Episode 43 – The Apothecary Diaries Season 2

Jokes about how Maomao can’t bring herself to eat a frog and how she constantly has to talk herself out of giving away or selling Jinshi’s hair stick can’t quite hide the menace bubbling to the surface this week. Even if the hidden forest village didn’t have a vaguely creepy mask-burning ceremony (because setting a tower studded with faces on fire can’t help but be at least a little unsettling, no matter what the purpose), it would be clear that something is going on there that’s dangerous to at least the emperor, if not everyone under his rule. In part, that threat is based on what’s looking like an offshoot branch of the imperial family – many of the villagers, Shisui included, are red/green color blind, a trait that we know runs in the emperor’s line. While it’s possible that the early empress this came from and the foreign settlers of the forest town came from the same place where color blindness is more common, that feels a little too coincidental. And after all, if there wasn’t any relation whatsoever, there would have been no need to infiltrate the Rear Palace or kidnap Maomao.

The fact that at least one person – and probably a lot more – is engaged in researching what I can’t help thinking of as a Juliet potion (one that makes you look dead when you aren’t) is another reason to question what’s going on. Suirei is proof that it works to a pretty good degree. Still, the aftereffects she’s suffering indicate that more research is needed…and Maomao proves that research is being carried out even now. There’s a definite risk to that; Suirei mentions that she got off easily with her symptoms, others have suffered total memory loss from the drug, and I think we have to assume that some people never wake up. Maomao’s naturally excited about the whole “new drug” thing, but when she calms down, she knows that this isn’t the kind of research perfectly normal, harmless people carry out in their spare time…and they certainly don’t do it in the same place where they’re also assembling guns like the one that was used in the attempted assassination of Ka Zuigetsu.

At least one of the envoys, Ayla, seems to be in this up to her neck. That’s another worrying bit of information fully revealed this week; if she hadn’t accompanied Lady Shinmei to the workshop, I could have written her appearance off as a bit of a convenient coincidence. But she is with the woman, and that’s not a great sign, especially since Shisui just cheerily and casually described the abuse she suffered at her mother’s hands. We don’t know that Shinmei is related to Shisui in any way (although there is at least a surface-level similarity), but she also doesn’t seem like a stable, kind individual. That could speak to an unhealthy village culture, because Maomao is horrified that Shisui’s own mother did that to her – and she wasn’t thrilled when she thought it was Shisui’s master, either, which could indicate that such treatment is classified as abuse in the story’s world, and not normal. Maomao may not have always been treated gently by the Madam, but she also wasn’t tormented.

We should probably be at least a little concerned about how this will pan out and who will suffer going forward. It’s a good thing Daddy’s mobilized the troops and that Jinshi isn’t far behind him – Maomao’s good, but she may not be able to get herself out of this one, and she may be happier to see a certain frog-owner than she’s willing to admit.

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