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The Apothecary Diaries | Season 1 Episodes 21-24 | Unedited Reaction (Patreon)

Published:
2026-09-13 18:31:09
Imported:
2026-09
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What a BEAUTIFUL way to end this first season..

I've loved this anime from start to end. The mysteries that unravelled. The way this show goes from serious to absolutely unhinged in seconds. Maomao just being Maomao. Jinshi and his absolute inability to keep it together around Maomao. Their relationship has probably become one of my favorite parts of the show.. neither of them seem remotely capable of handling whatever is happening between them normally. And it's honestly SO relatable somehow lol.But Lakan.. His story actually broke my heart. WHICH I WAS NOT EXPECTING IN THE LEAST BIT. This entire time the show has painted him as this villainous weirdo. Only to finally show us the truth. His relationship with Fengxian wasn't some gross calculated scheme. It was two strange and absolutely brilliant people who found each other. Only for a great misunderstanding to completely destroy what they could have had. Him not understanding what had happened until it was too late, discovering Maomao existed after everything was already lost, then finally finding Fengxian at the end again.. UGH.Of course it doesn't erase Maomao's feelings toward him or magically make him a good father. But it makes him painfully human. I love that this story allowed both of those things to be true and even addressed them. Maomao can have every reason to resent him, while Lakan can also be someone whose life is just deeply tragic.Now that Season 1 is over... I am still burning with so many questions. Why is Jinshi hiding his true identity? What is Maomao's place in all of this? What are the secret politics that are quietly happening behind closed doors with the new courtesan? Where did the crazy garden lady go after faking her death? Who is she working with?? I LOVE how this show hides enormous stories underneath the tiniest clues. You think you're solving a poisoning or figuring out why someone painted their nails red and suddenly you're crying over decades of regret 😭 Absolute GENIUS writing.Maomao is everything and I think to celebrate I'll be shopping for some Apothecary merch before diving into the next season with you guys soon! I'll be sure to unbox anything I pick up in the next intro hehe. Thank you all for joining me!Thank you for your support on Patreon!Relax and enjoy 🍿🌿SYNC ALONG LINK: https://youtu.be/U5A30xCMAf8I watched this on Crunchyroll

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Comments

PaoloGP

i think i was one of the first to recommend this to you, so glad you started this journey with mao mao ❤️

Peter R Iorfino

I think another big incentive for jinshi offering the 20000 was to kinda buy him, lihaku would then owe jinshi kinda forever.

Sankis

I absolutely love how they can make it seem almost like a "villain of the week" type of show but it's actually quietly weaving all these related plots together. The second season is even better!! edit: You CAN lactate if you're not pregnant. I don't think it's common, but it can happen. I think you can induce it. Wet nurses, a woman that would breastfeed your children, used(?) to be a thing as well. I think it was more for the upper class/nobility, though. It's also possible for men to lactate. All the plumbing is there, they just (usually) don't get the hormones and stuff to activate it. Certain illnesses and conditions can cause it, though.

Howie

LOL so fun to watch you react to Maomao and jealous Jinshi in episode 21! Probably one of the funniest moments in the anime! Crazy Lakan info drop and reveal later on! All of our minds were blown as well! But him seeing FengXian again was super emotional even during a rewatch. After all those years, he still saw her face! Btw, MaoMao and Lakan were playing Chinese chess, not Go. But Lakan was seeing people as both chess AND Go pieces. In his eyes, the Go pieces were the "lowest" of rank/value and the chess pieces (with Chinese characters) had higher rank/value. And Suirei and pronounced "SWEE-RAY"

rubberkidney

Bro, how good is anime, right?

Peter R Iorfino

One thing you may have missed is who lakan's uncle is. His uncle, who taught lakan to differentiate people by their voice and build and clothes, is Luomen maomao's adopted father.

Ophion

i would highly recommend not watching the video game trailer until after you watch season 2 since it has spoilers for season 2

StrayConfusion

Loved rewatching this season with you! The Apothecary Diaries is one of my favorite modern anime series. Since you were interested in Go, you might want to check out Hikaru no Go, it's an older series and might be harder to find but it shares some of the drama elements of Apothecary Diaries and it teaches many of the basics of Go along the way.

