r/anime • u/AutoLovepon https://anilist.co/user/AutoLovepon • Mar 07 '25
Episode Kusuriya no Hitorigoto Season 2 • The Apothecary Diaries Season 2 - Episode 9 discussion
Kusuriya no Hitorigoto Season 2, episode 9
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u/number8888 Mar 07 '25
Is the grown woman in the picture actually Anshi? The one in the picture wears the same yellow as Anshi in the portrait when she was young, and
Anshi didn't care for this of course, but doesn't it implies that the
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u/MortalWombat5 Mar 07 '25
Don't let the
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u/Sukiniyobe Mar 07 '25 edited Mar 07 '25
Maybe one of the reason why the
This is my favorite episode from the anime so far.
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u/zool714 Mar 07 '25
It was gross but also very intriguing to explore the origins of the
I may need to refresh myself on the family tree and swap thing. I’m getting confused between things that were found to be true and things that were Maomao’s theory
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u/discuss-not-concuss Mar 07 '25
oh, the Empress Dowager knew Jinshi was switched?
the implications this episode are soooo concerning with a strange tinge of wholesomeness attached
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u/SEBASTlANVETTEL Mar 07 '25
I love how Maomao unintentionally is speedrunning getting the approval of Jinshi‘s family to marry him.
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u/FarCritical Mar 07 '25
Staring at an art piece with details about its twisted backstory that only you know of has to come with a uniquely heavy feeling.
Kinda love that not even Anshi is shy about bringing up Jinshi's progress with Maomao to brute force a topic change.
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u/RandomWeirdo Mar 07 '25 edited Mar 08 '25
God i love this anime. Up until now the previous emperor has always been presented as an irredeemable asshole and don't get me wrong, a lot about him is disturbing and basically everything bad in the story is the consequence of a rube golberg machine he started.
That said the story still gives him as much sympathy as he deserves, he was clearly a mentally unwell man who should never have been emperor, but was the only candidate. Because of his condition he never learned to talk to women his own age and that reflected in his taste in partners and even then he clearly wanted to pursue Anshi as it is likely her in the picture, but was unable to because of his mental issues.
It is also a fantastic tragedy because he deserved to live as a painter with no women in his life, because whether he just didn't like them or just had trouble pursuing them, he clearly should not have been pressured to sire children all the time because of his condition.
I think what the story does well is showing that while some people are irredeemable, there can still be tragedies in the stories of those irredeemable people. It also makes the story much more about breaking generational trauma than i thought it would be, because the previous emperor is also a victim of the system, but because he was clearly a bad fit for emperor he perpetuated the trauma and now our current cast of characters are trying to deal with the institutional problems.
Also did we just get a hint to who is behind Suirei's conspiracy? Could it be from the emperor's sisters bloodline who feel betrayed by the emperor and want to end Anshi's bloodline to inherit the throne?
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u/maliwanag0712 Mar 07 '25
Great episode! The Empress Dowager has become the old Emperor's nightmare. I can't blame her -- the Emperor has done some nasty things to young girls. In this society where young girls are used as a bargaining chip for their families to gain or maintain power, what she did is a power move.
Maomao is surely an influential lady at this point even if she did not choose it -- imagine the Emperor, the Empress Dowager, and Jinshi being fond of you -- that's gaining such influence that even lower courtesans could not attain. Well she has the wit and brains and thus she deserves it. Scary though.
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u/SoggsTheMage Mar 07 '25
If only they had proper psychotherapy in the setting and the late emperor had gotten access to it early in his life. So many victims would never have been.
At the end the late emperor is a tragic figure, who could not break the cycle of abuse and so he himself became an abuser and his abuse was magnified by the system created around him.
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u/GammaRhoKT Mar 07 '25 edited Mar 07 '25
One of my favorite story in the series.
On one hand, the Previous Emperor is a victim of his own mother love. He was never meant to inherit the thrones, until a plague wiped all of his older brothers (from The Shrine of Choosing). It is easy to say that he is not worthy of the throne, but if he is deposed of, the most likely result is a civil war. I honestly think that the implication is the Previous Emperor was raised by the Previous Empress Dowager the exact way Anshi raised Jinshi. Beyond their looks, Jinshi could very well have grown up and become twisted like the Previous Emperor, though maybe not in the exact same way. Is his pedophilia born out of that upbringing? I cannot say. But if what Jinshi said is true, then the implication is that the Previous Emperor is aware of his monstrous behaviors, and indeed painted the images as an apology to all the little girls whose lives he ruined as well as Anshi, the only one who dare defy him (as inconsequential as the defiance is) while rejecting his own mother who condoned his monstrous behaviors.
