Spiritpact

灵契 (Ling Qi)

7.2(34,291)

MAL Score

Ranked #3800

Popularity #2479

Action
Boys Love
Comedy
Supernatural
Mythology
Super Power
Urban Fantasy

Episodes: 20
Duration: 14 min per ep
Aired: Jun 21, 2016 to Nov 1, 2016
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

Down on his luck and scraping by with part-time jobs, You Keika’s life takes a sharp turn after an eerie meeting with a white-haired stranger in a junkyard. He soon awakens to an impossible reality: a sudden accident has killed him, leaving him as a restless spirit.

The man from the junkyard is Tanmoku Ki, revealed to be the 13th Youmeshi of the Tanmoki—China’s most prestigious exorcist lineage. Spotting You’s predicament, Tanmoku proposes a pact: protection from humans in exchange for You becoming his spirit shadow, bound to guard him at all times. Together they confront dangers lurking in the supernatural realm, and what begins as a strict master-and-servant arrangement gradually deepens into an unexpected connection.

Otaku Consensus

Spiritpact overcomes a weak opening through the escalating chemistry between Duanmu Xi and Yang Jinghua, whose comic friction and romantic tension give its urban-exorcist action a stronger identity than the adaptation initially suggests. Its momentum is repeatedly undermined by abrupt fanservice, dropped story threads, changes from Pingzi’s source work, and Haoliners Animation’s inconsistent artwork. The result is an imperfect but distinctive BL supernatural series whose central partnership is considerably more convincing than its plotting.

Why You Should Watch

If you want BL chemistry embedded in an action-fantasy framework rather than isolated from it, Spiritpact makes its central male relationship part of the supernatural machinery. Exorcism, ghosts, youkai, necromancy, swordplay, and magic provide more genre texture than a conventional romance, while the comedy keeps the bond from becoming relentlessly solemn. The attraction is not polished spectacle: Haoliners Animation’s artwork can be uneven, and the adaptation leaves several ideas underdeveloped. What carries the 20 episodes is the contrast between Duanmu Xi’s controlled authority and Yang Jinghua’s volatile energy, a dynamic that reviewers often found more rewarding after the poorly received premiere. Choose it when you want overt LGBTQ+ themes, combative banter, and occult action without waiting through an entire series for the male leads’ emotional connection to matter.

Key Characters

D
Duanmu Xi(VA: Shunsuke Takeuchi)
Duanmu Xi’s restrained authority gives the partnership its dramatic weight, especially when Yang Jinghua’s impulsiveness forces cracks into his composed exterior.
Y
Yang Jinghua(VA: Yuuichi Iguchi)
Yang Jinghua supplies the series’ comic volatility and emotional directness, making his combative chemistry with Duanmu Xi the element fans most consistently defend.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
Haoliners Animation produced Spiritpact as a Chinese animation based on Pingzi’s source work, giving the series a cultural and production lineage distinct from the Japanese manga adaptations surrounding it in seasonal databases.
2
The first installment runs for 20 episodes, aired from June 21 to November 1, 2016, rather than fitting the more familiar 12- or 13-episode cour structure.
3
Its genre blend is unusually dense: AniList tagging identifies magic, ghosts, exorcism, youkai, necromancy, swordplay, and urban fantasy alongside Boys’ Love and broader LGBTQ+ themes.
4
The male relationship is the narrative core rather than peripheral subtext; contemporary reviewers explicitly classified the series as shounen-ai even when database genre labeling did not make that emphasis clear.
5
Spiritpact circulated in both Chinese and Japanese performances, and viewer commentary frequently distinguishes between the versions, with the Japanese voice track receiving particular criticism from source-material readers.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: Spiritpact is also known by its Chinese title, Ling Qi, reflecting its origin outside the Japanese anime production system.
Fun fact 2: Pingzi is credited as the original creator, and source readers have specifically criticized the animated version for changing plot material and truncating ideas developed more fully in the Chinese comic.
Fun fact 3: The Japanese-language leads are Shunsuke Takeuchi as Duanmu Xi and Yuuichi Iguchi as Yang Jinghua.
Fun fact 4: Its reception differs noticeably by platform: the research snapshot records a 7.2/10 MyAnimeList score from 34,273 votes, compared with 67/100 on AniList and 351 AniList favourites.
Fun fact 5: One Japanese-dub reviewer noted that MyAnimeList had previously maintained a separate entry for that version before consolidating it, helping explain why older reviews sometimes specify which language release they evaluated.