Nov 7, 2023
The amount of praise this anime gets makes me want to write my first review.
To put it plainly, this anime is just MID.
Great graphic for sure and the backgrounds are phenomenal. I actually paused some scenes to admire the details on the inner room furniture and style.
But that's where my praises end.
Now with the good parts out of the way. Let me start with why I am so disappointed in this series.
The Characters:
...
Our protagonist is something that has plaque the western media for some time now: A girl that knows everything and can do no wrong. Also she is strong female individual that will not be manipulated or fall for the charms of the most beautiful guy in the palace. ( you go girl!).
Now lets talk about the other characters.
The main love interest is just a wish fulfilment character. He is just madly fallen for her just because she won't give him attention and is playing hard to get. And she does this because she needs to point out that she is just the very special/ unique "ugly" girl trope.
I can live with that but what I can't live with is what they do with the story.
Story:
This in my opinion is the worst part of the show.
Lets take the first part and beware SPOILERS for the first 4 episodes !
Our MC sees that the palace doctor is a "quack" and figures out by just looking what causes the emperors babies to be sick.
She manages to scribble on a piece of cloth the reason and places it in view at each of two consort's rooms.
Now, one ignores the piece of cloth while the other checks it out, leading to just one of the kids surviving while the other does not. And the one that dies is the BOY!
The gender of the kids is very important here since in Chinese culture the male would be able to inherit the throne and in turn the mother of the male heir would be more important than the other. (as a side note, watch "Ooku:The Inner Chambers" that aired this year on Netflix. There we see how important it is that the emperor has no male heir)
So naturally the grieving mother would feel that she was betrayed and assume that our MC played favoritism since she never saw the actual message on that piece of cloth. Furthermore it would've been in the best interest of the other concubine to assassinate the boy since she would lose standing just because she gave birth to a girl and not to a boy.
Going into this, I would imagine heads falling, lashings (since they mentioned that it happens in epi 3) or a bit intrigue and tension until it is revealed that she tried her best to warn both concubines and she barely avoids execution because in the end she managed to save at least 1 kid.
The quack doctor on the other hand would be severely punished or killed since this is not the first kid that died in his care and he was oblivious to the cause. But no, he goes on his merry way and bakes cookies later on....
Next up, she is assigned as poison tester.
Here I would've imagine she came across an attempt to actually poison the concubine. Maybe because some attendees or even the grieving mother would still believe that they orchestrated the whole thing. And furthermore, we will have some episodes trying to pinpoint the one behind the poisoning attempt. But nope, this "task" is quickly forgotten after 1 episode and never mentioned again (but lets dedicate 1 episode to making chocolates!)
Next up.
She has to work with the quack doctor from episode 1.
There should be some tension, since she might be better than him he fears for his live.
Maybe he was spared temporarily due to the fact that there are no actual good doctors around, however, if she proves that she is better than him he might be getting the "boot".
Maybe this would've become a Dr. House kind of thing where each one tries to figure the cause of some disease and through that our MC actually fails (OMG SHE IS NOT PERFECT!! STOP THE PRESSES!) and it is shown that the quack doctor has some knowledge that she lacks.
So slowly but surely they will get passed their forced partnership and become actual friends that rely on each other.
BUT NOPE. he now cheerfully bakes cookies and was placed on the sidelines to help our MC like a good little nurse.
Such great writing....
I would love to go on and on, but I would like to add one other thing. This show compared to others running this season, is lacking anything meaningful: Frieren has sorrow and nostalgia going for it; Eminence in shadow is just batshit crazy fun; Hyakkano is our guilty funny pleasure;
But this show is just: "Daily lives of Cool Graphics and nice backgrounds" (Oh? It has characters in it? I totally missed that! )
Again, i would like to state, that this is not a bad show by any means. It is just AVERAGE and there are other shows just this season that SHOULD outshine it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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