First Look: Anime Overview: The Apothecary Diaries and Frieren (Patreon)

The Apothecary Diaries

Premise: Maomao works as an apothecary in a land much like 15th century China and she LOVES poisons. After being kidnapped and forced to work as a servant girl in the imperial palace, she solves a mysterious case of poisoning and catches the eye one of the Emporer's top concubines, who makes her a lady in waiting. Thanks to her sharp mind and knowledge of poisons, Mao Mao is unwilling pulled into the cauldron of deception and sabotage that is the inner palace, and there's lots of mysteries to solve...

The Apothecary Diaries is definitely among my top anime this season, and a lot of it is down to MaoMao, who's an incredible character. She's whip smart and refreshingly pragmatic, she's a cynical, bizarre little gremlin who loves poison way too much and she wishes everyone would just leave her alone so she can do weird medical experiments (often on herself). She just wants to keep her head down and not attract any trouble but annoyingly, her sense of justice means she can't ignore people in trouble! She's also disgusted by any man who tries to seduce her (girl, same). She's just plain fun to follow. She's impressive with her deductions, and intensely relatable at times. I love her, and Aoi Yuki does a fantastic job with her deadpan affect.

The anime is beautifully done, and it really gets across the cutthroat world of the Imperial Palace. MaoMao lives among the concubines, so a lot of the anime is concerned with how women are treated as disposable, and how they're pitted against each other for the Emperor's approval. Without being direct about it, it shows that being a concubine and palace servant is not a happy life, and even the most favored long for more freedom. Maomao is a girl without any power to change things, so she has to accept the way it is, but does extend kindnesses and helps the women around her when she can.

Then there's Jinshi, who. Uh.  He's an interesting character and is slowly developing, but I hate how he treats Maomao a lot of the time. The gag that he can't seduce her is fine enough, but he's super willing to use his social power over her to force her into uncomfortable situations. There's a part where he tries to force Maomao to taste honey from his fingers, backing her up against a wall, and it's so realistic about how it feels to have a man weaponize his higher standing in the workplace to harass you that it's very hard to watch. Maomao sweats and desperately strategizes to figure out how to refuse him without getting beheaded, looks at his assistant for help only for him to ignore her-- it's heartbreaking. The show does acknowledge how messed up with this is. Concubine Gyokuyo comes in to save Maomao and is furious at Jinshi for how he's treating her, Maomao tells off the assistant for ignoring her, and takes pleasure in getting a small bit of revenge on Jinshi later. But it makes me want Jinshi to go away. He's framed as Maomao's potential love interest sometimes, despite the fact she doesn't show any interest in him so far, (though I'm told they haven't gotten together in the English release of the source yet). I really don't want it to happen (Maomao reads so aroace right now), but hey, maybe he'll develop a lot.

Jinshi aside, you should also know that this being based off imperial China, pretty horrifying things are presented casually (like a nine year old concubine) though again, the show is well aware the system is messed up. There's also an incredibly weird moment where Maomqo tells a rape joke? She obliquely threatens to sexually assault to a concubine bullying and threatening her (so obliquely I didn't realize at first and thought she was threatening to poison her, which would have been way more in character) and then goes 'lol it was just a joke'. Nothing like that happens again, but it was completely bizarre and seemed OOC. There's also some "women are like this" dialogue that fits the time period but can still be annoying.

Overall though, The Apothecary Diaries is full of intrigue, mystery, well-developed characters and impeccable atmosphere, with a fascinating examination of the social constraints placed on women as an undercurrent. It tells a great range of stories, from romantic triumph, to bittersweet tales of recovering from grief, to pure tragedies, Maomao is extremely loveable and entertaining, and I adore seeing her Sherlock Holmes her way though all the medical mysteries, while squeeing over horrible poison. Definitely check this out!

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End

Premise: Frieren and her adventuring party saved the world from the Demon King after a ten year quest, and now their adventure is over. Frieren, as an elf who's lived for thousands of years, calls the journey a "short" one and casually says goodbye to her companions, promising to pop back around in fifty years. She does exactly that, only to find her companions have significantly aged, and when a beloved friend quickly passes away, she's wracked with grief and suddenly realizes this very "short" journey was important to her. In order to try to understand her feelings and human lives in general, she decided to retrace the steps of her journey, picking up companions on the way.

Frieren is both an interesting examination of what happens after the hero saves the world, as well as a meditation on mortality, grief, and the endless march of time. Frieren's long life allows her to see the impact she and her friends had on tons of people, even as, heartbreakingly, the memories of her companions are slowly fading from the collective consciousness, with only the legend remaining. There's a beautiful, bittersweet, hopeful but melancholy  atmosphere to the narrative, and the animation is absolutely breathtaking. Frieren herself is an intriguing character, seemingly stoic and disconnected but achingly human underneath it all and not without her funny quirks. She also has a good dynamic with the companions she picks up.

A sticking point for some might be the small arc where Frieren takes on some demons. It's a tone shift from the rest, being more of a fight against the Evil Enemy rather than a quiet meditation on loss, and I'll never be fond of the Innately Evil Fantasy Race trope.

Frieren does try to counteract the implications by saying the demons are just evolved from monsters who would mimic human speech to eat them and so they're basically monsters or whatever, but that actually just makes some parts just straight up not make sense (they're clearly sentient, and if demons don't know what a "father" is, why can they expertly manipulate a father's grief, animals don't get together and mock their victims). I think what Frieren is going for is the horror of a monster almost indistinguishable from humans that only has interest in eating and killing us, which is the basis for a lot of horror and mythology (but has it's own loaded implications) but the execution, uh...it could be better. There's always going to be something uncomfortable about the hero's motivation being "wipe all of this sentient race out" and the narrative bending over backwards to justify that. (Even if the demons sincerely did actually act like animals, I would have a hard time with Frieren declaring she's going to kill every last dragon on earth because one destroyed her village).

I don't think any of these undertones are is purposeful on Frieren's part and I'm told that Frieren isn't necessarily meant to be right about demons, and later on the manga introduces some elements that makes the demons much more complex and less 'they're all evil'' than this arc does, but for now, it's a little jarring. However, I really did enjoy the amazingly animated fights and bonechilling moments we got out of this arc, and afterward the show went back to doing it's usual  exploration of loss thing.

Overall, I think Frieren is a well crafted, beautiful and sometimes touching journey though a pastoral fantasy world. There's just a jarring and somewhat poorly executed tone shift as a bump in the road (that nevertheless is a mostly entertaining arc). It also has girls that kick ass and are interesting characters, always a bonus. I'm on board for the rest!