Overview:
Maomao lived a peaceful life with her apothecary father. Until one day, she’s sold as a lowly servant to the emperor’s palace. But she wasn’t meant for a compliant life among royalty. So when imperial heirs fall ill, she decides to step in and find a cure! This catches the eye of Jinshi, a handsome palace official who promotes her. Now, she’s making a name for herself solving medical mysteries!
Our Take:
I still think about the third episode of this series all the time. It was such a beautiful episode, I cried like a baby and the amazing part is that was just a one-off mystery episode. I can’t say any other singular episode in this season came to the same heights but that episode set the tone that this would be a series well worth watching.
I remember reading the manga when it first came out and enjoying but never thought it would get an anime because I stopped reading it fairly early on. Look, we all make mistakes, and giving up on this series was one of the biggest ones I’ve made. Turns out, if I had just kept reading I might have found another favorite manga to keep reading but now I have an anime to look forward to so I guess it’s not all bad.
This anime takes place in China which for an anime is unique in its way. Maomao is like a Chinese Sherlock Holmes if Sherlock liked to ingest poisons just to see what they did to him. Maomao is what makes this show fascinating and her relationship with Jinshi left me wanting a bit more. Sure it’s a romance and we know that it will eventually go that way and with a second season being confirmed we might get that soon it was still a bit disappointing.
What wasn’t disappointing at all was the voice acting, Kaiji Tang has always been a favorite of mine and it feels like there isn’t a show or game in which he isn’t featured in some way. I loved how he brought Jinshi to life and it took some time for the character to get more fleshed out but it was fantastic when it happened.
Emi Lo is a great voice actress and she has gotten some leading roles, most notable for me was her role of Kate in Shadow’s House. She’s no stranger to major roles but for some reason, this was the one that did it for me. I loved how she brought Maomao to life, from her quirks with poisons and silliness down to when she gets so angry that even the emperor feared for his life. Sometimes it takes a role like this to make someone “recognizable” and now I’ve been watching other anime and I hear her a lot more, I hope that is a sign of things to come.
This was a great few months for anime, getting this and Frieren in the same season was a stroke of luck. I hope this doesn’t sound like recency bias but I think we just had one of the best years of anime in a long time. I’m very excited to see what the next year brings especially with a second season of The Apothecary Diaries on the horizon.