Bai Yao Pu season 3 adds Kamiya and Ono as demon brothers

Bai Yao Pu has a fresh pair of antagonists, and they arrive as a matched set. Hiroshi Kamiya and Daisuke Ono are joining Bai Yao Pu season 3, the Kyoshi Arc, as the brothers Shi Kuanglan and Shi Jingyuan, with the new season opening on Fuji TV's B8station slot on 7 October.

The casting appears on the production's own staff and cast list, and Japanese anime outlets including Natalie, Animate Times and MANTANWEB reported it on 18 September. A new full promotional video followed, putting both actors' takes on the characters in front of viewers for the first time.

A quiet brother and a loud one

Japanese coverage describes the pair as the “living Enma”, a taciturn younger brother and a talkative older one. For a series built on a demon doctor who heals monsters by working out what is upsetting them, handing her two brotherly magistrates of the underworld with opposite temperaments is tidy casting arithmetic.

The returning cast is unchanged: Nao Toyama as the wandering spirit doctor Toyo, Ayumu Murase as the young monk Maga and Kengo Kawanishi as Ryukoshi. The original novel is by Shaluo Shuangshu, and Dong Yi directs.

When it starts and where to watch

The Kyoshi Arc opens on Fuji TV's B8station at 25:15 JST on 7 October, which is half past one in the morning on 8 October for anyone setting a recorder. BS Fuji takes it from 14 October at 24:30, Hokkaido Bunka Hoso from 20 October at 24:50 and Fukushima TV from 22 October at 24:45.

Streaming begins on 8 October at 12:00 JST on ABEMA Premium, Amazon Prime Video, DMM TV, d Anime Store (including its Prime Video, Niconico and LINE Manga branches), FOD, Hulu, Lemino, U-NEXT and Anime Hodai. The newest episode is free for a limited spell on FOD and TVer, while Prime Video and music.jp carry rentals.

Those are Japanese services and Japanese broadcast slots. No British or American streaming home has been announced, so the dates above hold for Japan for now.

Where the series comes from

Bai Yao Pu is a Chinese series, adapted from Shaluo Shuangshu's novel and produced with bilibili, which reaches Japanese television through B8station, the Fuji TV and bilibili anime slot, with a Japanese dub made for the channel. The slot opened with the first season in January 2024, and the second ran from October 2024. The Kyoshi Arc is the third.

Our opinion

The interesting thing here is the arrangement rather than the casting. Fuji TV and bilibili did not simply license a finished Chinese show; they built a Japanese dub and a late-night home for it, which is why a series most British viewers have never heard of can reach a third season without a single English-language marketing push. Putting Kamiya and Ono, two of the biggest names in Japanese dubbing, on a pair of brotherly underworld magistrates is a clear signal that the Shi brothers are expected to carry scenes rather than decorate them. The practical obstacle is not the cast but the wall of Japan-only streaming, so whether the Kyoshi Arc reaches the rest of us depends entirely on somebody licensing it.