I haven’t written on my blog for six months, so what better reason to restart than the new season of The Apothecary Diaries?
The Apothecary Diaries returned on January 10, 2025 on Crunchyroll, and as you can see by the dating of this post, I’m one episode behind. Whoops. Well, in my defense, the first episode was released during my birthday week, so watching anime and writing a reaction were the last things on my mind.
Anyway, I thought it was a great start to the season. The pacing of the scenes at the beginning of the episode felt a bit rushed, although I do understand why it was done that way. You get a sense of everyone’s busy-ness: Granny scheming at the Verdigris house, Jinshi visiting with the concubines, and Maomao doing Maomao things. All of these things are happening concurrently. It’s a busy place!
I thought Maomao mentioning how she’s using the leftover roses from the blue roses experiment was a nice touch. It’s very likely that I’m reading way too deeply into this (when don’t I?), but I felt like that was a reminder that the events of this episode are taking place just days later, not months later, even though the anime season is. Whenever I’m watching a new season of a show (anime and non-anime), I feel like the same amount of time has passed for the characters as it did for me, unless the season is continuing exactly the moment where the last left off. Last time we saw Maomao, Jinshi had just rescued her from herself (aka stopping her from stitching her own wound), and he was carrying her princess-style.
Speaking of Jinshi and Maomao, their scenes were great. I don’t really have any nitpicks there. I do have something I’m curious about though. I’ve always wondered is why Jinshi holds the kitten’s belly to his face. I’m not a cat person (don’t get me wrong: I LIKE cats, I just prefer dogs), so maybe that’s why it seemed a bit odd to me. Why not nuzzle its face or squish its toe beans? Is he trying to nuzzle Maomao (the person) that way? Either way, I still found it cute. I found Maomao’s reaction to it funnier though.
My favorite parts this episode were Xiaolan’s determination to learn how to read and write, along with Gaoshun dropping his stoic facade because of Maomao (the cat). Xiaolan not learning how to read for herself is so commendable. If Maomao were to read her the novel, it would maybe take up a few hours at most, in comparison to learning a whole language. Even with how young she is (does the series ever give an age to Xiaolan?), she’s already thinking of her future and how to improve herself.
And if you’ve read enough of my Apothecary reactions, you know Gaoshun is my favorite character, so to see him stop being “Gaoshun – Jinshi’s assistant who keeps him in line” for a moment was fun. Who would think such a serious and stoic man has a soft spot for little kitties? It’s unexpected yet adorable.
I have no comparison images to the manga this time around, mostly because I still have to refresh my memory of the manga and light novel for this seaosn. Plus, I honestly don’t know if I’ll have the time. Comparing and contrasting the different mediums takes a lot more time that I realized. We’ll just have to see, I guess.
That’s it for episode one. I’ll try to get my reaction to episode two up ASAP, so I can catch up to the third episode this Friday. Anyway, hope you, dear person who is reading this, is doing well and thriving! I leave you with the imperial family:
