Concubine Gyokuyou – Thorough Watch

Kusuriya no Hitorigoto (The Apothecary Diaries) Episode 34 (Season 2 Episode 10) – Analysis + Important Details

Posted on March 21, 2025 | by anicritic | Leave a Comment

This episode seems very different from that of what came before given Maomao indicated some things are simply beyond her understanding.

The episode opens with Lady Hongniang introducing Maomao to the three new ladies-in-waiting, Haku-u, Koku-u, and Seki-u, who are all from the same hometown as Lady Gyokuyou, which is the safest way to ensure only those who have earned Gyokuyou’s trust can be her ladies-in-waiting. After Maomao is unable to differentiate between them, Haku-u says that the three of them will wear hairbands that match the colours in their names. After Yinghua and Maomao caused a scene in the presence of the new ladies-in-waiting, Hongniang drags them back to Lady Gyokuyou where it’s made clear that the shed is now Maomao’s main quarters but that she must sleep in her original room, probably to maintain an air of normalcy to the new arrivals to the Jade Pavilion.

Maomao then thinks as they’re all working that with the new ladies-in-waiting that the work per person has reduced dramatically, but Gyokuyou’s pregnancy isn’t the only reason they needed more ladies-in-waiting since they had to balance out to an extent the astronomically high number of ladies-in-waiting from Concubine Loulan’s Garnet Pavilion. When Maomao finishes her work, she heads back to the shed, leading to Koku-u (black hairband) and Seki-u (red hairband) asking Yinghua whether Maomao really lives in a shed considering she’s Gyokuyou’s lady-in-waiting, and Yinghua is at a loss for words while Haku-u (white hairband), who is the same age as Lady Gyokuyou and could be a personal best friend of hers, is calm, possibly to show that she trusts Gyokuyou.

Maomao, in thought, shows that she understands that the reason Yinghua tried to get her out of the shed was so she could get comfortable with the new ladies-in-waiting faster, which shows how considerate she is. She then apologizes to Yinghua for being so selfish all the time, and Yinghua guilt trips her into accompanying her somewhere later in the night. They venture out to a building on the north side of the palace and meet a woman, who Maomao thinks to herself is pretty but quite old for a court lady. The lady reveals that this place was used during the era of the late emperor and that compared to back then the number of court ladies has gone down considerably but that this place is still useful on occasions like this.

Once Maomao has taken a seat in a room with the others, she thinks up an incomplete thought with 12 people total in such a hot room on closed-off room like this with it being interrupted by the organizer asking if everyone was prepared with their stories, saying that tonight they’ll enjoy thirteen spine-chilling tales. Maomao reacted to there being thirteen stories, but Yinghua being a scaredy-cat got her distracted. After the first story is told, Maomao clearly sees that Yinghua is easily scared by the ghosr stories but thoroughly enjoys them. Maomao thinks to herself that the stories are more like rumours heard in the rear palace, saying they’re not particularly spine-chilling, reasoning that there not being much entertainment in the rear palace being why they’re allowed to gather like this.

For one prominent story, there was a forest near a village that villagers were told to never enter. It was said that if you went in, you’d be cursed and demons would eat your soul. One day, a child broke the rule and returned with a lot of food since crop yields had been low that year. When the other villagers found out, the boy and his mother were ostracized, not even getting food any longer, resulting in them getting very weak with not a single person reaching out to help them. One night, another villager saw what appeared to be a light floating into the family’s house. The next day the village heard the news and went to visit them only to find the son already dead and the mother near death. Her last words to him were “let me tell you a good secret” before she died with no one the wiser about what had happened to them and the locals all regarding the forest as the forbidden forest. The story spread that anyone who entered would be attacked by a demon and have their souls devoured. Maomao is not all that interested and having pieced out what had actually happened, tells Shisui she’ll tell her the truth behind the story after this is all over, and she thinks to herself that she’s awfully tired for some reason.

Shisui then told a story from a distant land far to the east, and it’s like she became an entirely different person once she starts telling the story with her tone of voice. Apparently, a monk from a foreign nation finished performing funeral rights in a distant land. On his way home he realized the sun had set at some point, and given he could hear wild dogs nearby, he was eager to get out of danger, and suddenly an old house appeared in front of him. There was a couple inside, and the wife gave the monk food and bedding. The monk was grateful but had nothing to offer her in return so he thought the least he could do was to chant a sutra for her. As he chants it, he hears the couple arguing, and he gets the feeling he shouldn’t intervene and should keep chanting the sutra. The wife talks about using the monk as a replacement, and when she walks into the room she had offered the monk, she has the body of a monster and is unable to discern the monk’s location, probably due to the sutra. She then goes and eats the husband instead since she couldn’t find the monk, and the monk continued chanting until the chewing sounds stopped. He didn’t see the couple outside and only the wings of insects, and that convinced him to continue chanting the sutra until dawn. Maomao notes that it’s as if Shisui had become an entirely different person and that she’s a good storyteller. She also notes that Shisui’s face at the angle she’s looking at seems familiar, so maybe Shisui is Loulan in disguise as I had previously speculated.

Then it was Maomao’s turn to tell a story in which rumours were flying around that floating spirits had been seen in a graveyard. Suspicious of that, a group of young men went to investigate only to find it was another man from the same town walking with a torch. The man was a graverobber and grew an unhealthy interest in a strange curse, going around digging up graves to cut up corpses and harvest human livers he believed were cures for the curse with Yinghua interrupting her before Maomao finished her thought. Yinghua was up next and turned out to be a terrible storyteller.

The organizer then mentioned it was her turn to share, and Maomao thought back to her saying there’d be thirteen stories even though only twelve of them were there. During the late emperor’s reign, the rear palace was always growing, constantly adding new sections. The Great Empress Dowager, also known as the Empress, wielded immense power at the time. She was constantly trying to find girls who would fit the late emperor’s tastes. He’d choose the youngest girls again and again with those that he chose spending their time in the rear palace, barred from ever leaving. One of those girls eventually became pregnant, and she petitioned the late emperor, but she was never allowed to leave either, which seems eerily similar to what happened to what was implied in the previous episode with those having relations with the late emperor not being allowed to leave. The storyteller then said that right before the woman who got pregant died, she said that it’s his turn next very loudly, which jolted Maomao awake and made her realize why she was getting dizzy. She then rushed to the window and opened it, ordering Shisui and Yinghua to move the unconscious ladies to the window, saying that the smoldering fire was trapping a lot of bad air in the room. The organizer said that she was so close too, and then Maomao when turned around, she was gone without a trace.

On their way back, Maomao explains to Shisui that the story was probably a superstition with how some things have a reason for becoming forbidden as forest are full of food but also inedible things. If someone got sick from eating something from the forest, word would get out to not do so, and over many years, what was once just a recommendation to not do something could morph into being a forbidden endeavor. After the famine ended, no one could distinguish between what could be eaten and what couldn’t. Maomao surmised the mother and son from the story must’ve entered the forest while it was dark since they were breaking the rules. She indicated there’s a type of mushroom called the moonlight mushroom that resemble oyster mushrooms and looks delicious but are actually poisonous and glow in the dark with a villager seeing someone carrying them from a distance in the dark possibly mistaking them for floating spirits. It’s not a potent poison, but if eaten by a starving, weakened person, it’d kill them. Maomao reasoned that the mother was perhaps trying to say there are delicious mushrooms in the forest as a way to get back at the villagers who abandoned her and her son. Satisfied with the answer, Shisui parted ways with Maomao and Shisui. Yinghua said all of those stories must have background stories like that, and Maomao replied with “Well… who knows?” showing that she has doubts whether what happened back at their gathering could be explained by a natural cause.

When they returned, Hongniang indicated that they came back earlier than they expected with Yinghua saying that there was a bit of commotion, which Hongniang had figured would happen since the organizer of the event this year was new with the previous organizer, a helpful court lady who never got to leave the rear palace after having relations with the late emperor, having passed away last year. Maomao realized that that was the organizer’s own personal story, thinking that the world is full of things she can’t truly understand and that she’s glad they didn’t become the thirteenth ghost story. Yinghua then forced Maomao to sleep with her tonight due to her being spooked.

This was a very interesting episode as I never expected Maomao, a creature of logic, to acknowledge the supernatural like she did, and it seemed that the new organizer was the ghost of one of the girls the late emperor had preyed upon who had malicious intentions.

Kusuriya no Hitorigoto (The Apothecary Diaries) Episode 32 (Season 2 Episode 8) – Analysis + Important Details

Posted on March 7, 2025 | by anicritic | Leave a Comment

The episode leads with Maomao being assigned to the storage shed as punishment for scaring Yinghua with the salamander tail she caught. It flashes back to a hilarious sequence of Yinghua, after regaining consciousness, saying that one day Lady Hongniang will force Maomao to move into a storage shed if she keeps misbehaving. Of course, Maomao absolutely loves the idea since the storage shed is bigger than her room and allows for her to make noise at night since she’ll be far away from everyone else’s rooms, and she decides that they must hurry back. It then flashes forward to later in the evening when she has redecorated the entire shed, and when we’re back to the present, Maomao wholeheartedly thanks Hongniang, and it was really amusing seeing Maomao’s enthusiasm for her new lodgings.

Later when all the Jade Pavilion ladies-in-waiting aside from Hongniang are together, the others think Yinghua told on Maomao, but Yinghua reveals it was Maomao who approached Hongniang to her transfer to the shed approved. Yinghua then tells Maomao to stop collecting insects, and Maomao swears she’s not doing that with her thinking to herself that it must be Shisui since she’s the only who would collect insects while laughing with glee. Maomao decides it’s a serious issue if she’s being confused for someone else, so she sets out to ask Xiaolan where Shisui is with her replying she can be a bit of a phantom. Xiaolan then approaches some other laundry workers in the area, and they’re hesitant to give out info, especially after seeing Maomao, with Maomao rationalizing that they’re wary of her for serving directly under a concubine, and so she dangles the handkerchief Jinshi gave her in Episode 30 as a gift for reliable information since most of the girls are obsessed with Jinshi, learning that Shisui is usually out in the thicket on the north side, which is where she ran into her last time as well.

Out in the thicket, Maomao thinks she should have brought mosquito repellant since she’s getting bitten, and then she sees some white blossoms. When she was little, she used to collect their seeds with the courtesans to make an abortion drug, and that’s how Maomao came to know what she did in Episode 30. She thought that it wouldn’t be out of place for Shin to avoid perfume since it can cause miscarriages, but she wore it anywhere to hide the fact that she was making an abortion drug, which led to Maomao correctly reasoning that Concubine Lihua is also pregnant. The abortion drug the courtesans she went out with made with in the past also included ingredients such as lantern plant, peony, balsam, and mercury, all of which, aside from mercury, could be found in the rear palace, which demonstrated that Shin had no knowledge of medicine, and that’s why she bought the items from the caravan, showing that someone specifically taught her how to make that particular poison, and Maomao concludes that that person is probably still here in the rear palace, which I reckon is a good conclusion to come towards.

Shisui then makes an appearance as she appeared to be scrambling all around to collect a species of a small black insect, which made Maomao insulted that she got confused with her, and then Shisui sees that same insect on the top of Maomao’s head, attempting to catch it but instead getting insect guts on Maomao’s head, which needed them to head back to civilization to wash out Maomao’s hair. Maomao asked them if that was the type of insect she was hunting today, and Shisui started spazzing out about that species, leading to Maomao wishing she hadn’t asked that. They then get a glimpse of the current Empress Dowager, and Shisui wonders if she’s headed towards the clinic that was a focus of the Episodes 29 and 30. Shisui shared that the Empress Dowager was the one who founded that clinic back when the previous Empress was around, so that’s why it wasn’t made the official medical office. Shisui also shared that the Empress Dowager was the reason they eventually banned slaves and the surgery for making eunuchs. Maomao believes that banning slaves was a good idea from a humanitarian perspective, and draw parallel between slaves and courtesans, who sell their bodies to make money although it’s legal and considered employment. She thought although slavery is officially banned, it still exists under a different name. Maomao then wonders whether the Empress Dowager is visiting due to what happened at the Crystal Pavilion the other day and reasons if she’s on the case that there might be a big reform in the medical system coming to the rear palace, and if that’s the case, Maomao indicates she’d love to listen in, but the thought of the other ladies-in-waiting’s angry faces led to her deciding to head back to the Jade Pavilion after Shisui asked if she wanted to check in on what’s happening. If the Empress Dowager has a big influence on the current Emperor and Jinshi, that was probably the reason Jinshi started a school for servant girls since they’re working towards making that clinic the official medical office with some reforms.

Back at the Jade Pavilion, Lady Hongniang is making the others work really hard, leading to Maomao wonder if someone is coming to visit. With all of them present, Lady Gyokuyou tjan greets the Empress Dowager, Lady Anshi, and Maomao notes that Anshi knows that Gyokuyou is pregant, so she must be trustworthy. Maomao notes that the dynamic between Anshi and Gyokuyou is more akin to two friends a few years apart rather than that of a wife and a mother-in-law. Anshi addresses Maomao directly and indicates she knows of Maomao ’cause Suiren, Jinshi’s lady-in-waiting, had said a girl worth training had gone back to the rear palace and that Suiren herself used to be her lady-in-waiting. Anshi then gives Gyokuyou a look, and the latter immediately got the hint to remove herself from Anshi’s presence so that Anshi could speak with Maomao in private. Anshi says she hears Maomao goes around solving problems with Maomao replying that she solves them using the limited pool of knowledge she has since what she knows is far less than that of Luomen ’cause she’s the type to manage the expectations on her. Anshi is fine with that answer and says she wants Maomao to do her best to look into something for her with her uttering whether she might’ve cursed the previous Emperor, and that explains why the first shot of the episode had Anshi looking intently at a room as it’s obvious she wants something to be done and over with.

Later, Maomao remarks that she’s only heard people speak poorly of the previous emperor, such as through the terms, “foolish Emperor”, “idiot ruler”, and “puppet of the empress” with the most notorious one in the rear palace being “pedophile”. The previous Emperor specifically chose the youngest girls available, so that’s why the current Empress Dowager has a scar on her stomach as she wasn’t mature yet, meaning they had to perform a C-section on her. The eunuch who helped with that surgery was Luomen, Maomao’s adopted father, so it’s a small world out there. Thanks to those sacrifices, the current Emperor grew up strong and healthy, and the Empress Dowager allegedly gave birth to a brother who is supposedly one year older than Maomao is when she was 30 years old, meaning she was no longer very young, which didn’t suit the pedophile emperor’s tastes at all, making Maomao question whether the imperial brother really is the Emperor’s brother, a callback to Maomao’s previous theory about there being a baby swap. Maomao then immediately squashed that line of thinking with the thought that if she were to say that out loud she’d be beheaded. I can’t fault Maomao’s reasoning there given the previous emperor’s penchant for young girls that it doesn’t make sense for her to bear him another son at the age of 30 for no reason.

Anshi then invited the four high-ranking concubines to a tea party. Maomao said that Lady Gyokuyou was getting sleepy often, which is a sign of pregnancy. Yinghua questions why they’re meeting in the inner court since they usually stick to the rear palace, especially since Lady Anshi knows that Gyokuyou is pregnant. They have no idea what the other concubines will think. Maomao thinks Gyokukou’s pregnancy is an open secret, but there could be a more direct probe about it during a face-to-face tea party. She reasons that Lihua wouldn’t be the one to do such a thing since she is pregnant herself and a proud woman who wouldn’t do that to others. Lishu might speak up if some of her ladies-in-waiting urged her to, but her head lady-in-waiting, the former taster, likely won’t step out of line due to what happened in the past and since she’s more professional than the others. And that leaves Concubine Loulan as the one to stir up trouble with Maomao remarking Loulan is strangely free of rumours aside from the one about her flashy fashion, which I believe is a ruse that allows Loulan to live a double life that Maomao hasn’t caught onto yet.

Hongniang then requests to speak with Maomao alone, sharing that she, not Maomao, will be the taster, which Maomao reasons is to show their trust in Anshi by not using a separate taster. Hongniang then says the Empress Dowager would like Maomao’s help with something, which Anshi did bring up initially earlier in the episode, and we find out now that she wants to speak with Maomao elsewhere, so this tea party is a pretext to meet with Maomao regarding the request she made of her. Hongniang then scares the bejeebers out of Maomao with a wall slam, warning her not to betray Lady Gyokuyou ’cause she wants to maintain a good relationship with Maomao, most likely ’cause she’s starting to become famous for her deductive reasoning skills. Hongniang is the head lady-in-waiting for Gyokuyou for good reason given her incredibly loyalty to her.

Maomao then rushes over outside to a lady-in-waiting of Anshi’s, who notes that this place currently served the function of the rear palace before it was built, and Maomao noted that the cleaning of the place was impeccable. The lady-in-waiting stops them at a room where nobody, not even the cleaners, are allowed to enter. It was during the time of the current Emperor’s grandfather that a court lady who became a low-ranking concubine lived here, and she was the empress at the time. The late emperor was also raised here, and it was where he passed away. After moving to a different room, it was then revealed to Maomao that during the final years of the late emperor and his mother, the acting empress, spent a ton of time in that room, as if clinging to their memories together. The late Emperor, perhaps due to his weakened spirit, drew his last breath in that room shortly after the empress died as if he was chasing after her. After a bit of prodding from Maomao, the lady-in-waiting revealed that the late Emperor was old enough to be described as dying a natural death, and she revealed that she tried to talk down the talk about a curse, but Anshi insisted she was the cause of his death due to how she wished for his death nearly every night. The true reason Anshi can’t shake the belief that she was the reason the late emperor died was that after his body was placed in a mausoleum for a year, which is the custom, his body was in nearly identical condition without significant decay in contrast to the empress, whose body was in a horrible state. Maomao noted in her mind that it is indeed unusual since every corpse should rot, death being the equalizer for all people, no matter one’s status. The lady-in-waiting then tells Maomao that the mausoleum will be torn down soon, so Anshi wants her to investigate it before that happens, and the episode ends with Maomao having one request to make before she starts her investigation, and knowing Maomao it’s likely that the request is something that will aid in her investigation.