Wasabi tobiko

Lakan gave Maomao clues about the ceremonial ritual that was intended to kill Jinshi: First, Suirei and her conspirator set off an explosion at a flour warehouse by giving one of the guards a pipe to smoke. They did this to distract the guards so they could steal the heavy ceremonial bell and tools without anyone noticing. This is where Lakan found the pipe and felt something wrong about the incident second, Lakan tipped off Gaoshun about a bureaucrat poisoned by seaweed. This victim was the new boss of the Board of Rites (the department running the ceremony). By poisoning him, the bad guys made sure no one was left to double-check the ritual equipment. Third, Lakan dropped a puzzle about a dead blacksmith into Jinshi's office, knowing Maomao would solve it. Maomao discovered the blacksmith's secret: a metal that melts at a very low temperature. Maomao Understood that Lady Gyokuyou’s pregnancy means there’s a chance she could give birth to a baby boy, who would automatically become the next heir and raise her standing. However, it would also make her a bigger target for her rivals and increase the threat to her life. Just my opinion, but I think Meimei likes Lakan. All these are just theories. CMIIW.

Nelson CHen

Yeah it makes it hilarious in retrospect that Lakan was just harassing Jinshi the whole time as the “daughter’s boyfriend”. And when he finds out that she works for him it’s like “you make your potential wife or lover your servant-employee as well? That’s messed up, man. You bought her out for THAT?”

Pilot2b

I think it’s more than that. I think to Jinshi, it’s a potential 20,000 silver cost to know who he can trust. If Lihaku takes the silver, then sure, Jinshi has someone who owes him majorly, but it’s also someone who can be bought. But by Lihaku turning down the offer on principle, now Jinshi has an up-and-coming officer who he knows he can trust to do the right thing, which is probably worth more to Jinshi than someone who can be bought.

PG Modehouse

holy toledo! Lakan's prosopagnosia was depicted in such an interesting way.

PG Modehouse

This is just a theory, I haven't watched season 2 yet, but I suspect Lakan gives Jinshi difficult cases and tasks 1) partly to challenge Maomao to solve high visibility/high impact cases and raise her status at court, 2) partly to test Jinshi because Lakan knows who he really is, and to see if he has the spine to rule, 3) but also partly to be petty and annoying to Jinshi because he bought Maomao from the Verdegris House right as she became a courtesan, before Lakan could do so to take his daughter home.

Holy Arathi

Maomao legit just nonchalantly saved that doctors entire family business.

Holy Arathi

I think you misunderstood why Lakan chose go…. Go is the game that Fengxian is better at. He chose that game so he’d lose. He would rather give her something than take it from her.

Holy Arathi

Lakan didn’t go see her because he did t know she was still in the house. When he asked, while granny was beating him with a broom, granny said “She’s gone!”

William Roberts

My favorite detail is the fact that when the bet is made with Fengxian, Lakan chooses to play Go. The game she always beat him at. His best game was chess, hers was Go. Lakan choosing to play Go in that moment was him telling Fengxian that she could have whatever she wanted from him.

Sankis

As for the pregnancy, the rear palace (and palace itself) is cutthroat. Ambitious officials and other concubines would constantly be plotting against each other in some form or another. A concubine being pregnant puts a big target on them by anyone else with ambition. If Lady Gyokuyou gives birth to a boy, she becomes the mother of the crown prince and gains a tremendous amount of standing and political power. I assume it'd become harder and riskier to target her at that point since not only would you be going after a high concubine, you'd be targeting a member of the imperial family. So the time to strike would be before she gives birth. By hiding her status they can protect her a bit. We generally only really see the high concubines but remember that there would be dozens if not hundreds of lower ranking ones as well. Except for rare exceptions, each of them will be stuck in the rear palace for the rest of their life. Their only way to raise in station is by getting the Emperor's attention and that will be much harder if he's happy with his high concubines who have successfully given him heirs.

