Debut: The Apothecary Diaries episodes 1-3

Streams: Crunchyroll on Saturdays

Rating: A- (overall)

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End and The Eminence in Shadow looked to be the early front-runners for the season’s best series. With the belated debut of this series (with three episodes, no less!), they have some serious new competition. This was my most-anticipated debut of the season, and I am delighted to say that it doesn’t disappoint.

Though the Chinese Imperial Court-patterned setting and mystery-solving foundation may call up comparisons to last year’s Raven of the Inner Palace, this is an entirely different animal with a significantly different dynamic, as well as being a decidedly more light-hearted story. It tells the story of Maomao, a girl who grew up with an apothecary father who tended to the courtesans of the capital city’s Red Light District; as such, she was around brothels from an early age and came to be treated as a little sister by some of them. One day while picking herbs, she is kidnapped and sold off to the Rear Palace, where the harem of the Emperor lives, as a servant. She initially tries to keep a low profile – including hiding the fact that she’s both an apothecary and literate – but she can’t help but become involved when a mysterious sickness that is killing the Emperor’s children and making his chief concubines ill as well strikes, and she knows the cause because of past experience with the courtesans of the brothels. Despite her attempts at secrecy, Maomao solving the mystery draws the attention of Gyokuyou, the Emperor’s current favorite (and mother of his daughter, whose life Maomao’s secret warning saved), and Jinshi, the gorgeous manager of the Rear Palace. As a result, she gets hired as one of Gyokuyou’s personal attendants and starts reluctantly getting involved in mysteries and schemes that Jinshi brings to her attention while serving as Gyokuyou’s poison-tester.

Though originally a light novel, The Apothecary Diaries also has a successful manga version, which has become a personal favorite. Based on the first three episodes, the anime is pretty closely following the manga version in terms of the way it paces and lays out scenes, even to the point of using the same style of SD characters in its humorous moments. It also beautifully brings to life the charms and idiosyncrasies of its prominent characters. Maomao is a delight as a very smart girl who also tries to be wise but sometimes lets her impulses get the better of her. Her chief foil is Jinshi, who puts on the air of a charming pretty boy who flirts with all of the servants and concubines, but he’s also much sharper than he lets on; even his casual flirting is both a test and a tool for manipulation. The two wonderfully bouncing off each other, with Jinshi taking a perverse delight in Maomao reacting to him with disgust rather than adoration, to the point that his faithful right-hand-man Gaoshun at one point asks Maomao not to react that way towards Jinshi because the latter’s giddiness over it becomes a distraction. Gyokyuyou also shows herself to be very astute and likable as a high-ranking courtesan, and her chief lady-in-waiting has a certain amount of cleverness, too. Maomao may be the smartest person in the series, but she’s hardly surrounded by idiots, and that is something you don’t often see in mystery series.

And the mysteries, though relatively short so far, are one of the three pillars of the series. Unlike Raven, none of the mysteries have any supernatural component to them, but they are all keyed to the realities of life in this setting and are often involve the statement “ignorance is a sin.” They don’t assume that bad things are automatically malicious acts and show how, say, being unaware that the branches used by soldiers to make chopsticks are poisonous can have devastating consequences. More complex mysteries – some of which may not be containable within a single episode – will also come eventually, but these short mysteries are fine while the series is still establishing itself.

Humor is definitely the second pillar of the series. Though I wouldn’t go as far as calling the series a comedy, it certainly has its regular humorous components and can be quite funny. Much of this has to do with either Maomao demonstrating her weird proclivities (she deliberately tests poisons on herself), her and Jinshi reacting to each other, or other people reacting to Maomao. The style of it is very similar to what The Ancient Magus’ Bride does, but it is much less of a distraction here because of the overall lighter tone.

The third pillar is definitely the artistic design. Though some of the courtesan and concubine designs seems to be simplified a little compared to the manga, character designs on the whole are beautifully detailed and the background artistry is exquisite in both design and detail. Couple it with sumptuous use of a vibrant color palette and respectable animation quality and it’s one of the best-looking series of the season, if not the year. Background music which heavily employs traditional Chinese instrumentation is a nice complement, too, and Aoi Yuki is putting on the expected star performance as Maomao. (In general, though, the Japanese voice work is very strong, with each character introduced so far sounding exactly like I imagined.)

On the whole, the first three episodes come together beautifully in one balanced, highly entertaining passage. The two minor quibble I have is that the episodes are a bit on the shorter side (less than 23 full minutes even with OP and ED) and that I question the need to delay two weeks so the first three episodes come out all at once. I’ve seen speculation that it may have been a program scheduling issue, but whatever the reason, this one didn’t need a three-episode debut. Its appeal is quite apparent from the first episode alone.