Sorry. I know this is late. Life happens, but I still think I want to put my thoughts down on paper for this one (or at least type them on a screen). Either way, Apothecary Diaries (Kusuriya no Hitorigoto) is back for another season, which means my favorite poison gremlin is back to amuse and befuddle the Imperial Court and viewers once again. I couldn’t be happier about this.

For the quickest of summaries, Maomao lives in Imperial China (dynasty unclear) as the adopted daughter of an apothecary for the capital’s pleasure district, full of brothels, gambling houses, and people of ill repute. Maomao doesn’t really care. She was raised by these types of people, and she just wants to focus on medicines and poisons (especially the latter). Then, one day, she was kidnapped from her garden and sold as a servant to the Inner Palace of the Emperor’s Court. In spite of her best efforts to keep her head down, Maomao’s insatiable curiosity, knowledge of poisons, and sense that sometimes she should do the just thing when others won’t, gets her noticed when she saves the infant child of one of the Emperor’s highest ranking concubines: Lady Gyokuyo. This act of decency earns her the promotion to official poison tester for Lady Gyokuyo and unofficial problem solver for court intrigues under the direction of the head eunuch of the Inner Palace: Jingshi (note: no man with functioning genitalia is allowed into the Inner Palace). Maomao couldn’t be happier about the poison testing part, but she is somewhat nonplussed about becoming the Palace’s unofficial “fixer,” but she has a lot of fixing to do, because as Maomao says, “The Inner Palace is a lot like the brothels; a pretty exterior hiding a corrupt, rotting core.”

Suffice to say, there is one principal reason I streamed and bought season 1 of this show and will do the same for season 2, and that is its main character, Maomao (which is a reference to the sound cats make in mandarin). It would be hard for me to overstate how incredibly compelled I am by her blend of manic enthusiasm for all things poison and medicine related and her well earned realistic pessimism when it comes to all matters of people and the human soul. Maomao is often surrounded by characters that should be just as jaded to reality (if not more so) than she is, and yet they are all some combination of shocked, amused or exasperated with her somehow polite yet blunt statement of some hard truths. 

Luckily, to boost Maomao’s brilliance as a lead, she is surrounded by a wide cast of interesting characters with complicated backgrounds and motivations. This is perhaps the largest cast of characters I’ve watched in an ongoing show in a while where I am keenly aware of the names, characterizations, motives, and views of so many of them and the impact they and those around them have on the plot. The beautiful yet cunning head eunuch of the inner court Jinshi probably will always have the best rapport with Maomao as he is the other main character (and quite a complicated one), but Maomao also has evolving, interesting relationships with a number of other high and low members of the Inner Palace. The way these relationships and character dynamics grow and evolve is key to the series, and I appreciate the amount of attention to detail that can come from small things you noticed many episodes ago taking on new importance much later. It is very good storytelling. 

The other way the storytelling excels is in balancing mystery of the week plots with larger, ongoing intrigues. A friend of mine has read the light novels that this series is adapted from, and she has assessed that every 12 episodes or so represents the completion of one novel’s story. This makes sense, because while there are many one off mystery stories throughout season 1 and in this first half of season 2, they do both often start suggesting a bigger plot earlier on that is concluded at least partly by the end, often with a few lingering tidbits for later. This combination works out very well in the show’s favor, since you can enjoy many of the individual episodes on their own (although like with any episode of the week format, some are stronger than others), while also paying attention to the little pieces that solve the puzzle of the whole arc going forward. This, in my mind, is what the television format does best, and Apothecary Diaries excels at it.

Backing up the quality of the writing is that the overall stunning animation and art direction for the series. TOHO Animation and OLM are both giants in the industry, and they clearly feel they have a winner on their hands with this series (and Maomao in particular). So they pull out all of the stops to make the series gorgeous and intricately detailed, with strong bits of character animation to show personality and just gorgeous scenes in general. There are of course some shortcuts to keep the budget down, and the occasional moment where the animation quality isn’t the best, but the quality control is remarkably high throughout relatively speaking.

The only place where the animation quality becomes a problem is when it (probably) unintentionally reveals what feel like should be major plot twists for later on. Early on, this season introduces a new character that we were never supposed to be familiar with yet, but the character’s design and coloring is so distinct and unique that my brain immediately made a connection that my friend who read the light novels said I probably wasn’t supposed to notice yet. It’s not a major issue but it is noticeable.

Minor Asides:

• All of the Kusuriya OPs have been bops, and this one is as well, taking a slightly different tone from the first two.

Apothecary Diaries is one of my favorite anime of the past few years. I’ve rewatched the first season several times and I will probably do the same with this second one since the quality of writing and animation have not fallen off at all. Maomao is still a delight, the stories and side characters around her continue to grow more fun and interesting, and I love the balance of short weekly mysteries with long ongoing intrigues. If Frieren hadn’t come out at the same time, this would have been the best show of the year it came out. 

Score: 4.5/5