Kouko Ishigami

Spirit Circle began as a manga by Satoshi Mizukami. It ran in a Japanese magazine called Young King OURs from May 2012 to March 2016. The story was collected in six books. English readers could first follow it online through Crunchyroll Manga, and later Seven Seas Entertainment released it in print. The manga was nominated for a Seiun Award in 2017, and it had sold about 250,000 copies by 2022. Now it is getting an anime. The anime was announced in November 2026, and 18 episodes are planned for December 2026. Tatsuo Sato directs it and writes the scripts. The studios are Nagomi and EOTA, and Twin Engine is the production company. The hero is Fuuta Okeya, a 14-year-old boy. He has an unusual gift: he can see ghosts. He also has a large birthmark on his left cheek, and he covers it with a bandage because he does not want people to stare. His life is quiet and a little lonely, and the ghosts are a normal part of it. Then a new girl joins his class. Her name is Kouko Ishigami. She has a scar on her forehead, and a friendly, tall ghost named East follows her around. Fuuta likes her right away. He even wonders if this is love at first sight. He has a strange dream about her, and he wakes up crying. He feels that he already knows her, even though they have just met. His hopes do not last long. When Kouko sees his birthmark, she is not happy to meet him. She says that he is the enemy of her life. She tells him that the two of them have lived many times before, and that people are born again after they die. In one of those past lives, she says, she put the mark on his face as a curse. She did it so that she could always find him and one day beat him. To prove it, she makes a ring of fire, called a spirit circle, and uses it to attack him. From here the story becomes a trip through time. Fuuta is thrown back into the memories of his earlier lives. Each life shows him a different time and a different version of himself. Step by step, he learns why he and Kouko are bound together, and why she holds such a deep grudge. Another spirit, a girl named Rune, also appears in his life. East is part of the puzzle too. Fuuta has to find out how all of these people are connected. In the anime, Fuuta is voiced by Kazuki Ura, and Kouko is voiced by Anna Nagase. Eri Yukimura plays Rune, and Yuichi Nakamura plays East. Anna Nagase also sings the ending song. Spirit Circle mixes several kinds of stories. It has supernatural parts, school life, comedy, romance, and science fiction ideas. The main themes are rebirth, fate, and what it means to carry the past with you. It asks if a person is still the same person after many lives. It also asks if an old hurt must follow someone forever.