I’m curious about what the exact nature of the request is, but that should be revealed soon. I know Maomao obviously doesn’t believe in curses, and her knowledge of medicine and biology should be useful in getting down to the bottom of this, so it’ll be interesting to see just how entertaining the next episode will be.

Kusuriya no Hitorigoto (The Apothecary Diaries) Episode 30 (Season 2 Episode 6) – Analysis + Important Details

Posted on February 17, 2025 | by anicritic | Leave a Comment

This episode leads with the woman from the clinic who showed Ailan a room she could stay in last episode, and we find out her name is Shenlü later in the episode. The first scene shows her looking at a letter someone sent her (which I will come back to at the end), and this suggests that someone else suggested to her to approach Maomao later in the episode when Ailan returned the next day to say that a court lady wanted to see her, which Ailan apologized for since she reasons she should’ve taken the medicine Maomao prepared for her beforehand so that Shenlü didn’t see it. When Gyokuyou wondered whether there will be repercussions, that’s when Ailan spilled that that court lady wanted to borrow Maomao for a while.

When Maomao and Yinghua went to meet Shenlü, Maomao noted that Shenlü has green-tinted eyes, meaning she is likely from the same region as Lady Gyokuyou. She said that yesterday Shenlü gave off the vibe of a tough mother hen, but in this calm setting, she gives off a wise reserved impression. Shenlü then apologized for yesterday since she had no idea Maomao worked for the Precious Consort, which is Lady Gyokuyou’s title with all the high-ranking concubines having a specific title (Lihua’s the Wise Consort. Lishu’s the Virtuous Consort. And Loulan’s the Pure Consort if I recall correctly). Court ladies from outside the 4 pavilions often use these titles. Shenlü requests for Maomao to make some medicine to treat a servant girl in the Crystal Pavilion who has a bad cough that she last saw half a month ago. Shenlü had met the girl at the laundry area a number of times, eventually telling the girl to get some serious rest, but she went missing the next day and didn’t even visit the clinic. Maomao surmises that the head leady-in-waiting at the Crystal Pavilion must have denied the servant girl’s request to go to the clinic after Shenlü put it out there that the higher-ups might not have allowed to come to the clinic.

Once they’ve left the clinic, Yinghua says that she knows these types of things catch Maomao’s eye, so she told Maomao outright to get the right permissions first to do anything about this situation as Maomao has a bad habit of diving into things head-first, a callback to when Maomao went to sniff the servant girls and ladies-in-waitings at the Crystal Pavilion. Maomao mentally notes she needs to be patient and said she’d get Jinshi to make the introduction. She then saw a salamander and caught its tail, which reinforced Yinghua’s point and freaked Yinghua out, as it appears she’s afraid of critters like those, which I thought was pretty funny. Maomao wants to study how they grow back their tails due to her wanting to figure out how to regrow testicles. Oh, you devious girl.

Back at the Crystal Pavilion, we see there’s a girl that’s dying, and a servant girl tries to check up on her but was rebuked by Shin since it isn’t part of that girl’s duties. Shin then gets notified that the quack doctor from the medical office is here, and nobody is happy to see him given how he couldn’t save the prince and when Shin outright says that Lihua doesn’t want to see him, he produces the letter showing he is here by Jinshi’s order after Maomao in high heels whispers something to him as Shin wonders whether she has seen this “tall” court lady before. The doctor says he’s sure Lihua has great helpers, and Shin replies of course since all who work at the Crystal Pavilion were born and raised in noble families, so they truly deserve their spot in the Emperor’s service, which we all know is not true since they’re the laziest workers around due to their background. Lihua mentioned that Lihua is born from the imperial lineage and thought to herself why she wasn’t a concubine with her thought being interrupted with Maomao having caught sight of a shed that is out of place and directing the doctor to ask about it. When Shin says it’s just for storage, the doctor just as planned asked if she did any gardening recently to draw her attention away so that he could sneak up to the shed while Maomao distracted her, saying that Shin is wearing perfume today among other things.

