Welcome, readers of Gogoanime! Today we will review The Apothecary Diaries, an anime we fell in love with last year by combining humor, action, and mystery.
The Apothecary Diaries Plot:
In The Apothecary Diaries we are told the story of Maomao, the daughter of a quack who is kidnapped and sold to a court palace to work there as a maid, but soon begins to stand out and manages to get Jinshi, a eunuch of unparalleled beauty, to notice her. Despite her beauty, a eunuch like all the men who work in the emperor's palace, our protagonist has no eyes for him, only for poisons.
In fact, what makes her rise quickly in the palace is her skill as an apothecary, learned from her father, which helps her save lives and discover mysteries that occur in the palace. Thus, little by little, she climbs the ranks of the imperial complex, even working for one of the emperor's wives.
In this way, Maomao discovers the mysteries that surround the environment where she lives, and we, the spectators, begin to unravel the enigmas of the protagonist's life, such as her real father, or Jinshi, although we still don't know much about the latter.
The Apothecary Diaries Structure:
That is, how it is structured or the artistic configuration in which the work is presented, which on this occasion takes two directions: textual narrative and audiovisual narrative.
Concerning the textual narrative, we affirm without any fear that Detective Conan has had his children, as we mentioned in the review of Corpse Hunters, and here we say it again. The formula that Gōshō Aoyama implemented in his magnum opus is also maintained in this work.
However, the adventures of the young detective have been published for a long time and times have changed, and the works have changed with us. For this reason, Natsu Hyūga takes the same structure and renews it:
We have a protagonist, Shininchi Kudo, who has suffered an accident and must find those who poisoned him and turned him into a child, but, in the meantime, we are told the stories of his daily life, from the cases he solves to how he hides his identity from Ran, his childhood friend and with whom he is in love.
While all these cases occur in Conan's daily life, little by little, pill by pill, we are given information about the organization that made him become a child again so that the main story progresses in an interspersed manner with the cases that arise in the day to day, that is, in the background.
In the case of The Apothecary's Diaries ,we have exactly the same structure. Day by day, chapter by chapter, Maomao solves minor cases that bring her closer to a bigger secret, which keeps the viewer glued to the screen, not wanting to miss a single detail of what is happening and, above all, what is to come.
If we focus this analysis from a structural perspective, we could conclude that each detail will influence the entire work, because knowledge is not achieved only by the gradual progression from one detail to another, each of them being key to concluding the end of the puzzle that has been presented to us.
That is to say, in a certain way, this work encourages the viewer to rack his or her brain, looking for detail by detail, piece by piece, and completing the puzzle that is presented to us in the form of a story. In this way, Natsu Hyūga creates what Jauss and Umberto Eco called "gaps," for the viewer (or reader) to fill in.
In this way, this gap is created for the reader to fill thanks to the information that has been provided during the development of the action, making him feel useful and intelligent after filling it, that is, it is the candy for having made an effort in search of the solution.
This, as we said, keeps the viewer glued to the screen, waiting for the next puzzle, the next mystery, to feel useful and not just an observer. In this way, we see in the work a matryoshka-shaped puzzle, where each mystery, once solved, is nothing more than a part of the final puzzle, each one being more interesting than the previous one.
After this, in case the viewer has not been able to follow the thread of the narrative, it is the anime itself that tells us what happened, either to confirm suspicions or theories of the enigma or directly solve the question for those who have not been able to anticipate the solution to the conflict.
And if you do not like the questions or mysteries of the work, it does not matter. The Hianime has other things that make it spectacular: the music, the animation itself, a strange romance and a comedy that knows perfectly where to fit and relieve tension, causing laughter or a smile.
We have little to say about the music and animation because the work of the OLM studio is spectacular: they are splendid, they fit perfectly (for this you only have to see the first opening that is maintained throughout the series) and they are more than excellent for what we are used to in an anime of this type. To this we must add the fabulous design of characters, costumes and environments that the work contains, perfectly transferred from the manga.
The supposed romance that exists between Maomao and Jinshi is, as far as we have seen, complicated to analyze. We could rather talk about a classic relationship between the lover (the eunuch) and the beloved (the apothecary).
Love is unidirectional and it seems that Maomao is almost more disgusted than attracted to it, unlike all the women of the palace. Although as their relationship grows closer, it seems that the apothecary relaxes and gets closer to the eunuch, in a more affable way, but even so it does not seem to attract him.
In conclusion, this work shows a perfect balance between all the elements that compose it. What did you think of the first broadcast? Are you looking forward to seeing the second season? We'll read you in the comments and on Twitter. You can follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Twitch, or on our Discord channel. See you next time!
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