreover, said pair is the actual main focus of the story of this season and our two main leads have taken the role as the matchmakers for this pair. For those who have watched Your Name (the movie) would be familiar with the term’s red-string of fate or destined lovers and this anime takes ... this concept to a higher level i.e. making it a service. Some might view this to be a weird idea to make something like destiny/ fate to be used as a business ploy, but it makes sense considering the pairs used for this series are generally a human (mortal beings) and a demon/ spirit (immortal beings). Hence, the idea of providing a service to the demons/ spirits to continue their love life once their human lover reincarnates (as he/she dies) is an interesting concept. Although this did some spark some questions from me that I would like to have the answers for; Can this service be abused/ corrupted? Once the human lover reincarnates do they have a choice to continue it OR is it similar to a contract where he/she is obliged to it? And what happens if they cannot be together? Hopefully, this anime/ manhua can answer these questions in due time.

Review for season 1 only:

Unfortunately, this anime has the case of lack of exposition i.e. “too many things are happening at once with little to no explanation of the heck is going on”. Does this immediately mean that the anime’s storyline is poorly constructed? The answer to that is no. Those that have read the original source of the anime i.e. the manhua can say that this is how the series started. And for those who did read it (including myself) will probably say “be patient and give it some time to build up its characters and world-building to provide the exposition for you. At the end of this season (season 1) it gives you a proper idea of what a Fox Spirit Matchmaker is. Therefore, if you were hoping for a quick-to-understand setting for the first 3 episodes then I am afraid this is not the case. Though I say this there is something good about this piece of animation that is different from normal.

Firstly, despite the main character (Bai Yue Chu) being the typical overpowering type he does not portray the typical traits of the OP character in other Japanese anime. The difference here is that he holds the interesting combination trait of being powerful but also being (literally) dirt poor. From this background, it makes his personality to be selfish and greedy where he tries any method to get himself out of being the poor state that he is in. Though there are times where he does display a “Jerk has a heart of gold” trope from time to time. Despite him having the “boy meets girl” trope by seeing Su Su he does not fall in love with her instead he just ignores her which does not follow the typical rom-com format. Thus, the question becomes where is the rom-com element? That leads to the second good point.

Second good point is that the rom-com elements are focused on the side characters of this season or more accurately the focus pair of this season. This then ties into the “Matchmaker” in the title of this anime of Fox Spirit Matchmaker. We have probably seen in anime (particularly in shoujo anime) where the side characters take this role instead of the main protagonist(s). And typically the matchmaker role is portrayed as either slow, useless, or disastrous due to various reasons. However, this anime takes it to a business-like level where there is a procedure to these things. Of course, you have to take note that the characters in question are not all human beings but a society where demons/ spirits and humans coexist. This brings a nice change where instead of focusing on romance blooming for the main protagonists we are given focus on the romance of other characters. For those that have watched anime where youkai/demons/gods love a human, you might say well what is the difference between this anime and those that I have seen? The difference here is the focus of the romance. Typically, in anime, you will see that the human and youkai/demons/gods pair will have to face the inevitable obstacle of lifespan where they will either continue or end their love life i.e. it focuses on the present. In Fox Spirit Matchmaker lifespan is not an issue since they have a service that enables their love life to continue via human reincarnating. Therefore, instead of focusing on the present day (which is a typical anime structure) Fox Spirit Matchmaker actually focuses on the past to unravel their love life and lets us see whether the continuation of their love life is needed or not. And this brings in the last good point of the series.

Using the focus pair i.e. side characters to develop our main protagonists whilst world building! This anime takes a new approach on how to world build and develop their characters by using the memories from the past to express them. In this season despite Bai Yue Chu and Su Su being paired together the reason for them to be paired is unexplained and we know that going through their memories is required to get all the answers out. Although this sounds like a simple solution, those who have read the manhua would realize that this does not answer all the questions and the reason simply ties to connections. This is actually evident at the end of season 1 where we observe that even looking through Bai Yue Chu’s memories of his past life it still does not explain everything that has happened. Those who have read the manhua will then notice that this becomes a common theme where our main protagonist will constantly have to look into memories of the past to figure more about the world they live in or the problems they need to deal with.

To summarise the anime does provide an interesting take on the rom-com genre and how to execute its exposition. However, you will have to be patient and accepting of its beginnings where it seems that the current story seems to be going but there is no relevance towards the over-arching story (especially towards Bai Yue Chu and Tu Shan Su Su).

On a final note, I would definitely recommend that you watch it and try to watch the future seasons that have already finished airing (bear in mind that as of this writing it has already got 8 seasons with 9th already airing!). If you do that then I can guarantee that you would appreciate the glimpse of the world that season 1 tried to show in Fox Spirit Matchmaker. And for those that have read the manhua of this series, it is quite clear that the animators had other things in mind when adapting season 1 of the show, especially for the recent seasons (though that is a little spoiler that I will not dwell into.)

Side note - for those who are confused about some terminologies i.e. cultivation, treasured weapons/items, etc. Unfortunately, the anime will not explain this to you since it is aimed at a Chinese audience where they will already have some foreknowledge of this from existing Wuxia genre-based novels/shows. So be warned that you need to fully understand this to understand some of the fight scenes BUT you can still understand and enjoy the romance side of the anime without it.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Oct 10, 2018

Oparu_no_hi

Recommended

Anime is concept and art is very good.In Chinese version is anime has lot of concept is removed
So i would recommend to go https://anilist.co/anime/98976/Enmusubi-no-Youkochan/


I same as this anime .i different is it in Japanese with sub.


If you really have enough time, and really want to watch an anime true to its genre I recommend this anime for you. Even though as I said, I agree with some comments with the pacing of the story, but in the end, it was really worth my time watching. If you want to dwell into an anime with human emotions, relationships and touch, this is a great anime for ... you.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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	Poll: Huyao Xiao Hongniang Episode 6 Discussion Mana - May 31, 2016	6 replies	by RGreatDanton »» Jan 18, 1:42 PM
	Poll: Huyao Xiao Hongniang Episode 5 Discussion Mana - May 31, 2016	3 replies	by RGreatDanton »» Jan 17, 4:29 PM
	Poll: Huyao Xiao Hongniang Episode 4 Discussion Mana - May 31, 2016	4 replies	by RGreatDanton »» Jan 14, 3:01 PM
	Poll: Huyao Xiao Hongniang Episode 2 Discussion Mana - Apr 18, 2016	6 replies	by RGreatDanton »» Jan 14, 2:30 PM
	Poll: Huyao Xiao Hongniang Episode 1 Discussion Mana - Apr 17, 2016	27 replies	by RGreatDanton »» Jan 14, 2:29 PM