Maomao then quickly gets to work treating the sick servant girl wondering why she’s being treated like this with Shin interjecting that it’s common sense to quarantine a sick person to make sure an illness doesn’t spread, but Maomao says the girl will die if she keeps getting treated like this, not that a death of a single servant girl would get Shin in any trouble. Maomao then says coming to the Crystal Pavilion made her think back to what happened here before when Lihua was sick, and Shin was burning incense as if to hide the scent of the sick. This time, she feels the opposite, that Shin put a sick person here to hide the smell of incense. Maomao remarks that the ladies of the Crystal Pavilion have too many secrets with how a basket full of banned goods from the caravan were found here, and she asked why Shin is trying to make an abortion drug, which unnerved Shin.

After Maomao has washed herself and changed into fresh clothes, Jinshi, Maomao, Lady Gyokuyou, and Gaoshun confront Shin, and I just absolutely love how Maomao was so in your face and aggressive with Shin, destroying Shin’s faulty logic about how the goods aren’t hers when one of the flasks has the same scent as she does today. That resulted in Shin scratching Maomao’s face, and that results in Lihua taking control of the interrogations with how she surmises that Shin never saw her as a concubine and said it came down to the wire about which of them would be chosen as a concubine, and Shin breaks down due to having perceived Lihua to be talking down to her, saying how she’s better at Lihua at at most things with Maomao thinking that Lihua’s breasts are why Lihua won out since she had more ‘caliber’ as a concubine. Maomao also observed that Lady Lihua wore the same outfit as Lady Gyokuyou before she started wearing outfits that would hide her pregnancy, thinking that ladies-in-waiting here are no good and were deliberately selected by Shin specifically ’cause of their upbringings. Eventually, Jinshi wonders whether what Shin said about her being raised from birth to be Empress amounts to a confession, and Shin completely loses it and throws all the scented oils at Lihua to try and cause a miscarriage, but she was stopped by Gaoshun. Maomao, still in a feisty mood, then puts out that Shin covets the position of Empress while Lihua just loves the Emperor in general, which rattled Shin further. Lady Lihua then punishes Shin with a huge slap to the face and was posed to also punch her too with her dramatics giving her the cover to give Shin a lenient sentence in merely just being banned from the rear palace, and she appeared so dignified unlike when she was sick, nearly to the point of death.

Outside, Jinshi asked Maomao how she knew the servant girl was in the shed, and Maomao said she had an idea beforehand since the girl would be somewhere out of sight, away from the bedrooms of the others. As a callback to earlier when the quack doctor asked if Shin had done some gardening, Maomao indicated there was an clue with flowers that were planted next to the shed being white when they were usually red ’cause in feng shui they say that green and white is a combo that brings good health. She said it was ironic that whoever planted them chose the white blossom though ‘since the white powder in the seeds of white blossoms can be used to induce an abortion. Jinshi reacted with alarm, and Maomao that they’re harmless otherwise unless you specifically have the knowledge about the abortions much like the scented oils. Jinshi asks her whether someone is deliberately spreading the knowledge about the use of scented oils for abortions, and she indicated she’s unsure, but you can never be too careful. Maomao then has an encounter with the girl who was trying to help the sick servant girl, and she was the one plating the white blossoms. Maomao let her know that she’s getting proper treatment away from the rear palace, thinking that Lihua is paying for the treatment herself since she felt responsible. It was just so wonderful to see this girl light up with the news, showing that there is at least one good person serving under Lady Lihua and the goodness of humanity in general.

At night, the Emperor visits Lady Lihua and casually remarks that Maomao was here again, and Lihua says he must know everything and that she has done nothing but save her. The Emperor looks deep in thought, either ’cause of all the threats to his concubines, ’cause this incident is having him think of making a request of Maomao he wouldn’t normally make, or maybe even both those things. Back to my thought at the start of the post that Shenlü approached Maomao after receiving a letter, it wouldn’t surprise me if whoever wrote the letter has some nefarious plans in order. Maybe this person’s request specifically involved Maomao saving the day to increase her profile for whatever reason. In retrospect, Episode 26 had Shin make an evil face upon reading a letter from the clinic, which perhaps suggests that she had a co-conspirator at the clinic, and that person may be Shenlü, who herself is conspiring with someone else with Suiren being the first to come to mind due to her expansive knowledge of poisons. The episode ends with an ominous shot of a building, and I wonder what it’s significance will be.

