Dec 29, 2024
I recently got back into watching anime after a hiatus of duration over a year long, wanted to check out Oshi no Ko s2 but thought that would be a big plate to feast on and I needed an appetiser, so I ultimately picked The Apothecary Diaries out of knowledge of it's mega-popularity back in 2023. In my humble opinion, the emotional pay-off only really arrived towards the last 2 episodes, as it was a culmination of all the adventures our main cast had been through over the previous 22 episodes. Personally, I found the first few episodes intriguing as it was a decent introduction
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for Maomao's interesting character as well as the environment that surrounded her in this fictional ancient China-inspired universe. However, the subsequent episodes that led into the halfway-point felt like the same rinse-and-repeat humdrum, with Maomao being sent around on various missions to aid side characters resolve problems in their lives, without providing any opportunities for character development or progression of the relationship between Maomao and Jinshi, amongst other main themes featured in the story.
I guess what I wanted from this anime was the typical action genre of anime, coming-of-age story where we saw characters evolve in their thinking and decision-making as they encountered more challenges, but this was not satisfied as whenever Maomao has to resolve problems, she really just does so with the same set of personality characteristics (heat-of-the-moment fiery lashing out at incompetent servants or reserved analytical snide remarks/outright criticism of others) or and knowledge skillsets (situational deduction abilities, medicinal knowledge) as she had possessed since episode 1.
However, it would be unfair of me to say that this anime lacked emotional depth or multidimensional characters, as a heavy theme of the story is the power dynamics between people in high ranking positions of society (officials, concubines to vary extents, the Emperor) and the less powerful (serving girls, courtesans that are deemed unworthy for whatever reasons, etc). We explored this in the first half of the story when Maomao worked in the rear palace, and she found out that some of the serving girls for various reasons, were not serving their concubine mistresses to the best of their ability, such as the lady-in-waiting who kept applying toxic powder to lady Lihua's face out of ignorance of the powder's harmful effects to health. Throughout her various discoveries of the wrongdoings of serving girls, she always ensured to be fair to the less powerful, even protecting them from receiving punishment, although fate was an inevitability in the case of Fengming. Through this aspect of the story, Maomao's personal beliefs make her shine through as a defender of justice for those who have it less accessible to them in the imperialist, archaic world they live in.
If I were to continue I might end up writing a total of 10 paragraphs of ranting junk so imma end it here. see y'all when s2 drops :P
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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