aquietjune

Today The Apothecary Diaries returned on air with the first episode of the second season. Have you watched already?

A non spoilery image from the episode

I'd like to have a discussion on the episode.

I am a light novel reader; I also read one of the manga adaptations (this series has two, for mysterious reasons) and I just want to share the love for the series: among anime&manga this story has a very wide appeal, imho, but it may be ignored because it's a (pseudo-)historical anime. But it's also a mystery! It has great character writing! And the anime itself is very well-made. More than that, if offers a lot also to LN/manga readers, and hence... discussion post. I can't promise I will be able to do this for every episode, but I'll try my best.

The opening has been released this morning and it's stunning, both musically and visually. This is where spoilers abound, so I won't comment on it, but just take a look!

While this episode is very slice-of-life, a central question is the diffusion of literature, both porn through Maomao's side-hustle schemes and later through novels, a "lesser, lowly genre" which makes the (mostly) virginal women and girls of the rear palace swoon and giggle, but most of all, it makes them complicit in sharing: sharing their skills to make the story they so love accessible to others, like the literate servant that first reads it aloud to Xiaolan and others and then through copying the book so that it can have even a wider dissemination. Is this the birth of fandom in the rear palace? Especially in the anime & manga fandoms, having people knowing Japanese (for example) working on translating scans, subs and whole novels has been and still is so fundamental, and while the show does not wink at us about it (not the point at all), I still thought how interesting this connection is.
Following the same thought, Xiaolan decides she wants to learn how to read and write because of the novel; according to Maomao, this is what Jinshi wanted from the dissemination of the novel: an increase in literacy in the (generally uneducated) servants in the rear palace. Still, it impresses me. How many things did I learn because of fandom? Etc. etc.
I don't know much about the history of medicine in China (Ben Cao... something), but it's interesting that some "modern" things Maomao imports from the knowledge her adoptive father has from the state of the art of medicine in the West. Knowing very little about that as well, my questions around this: 1. Was alcohol used to disinfect around that time? (Most people set Apothecary Diaries somewhere at the beginning of the Qing Dynasty? Generic 1650? Because there's the trade of cacao, for example.) 2. Writing-wise, do you think the author uses this plot device (Father-studied-in-the-West) to be able to work with more scientific stuff?

On a more general note:

A new character is introduced with a fun kitten-catching scene:
There's some kitten fostering going on, and cat people, and cat people who don't know yet they are cat people.
Jinshi's pout is back! Oh, how we missed it.
I need a Xiaolan icon. She's so cute and sunny ç__ç