Kusuriya no Hitorigoto (The Apothecary Diaries) – Episodes 26 and 27 (Season 2 Episodes 2 and 3) Analysis + Important Details

Posted on February 10, 2025 | by anicritic | Leave a Comment

So the caravan that was brought up at the start of Episode 25 is coming in advance of their banquet for the special envoy from a foreign land, and Maomao indicates it’s probably exciting for the rear palace given no shopping happens there and the lack of entertainment in the rear palace. Yinghua mentioned that Lady Gyokuyou will give them an allowance, which gets Hongniang furious as she’s doing too much chatting instead of working. It’s obvious that they will get a chance to go out there and buy clothing since Maomao and Gyokuyou’s other ladies-in-waitings were told that it’s time for a wardrobe change and since they organized so little to keep for themselves, the caravan would be the opportunity to stock up on fresh designs.

Back at the Crystal Pavillion, Lady Lihua directed Shin, her head lady-in-waiting to pass out a message, and Shin flatly says if she wants shopping at the caravan done that she’ll have one of the ladies-in-waiting do it. There is a strange close-up of the lower part of her face, which is probably intended to make us believe that there is something important about this interaction. A servant girl then tells Shin about a message they received from the clinic, and Shin breaks into an outright evil look after reading its contents. This does not look like someone who is benign in nature.

Maomao then has a talk outside with Xiaolan, who asked her out for the last day the caravan will be around as she might get some time off, and Maomao reasoned at the time that as a bottom-tier servant, she’s not allowed to start shopping ahead of Gyokuyou and her ladies-in-waiting. Maomao notes the rear palace is a peculiar environment as it it would appear if disease broke out in the rear palace that it would spread uncontrollably due to them only having 1 quack doctor, but she states the sanitation level is really top-notch with an underwater waterway carrying out waste flowing directly into the great river without ever going into the moat, which is the main source of water they use. I wonder if this will result in someone tampering with the waterway in the future to selectively cause an outbreak. whether it’s to explain why there aren’t widespread outbreaks, or whether they’re introducing filler info about the design of the rear palace, but given the sort of series Kusuriya no Hitorigoto is, it is more likely to be the first or second reason.

When Lady Gyokuyou and her ladies-in-waiting have finished with their shopping, Maomao notes that several robes and skirts are present with tight belts underneath the chest, which incidentally would easily reveal a pregnancy, and it gets her wondering whether this was done intentionally since Lady Gyokuyou’s pregnancy shouldn’t be public knowledge yet. As a precaution, she remarks to Lady Gyokuyou to ask whether the merchants have outfits with tight belts around the waste, which would obscure a pregnancy, and Gyokuyou and Hongniang did get the message with Gyokuyou asking the latter to directly ask the merchants that when they shop the next day.

On the final day, Maomao buys 2 hair ties for Xiaolan, and they run into Shisui, the girl who caught the cat, making this her formal introduction. Shisui has an orange highlight in her eye much like Concubine Loulan does. After missing that Suirei and the blue-eyed “man” who suggested to the younger brother of an official to kill his older brother with salted seaweed and who overdosed Kounen, the man with a sweet tooth who lost his ability to taste salt, with salt, I’ve been observing the eye colours of the characters more closely, and that’s how I realized that Shisui and Loulan both share that orange highlight in their eyes. If you recall from Episode 20, which I brought in my write-up of the previous episode, Loulan appeared to be a different person every time the she was visited by the Emperor, which confused him mightily, and that might literally be the reality with her ladies-in-waiting pretending to be her while Loulan is living a double life as Shisui. And if you also recall from Episode 17 of the first season, again from my write-up. it is possible to ingest substances that alter the quality of your voice as shown with Jinshi, which could allow Loulan’s ladies-in-waiting to have voices that can pass for Loulan’s. I have more to say about this at the end my article. Maomao brought back jasmine tea to the clinic, and apparently, Shisui is nerdy like Maomao is and into shrubs and insects and told Maomao there were tons of them on the north side of the palace, informing her there’s a weird smell coming from that side of the palace. The quack doctor thought that it might have been a waterway that was clogged, but given how every detail is important in Kusuriya no Hitorigoto, there might be something more to it than that.

After that, the show moved on briefly to someone who was coughing who had opened a basket carrying tons of flasks of who knows what they are. I don’t know if those items are the cause of his sickness or if they’re what he’s taking to relieve his symptoms.

