Apothecary Diaries s1 thoughts

[streussal]

 

jiggit was asking for my thoughts on The Apothecary Diaries.  I have now finished s1. Overall all I really like it. And it's beautifully animated.

 

My thoughts:

Maomao is an excellent protagonist. Her love of drugs and poisons is so pure and true. The way that she's generally pretty phlegmatic, but also deeply compassionate. The way she tries to be careful navigating power structures (in which she generally has very little power). It's all just very neat!
 

There is a bit of "girl takes off her glasses and becomes beautiful" silliness going on with Maomao applying fake freckles to make herself blend into the background, but I accept because she's such a well done character overall. (Also there's other elements, like clothes, styling, the way she holds herself, etc. And even at her top beauty levels I don't think she's supposed to be at the level of the Emperor's concubines or the high level courtesans.)

Jinshi is fun, and I enjoy his relationship with Maomao. I'm not convinced that there's a satisfying explanation for him pretending to be a eunuch though. Especially since it doesn't seem like the Emperor is forcing him to do it? I don't actually NEED there to be a reasonable explanation - it's generally a fairly light series, not a serious historical drama. But sometimes the show does have the occasional dark and psychological element so like. A coherent psychological explanation would not be completely out of place?

My other ship is Maomao/Suirei. Suirei has only been in a few episodes so far but these episodes did lead to Maomao getting really excited about what a wonderfully competent adversary Suirei was and hoping they meet again. I think they should kiss about it maybe. Great potential for Literally Toxic Yuri.

On the mysteries and puzzles Maomao solves - they're entertaining enough, but the way she solves them often involves a lot of conjecture on her part (even though the show makes a big deal out of not basing things on conjecture). I don't have a big problem with this - it's very much in the tradition of Agatha Christie detectives like Poirot and Miss Marple - but some mystery lovers may be irritated by it.

Power structure stuff - I do find it interesting how aware the show is of power structures. How Maomao is always careful about how she says things, both to try to avoid angering the wrong people (and being executed) or getting others in trouble (and executed). Maomao's detailed knowledge of how the brothels operate, and how in some ways they are very similar to the rear palace of the Emperor's concubines. The way she always presents this information in very matter of fact ways. She isn't trying to change things (and really how could she), she's just trying to live within them as best she can. I do wonder how this will work with the eventual Maomao/Jinshi romance that is developing, because that's a huge difference in social status and relative power!   

Character ages and math - okay some of the character ages do not make sense at all. So the Three Princesses of the Verdigris house basically raised Maomao right? But if they're not retired they should be 30 max, as Maomao says. Maomao is about 18 at this point in the series. So they should be 10-12 years older than her. Okay fine, they were still in training then. But then Pairin apparently breastfed Maomao??? At age 12?? Unless she's put off retirement longer than I thought and is like 35 and was 17 at the time. Idk. (The flashbacks showed all three princesses as adults too but I'm just gonna go with that being Maomao's imagination.) ALSO. Jinshi is stated to be 19 and having pretended to be a high ranking eunuch in the rear palace for the last 5 years. So since he was 14?????? Like I guess it's possible but. Uh. Well. It's anime I guess. (Based on light novels, but they're based on similar tropes regarding age.)

Maomao's bio dad: Okay so if I wrote this while I was still watching s1, then I would be talking about how Lakan is the ABSOLUTE WORST and needs to BE IN PRISON FOR A MILLION YEARS. And then I finished the season and it turns out he's mostly just kinda pathetic. Like he still sucks and is a dick. But he actually presents himself as worse than he is. The reason that Jinshi and the audience thought that Lakan had raped Maomao's mother to get her pregnant and destroy her buyout value was because Lakan himself heavily implied that. Very purposefully.

Anyways, very good series overal