Khepri Sun

I think what makes Fengxian and Lakan's story even more tragic is Meimei saying, “Big Sis, you should have been honest from the start.” The Verdigris House probably didn't know that Fengxian deliberately conspired to get pregnant in the hope that Lakan would buy her out. From their perspective, Lakan was probably just a scoundrel who seduced a high-ranking courtesan, got her pregnant, and then abandoned her for three years. Fengxian was ruined as a result, and the Verdigris House took a major financial and reputational hit because of it. Meimei was Fengxian's assistant and really the only person at the Verdigris House who interacts with Lakan, so she probably figured out that the two genuinely had feelings for each other. Had Fengxian “been honest from the start,” maybe things could have turned out differently.

Josue

Such a great first season. On to Season 2 (also great)! During all the Lakan flashback stuff, I think you missed one reveal. His "supposedly intelligent" uncle is Luomen. They don't name him but the context clues are there. And yeah, the dance was for her mom.

mitchhamilton64

i think you got meimei and pairin mixed up cause im pretty sure it was meimei who was talking about love and getting older in that line of work and wanting to leave for that, and while pairin was present, meimei wanted to wash maomao's back. its more acceptable in that culture to have a close friend or basically a sister wash your back. im glad you avoided it by doing the episodes in bulk but i saw commenters for another reacter spoil that lakan cant see faces since the reacter went off on him. really sucked since it was revealed in the next episode anyways, so idk why they spoiled it. speaking of lakan, i guess he was speaking about the whole thing with the courtesan because he viewed himself as a complete monster and thought he only deserved others to think that as well when it came to that story. a little sad detail is fengxian has no nose. they cover it with her hair in the anime but in the manga and light novel she lost her nose to her disease.

mitchhamilton64

and to add to that, when he thought "at that moment, i had a terrible thought" he was referring to potentially choosing chess since that would mean he would win and ask her for whatever he wanted.

Ms. S

My interpretation of why Lakan talked to Jinshi like that is he feels immense guilt and doesn’t want himself to be seen as anything but a bad guy in the situation. I could be wrong.

Sean Dame

Yeah the big clue there is when Lakan was sent away to the west with his brother when his brother was exiled from the rear palace. Lakan casually drops that info and just blows right by it.

Sean Dame

I figured partly that he's a concerned father, testing the guy that's interested in his daughter, in his weird/genius way.

kaliwali

WOAH. How did I miss this!!! Thank you so much for helping me realize that

kaliwali

I feel like all of these could def be true!

kaliwali

hmmmmm veeerry interesting. I'll file that in the 'things I now know that I don't want to think TOO hard about' 🤣

kaliwali

Oo ty I'll have to check that out!

kaliwali

I'm in love!! Ty for th recommend!

kaliwali

ugh that's super unfortunate for that reactor.. always my biggest fear when I go on rants about characters. I think commentors sometimes forget that we don't have all the pieces of the puzzle and they need to remember how they felt about certain characters before bigger plot points were revealed. def an issue that I've seen happen a few times when I go off about certain characters as well. but thankfully, I have an awesome mod!

kaliwali

right?? just a normal tuesday

kaliwali

I was wondering this!!! Ty so much!

Willaim Norton

Japanese bathing culture is much more deep rooted into society that what we are use to in the west. Think about how the Romans had public bath houses. In Japan it is not uncommon for families to bath together and in history public bath houses were co-ed. Parin washing Maomao's back is less to do with just material instinct but more with Japanese culture and anime's tenancy for fan service (lewdness)

Usagi

suirei’s name is so tough to pronounce. It’s Swee Rey but the R has a hard L sound. So it leans toward sounding like Sweeday.

Usagi

The lihaku episode was the one I was waiting for 😄

Usagi

Based on the type of humor you seem to enjoy in this show, I wonder if you’ve tried Korean rom-coms. They are similar in that I think you might like them. 💖

John

can't wait for S2 reaction! it's gonna be a banger!! hopefully she'll catch up before S3 starts next month.

Marith Lizard

I've heard a lot of praise for Hikaru no Go, too, and also would like to suggest Chihayafuru. It's about a girl who plays competitive karuta (also known as Hundred Poets). The anime and manga got popular enough to help revive the sport in Japan. Fascinating and unusual game - I'd really love to play an English-version of it, if someone ever creates one.