Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: The Apothecary Diaries
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Terraziel
Posts: 59 |
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I know it is a minor point but...
It seems pretty reasonable to me that the guy responsible for getting rid of the poison that killed the prince doesn't get to just say "Woops" when it is found in the same building (I think). |
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Azure Chrysanthemum
Posts: 119 |
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Yeah I think it would have been the same palace since it was that particular concubine's domicile so failing to get rid of it at all, but especially in that one specific location is a Bad Look. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18230 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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This explains some things, as I did think the animation (and especially the looser character renderings) was a bit different that before.
Interesting critique and observation. Once a few more episodes have aired, a more thorough look at how similarly and differently this series and Saiunkoku (and perhaps also Raven) approach similar content might be article-worthy. |
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TheSleepyMonkey
Posts: 905 |
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To clarify, their actual pen name is literally just China. (ちな) |
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MFrontier
Posts: 11675 |
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I felt that Maomao slap. She doesn't appreciate messing with lives for the sake of "beauty" especially when the girl should've known better. Also I bet that totally turned Jinshi on.
And what a contrast after she got tossed out a few times with cartoon sound effects. But it was nice to see Maomao gain a better understanding of Lihua, and Lihua of Maomao, and recognizing that despite still grieving for her son she still wants to live. |
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TJ_Kat
Posts: 368 Location: Saskatoon, Canada |
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Maomao ALSO a lady in waiting to an equally (if not more) favoured and high-ranking consort? Shouldn't their status be roughly equal? Did I misunderstand something? |
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Sssr
Posts: 3 |
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Maomao is the poison taster, lowest in rank and literally most expendable of Gyokuyou's ladies. She was up against Lihua's PERSONAL ATTENDANT, second only to her chief lady-in-waiting who's actually her cousin and a noblewoman in her own right. She's way out of her league there. Jinshi, btw, outranks everyone in the rear palace as he's technically the superintendent and manager. |
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Sssr
Posts: 3 |
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If you've learned history, you should know that third party contracting of servants was actually the norm in most dynasties. There were two types of female servant in the imperial palaces. The ones we hear most commonly about are the ladies-in-waiting and palace attendants. These were the women submitted by their upper-middle-class families to serve in the palace, and they're the ones you might be thinking about. These women would have been partially educated and trained in the arts. Sometimes they had special talents like poetry or music that made them highly valued and would have been announced at the selection process (the world-famous Murasaki Shikibu was one example). They served the concubines and consorts and other women living in the palace (such as the princesses). They did perform menial work, but only in the service of their direct mistresses. They're also the women emperors might have sexual relations with if they so preferred. These women generally served as long as their mistresses wanted, and as they came from well-to-do families, they could usually get married off to well-to-do men when released. The second type of female servant was the backroom servant. These were the women not attached to imperial ladies and who served in the general household of the palace, doing laundry, cleanup, general transportation, and even some amount of trash removal. These women were sourced from the same slave traders that eunuchs were sourced from. In general poor families couldn't sell their daughters directly to the palace because they had no connections and there's no way they could pass the security and background checks the palace placed, so instead they sold the girls to the slave traders who already had the palace's approval and security clearance and the slave traders bulked up their order books then sold the girls (and boys for future eunuchs) to the palace en masse. The boys would be there for life. The girls were sold for 2-5 year contracts and could be released or renewed if necessary. Technically the slave traders also had a responsibility to find a husband for released servant girls, but most of the time they just sold them off to random men looking for a wife - or a brothel. That's why the best way out for servant girls was to find a concubine willing to take them in as a lady-in-waiting. Because female servants were the property of the slave trader, their contracts were basically structured as a form of lease (as opposed to boys who were just sold off), so the slave trader would get fees for the servant girl while her contract was active. There were times, though, when the palace would open up their doors for direct submission of servants, and this is actually recorded in the memoirs of both the last eunuch of China and the last emperor (Aisin Gioro Pu Yi). The palace literally just opened up