Maomao then discovers after the caravan left that scented oils became all the rage in the rear palace, and she noticed that there were multiple scents that could negatively impact a pregnancy, which led her to her visiting the Crystal Pavillion, which is most vulnerable to fads and trend-chasing, and she revealed to Jinshi, Gaoshun, and those at the Jade Pavillion that there were multiple scented oils, spices, and teas that could negatively impact a pregnancy if they were used for something other than their standard purpose with mustard even being used for abortion medicines, which could be chilling given we have two pregnant concubines in the rear palace right now. Maomao reasoned this incident is similar to the face powder poisoning incident that nearly took Lingli and Lihua’s lives and killed Lihua’s newborn son where multiple coincidences converged together to become an outright inevitable conspiracy. She advised for all the concubines to be notified immediately and thought to herself about the extent of the reach of the people who tried to assassinate Jinshi.

After Maomao played a rancid joke on Jinshi when he kept pushing about wanting to try the same tea as her, Jinshi received news from Gaoshun that middle-rank Concubine Jin had passed away with the cause suspected to be poison. The next day, Hongniang told Lady Gyokuyou about Jin dying from food poisoning with Gyokuyou mentioning that she heard Jin had been bedridden for a year now. Jinshi hurried to visit the Jade Pavillion, and when Maomao returned, he requested to speak with her in private away from Lady Gyokuyou ’cause he was investigating the Jin case with the Jade Pavillion being the prime suspect for carrying out Jin’s poisoning out of revenge for the previous poisoning of Gyokuyou during her first pregnancy, which Maomao found out later on her way to paying her respects to what was believed to be Concubine Jin’s corpse due to Hongniang’s deep feelings of resentment towards Jin. Jin was apparently a nasty piece of work who would verbally abuse people and even physically assault those who were of lower class than her, and she had poisoned Concubine Son, a low-ranking concubine who was sometimes visited by the Emperor, and Son was the one who trashed the venue out of spite for Concubine Jin due to her belief that Jin had poisoned her.

Maomao then went foraging for a very particular poisonous mushroom having connected all the dots and presented her reasoning to Jinshi that the corpse at the ceremony most likely doesn’t belong Jin since her hands were clean, and there was inflammation on her face, meaning she didn’t accidentally kill herself, and the corpse had recently been rubbed on by the mushroom, which prompted her to have 3 capable eunuchs come to find the real corpse of Jin. Maomao reasoned that it was a court lady, Tao, who she had heard about from the quack doctor, who had taken Jin’s place and that Jin had actually died a year earlier and had been regularly abusing Tao due to jealousy since Tao had found love while she couldn’t even get a visit from the Emperor. Maomao found out that Tao looked very similar to Concubine Jin, and that was probably why Jin’s lady-in-waitings used her to cover up Jin’s murder before Tao’s rapidly approaching marriage crept up up on them, resulting in them killing her as well, which would explain why Jinshi couldn’t tell that why Jin seemed to have become completely different overnight.

Back to my previous point, I wonder what Shisui’s motive is for telling Maomao about the smell on the north side. If I’m right, and Shisui is Loulan, she specifically wanted Maomao to solve the case regarding Concubine Jin, perhaps to lower Gyokuyou and maybe Lihua’s guard about the risk of being poisoned during their pregnancies. Concubine Jin and her ladies-in-waiting had to have learned about the very toxic mushroom from somebody else due to Jin’s high-class upbringing, and maybe that somebody was Suirei. Shisui may intend for it to be a cased closed sort of thing, but maybe Maomao will connect the dots later.

Alternatively, Suirei is directing Shisui to act this way as a direct intellectual challenge to Maomao like with Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes. It’ll be interesting to whether one of my two theories is correct or whether the truth is something else entirely. Every detail in Kusuriya no Hitorigoto is important as is the case for Re:Zero, and stories like these are among my favourites, and it’ll be a treat to see how everything unfolds.

I couldn’t find a good spot to inject this into my post earlier, but earlier in the episode, Jinshi told Maomao about the school he planned on building for servant girls when he pulled her away from Concubine Gyokuyou and after getting Maomao’s opinion, she suggested the north side since even though the southern courtyard is a convenient spot for delivering goods it happens to be by the main gate, a popular spot for high and mid-ranked concubines to gather, and some of those concubines are very prideful and might not like the idea of having the servant girls educated, which made Jinshi settle on the north side as Maomao pointed out that that area isn’t well-maintained and has many abandoned buildings that can be renovated. Maomao told him to call it vocational training and to offer a snack every now and then as positive reinforcement since nobody gets addicted to a gamble that pays off every time. She reasoned that Jinshi asked for her opinion ’cause he might overlook some things due to his high-class upbringing. It’s clear this is Jinshi’s plan to improve the literacy rate in the rear palace.