Crossover With Non-anime Series Fan Fiction ❯ Terdwilicker's Anime Reviews ❯ (The) Apothecary Diaries ( Chapter 41 )

Yuki Aoi is one of my favorite voice actresses. She has a lot of range. She is best known for Tanya The Evil and Komachi from SNAFU, but she's done a lot of other roles, including the spider from So I'm A Spider, Madoka from Madoka Magica and most recently, she's the apothecary girl of Apothecary Diaries, which is playing the fall season of 2023 and Winter 2024.

Both the story and the voice acting are excellent, compelling from semi-historical context and from use of chemistry and actual science dealing with fairly common real-world issues which would affect any artificial environment, like the imperial palace of China. Kidnapped from the brothel where she worked as a maid, she ends up sold to the palace as a slave, working at cleaning floors and washing clothes until she drops a literal hint about poisons killing the imperial prince and princess, both infants. She gets caught and reveals she can read and knows medicine. Things go from there. Being better educated than most of the people in the palace and a dedicated scientist seeking cures to various ailments, she weaves through the difficulties there. Its an interesting story and worth watching and reading the manga, which has another 2 seasons worth of material past the anime. 

The biggest surprise of the story is there are actual surprises. I won't spoil them, because I was surprised, and I've watched enough anime, over several decades, that I can usually predict the story, and sometimes even the lines used by the protagonist right before they say them... but not this show/story. This one surprises me, and it is welcome to continue. 

One of the more persistent qualities of the girl Maomao (literally "cat-cat"), is her acceptance of her station in life, and thinking before she opens her mouth in front of a superior (most of the time), a quality completely lost in modern women. It is refreshing because it is historically accurate, and drives home the differences between the 16th century China and 21st Century Asia. So many things are different, including how people think, and how things have changed. This story is remarkable, and the anime is considerably better depicted and artistic over the manga. Five stars.