the rear gates and put up advertisements asking for families who would like to sell off sons and daughters as eunuchs and servants. However, this happened after the general collapse of imperial authority in the Qing dynasty when the palace was functionally broke. It's recorded as having happened as well in previous dynasties, particularly the Han and Tang, but apparently not in dynasties that fell through conquest like Jin, Song, and Ming. There was a way for the servant girls to stay in the palace without joining an entourage, and that was by occupying an office that would be hard to get replacements for. For example, the head and vice heads of the laundry needed some level of literacy because they did paperwork, and palace admin was loath to replace trusted sub-admins, so a woman with enough literacy to fill in checklists could eventually graduate from slavery and become a permanent palace servant after paying back her price plus interest from the slave traders. The slave traders in turn were incentivized to maintain good relations with such women so they could get recommendations from an insider trusted by palace admin. With all that said, a gang of kidnappers selling off a single girl at the height of imperial power like in Maomao's case would have been impossible without some weird shenanigans going on. |
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SHD
Posts: 1752 |
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That's another thing I found strange, though - Maomao may be the lowest ranking person in the room but she was there on the emperor's command. Who are those ladies in waiting to go against that? And if they didn't know - why didn't anyone tell them the emperor was sending someone over to heal their lady? (Obviously I wouldn't trust a random girl with my lady's life, but if the emperor was sending her I'd have no choice in the matter...) Then again, Maomao didn't mention it either, which was strange, she was getting thrown out over and over again and she was like "okay, let's try this again" without ever mentioning that "hey, actually I'm here because the emperor wants me to do this." |
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KarlFranz
Posts: 180 |
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That is mainly to pass the blame bucket. The lady-in-waiting themselves are also nobility, just lower ranks than the consort, thus serving the consort is a way for them to climb the social ladder and make connections. The eunuchs on the other hand are usually commoner. You obvious have to punish someone to make an example but you also can't punish the daughter of a noble too harsh, thus the eunuch took the majority of the blame. |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18230 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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The detail work in the series feels too well-researched for that to be carelessness, so maybe we're meant to assume that those guys were working for/through a slave trader? Or it could just be that the writer left this point deliberately vague (Maomao says herself, "I don't know if I was sold or ransomed" in episode 1), either to bring it up later or just facilitate quickly getting to the point of the story. Anyway, great explanation, BTW. I was already aware of some of those details from my own readings, but the rest of your post definitely filled in some gaps. |
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poltroon
Posts: 105 |
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I am a big fan of the light novels, which are outstanding.
The anime is somewhat less subtle and I didn't totally love the first episode, but I am getting over the different-from-source struggles and definitely enjoying the later episodes. |
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njprogfan
 Collector Extraordinaire Posts: 1170 Location: A River Named Toms |
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Episode 4 solidified it, this and Frieren are vying, for me, as best of this season so far; both have fantastic animation, beautiful background, excellent music, strong female protagonists and great stories, AND they couldn't more different. With these two shows and Shy, Eminence of Shadow, Ancient Magus Bride, 100 Girlfriends.....man, this fall season has some GOOD stuff!!!!
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Shay Guy
 Posts: 2152 |
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I haven't been paying that close attention to the flowers in the OP. Maybe I should. Partly it's that I don't know much about flowers in general. It was only after watching this episode that I discovered the consorts' titles are taken from real Chinese history. Probably should've expected that.
Given the amount of pre-production time suggested by how long it took this anime to come out, despite the source material's popularity -- the original LN was the 6th-highest-selling LN series in the first half of this year, and volume 9 of the Nekokurage manga sold 444,000 copies last year -- I'm not at all surprised by that level of attention to detail. I looked at a couple of YouTube reaction videos, and there's one detail that seems to be jumping out at people: the Virtuous Consort, Lishu. For anyone reading this thread who's raising an eyebrow… yeah. That should be elaborated on in the next episode. (Also expected next episode: "spoiler[Kore, doku desu.]"  )
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18230 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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I was intending to bring this up, too, but you beat me to the punch. If you're an anime-only viewer, definitely wait for an explanation on Lishu before jumping to any conclusions. |
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