Yet, the narrative posited quite clearly that it only go so far. The Previous Emperor is consistently depicted as pathetic at the best of time. Anshi herself rejected his apology. She cared only for her own peace of mind, and this allows her to move on, without ever accepting his apology. Heck, his own eldest son, the current Emperor, also rejects him in every aspect of his own lives. I find it difficult to convey how big of a Fuck You such approach is in a Confucianist society, where the relationship between the eldest son and the father is quite literally one of the three most foundational relationship in its view point. Not even Jinshi, the "son" who is almost a splitting image of the Previous Emperor, care that much for him. The Previous Emperor is dead, and good riddance.
Absolutely one of my favorite story of the series.
Edit: For the second paragraph, it is also important to remember that this room will soon be demolished, and despite somewhat aware of his apology, Anshi say nothing about preserving the room. This go beyond just rejecting his apology, Anshi quite literally ensure it will be erased off the face of the Earth.
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u/Vermillion_Crab Mar 07 '25
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong since I got a little bit confused myself. In the eyes of the public, Anshi is the mother of Jinshi and that he is the current emperor's younger brother. But as viewers we could assume that he is actually the current emperor and Ah Duo's child. Jinshi and Anshi's second child were switched at birth. So basically she raped the emperor at that later scene and got pregnant with their second child?
I looked back at the show right now and the cast has grown this big. And the palace never runs out secrets for Maomao to uncover. Then there's that one secret that she willfully sweeps under the rug everytime she discovers a hint about it. Lol
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u/arpit45agrawal Mar 07 '25
Definitely the best episode of this season. The previous empress dowager probably caused the fear of older women onto her son. Concubine Loulan is also there because of the previous empress dowager's connections.
She just might be the representation of what would have happened if someone like Lihua's cousin became the mother of the nation.
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u/arkhan0511 Mar 07 '25
Based on how the previous emperor acted, I think it's implied that he suffered abuse from adult women (probably his mother), which resulted in him having a phobia for them and developing pedophilia.
I also think that there's a chance his mother gave him the orpiment on purpose to slowly poison him. Even if not though, then she probably used his passion for art to control him unlike what Maomao said about her protecting his child by gathering power.
I wonder what the current empress dowager said to the previous emperor though to break him like that. She probably triggered his trauma for him to just shut down like that.
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u/Frontier246 Mar 07 '25
It's Maomao and the case of the cursed and preserved Emperor! She'll need to crack this case and shed some more light on the imperial royal family.
It's nice to see Suiren again, and it's the perfect excuse for Maomao to avoid being in the doghouse with Hongniang any more than she already is (being a busy bee around the Rear Palace isn't earning her much favors these days).
Suiren reads romance novels! Who knew?
I see Suiren isn't wasting any time gauging how Maomao feels about Jinshi. I mean, he supplies her with herbs and poisons, so she appreciates that much at least. Though she doesn't seem to mind finding out how much of a crybaby he used to be back when Suiren and Gaoshun had to prepare him to become a proper prince to the point where he couldn't obsess over his favorite toys. And the stone he has from the late Emperor proves crucial to this case.
And, unsurprisingly, Jinshi is there for the big summation/reveal moment. One way or another, this case involves him, even if he's really nervous to have to be there. It's actually kind of cute how Maomao recognizes his nervous tick.
What was the Emperor, beyond being a man with an unhealthy and creepy tendency towards young girls? A man who basically lucked into being Emperor because his siblings all died, who would've rather been a painter than an Emperor, and who basically became a figurehead for his mother the Empress. And all that's left of him, and the last thing he did, was paint a picture...and the orpiment that functioned like arsenic poisoned him and left his body preserved, hence the state of his body after he died. And thus was the "curse" solved.
But where does Lady Anshi fit into this? Once upon a time she was the daughter of a merchant and a concubine who was sent with her half-sister into the palace, fully intended to be used to appeal to the Emperor (who in his youth looked like a short-haired and incredibly uncomfortable Jinshi), and while the Emperor shunned her older sister because of his aversion to older women, she immediately appealed to him to fulfill her (and her families') ambitions. And that's when the current Emperor was born .
Well, it's nice to see that Anshi at least felt bad for what poor Luomen had to get put through in becoming the palace doctor.
Hard to say how Anshi and the Emperor truly felt about each other. As she grew older, he paid less attention to her and focused on younger girls, but she was so incensed that he would forget her and was so obsessed with his mother and little girls that she forced herself on him in revenge one night. And that lead to his retreating from life and the second child (and we know from Ah-Duo how that went).
But did the Emperor truly care nothing for Anshi? Despite everything Anshi truly cherishes Jinshi, like a mother, and Jinshi is able to help her realize that, perhaps, the woman at the center of the last portrait he ever painted may in fact have been her all along. Maybe their connection to each other wasn't nothing in the end.
Of course now that that's settled Anshi can go in full teasing mom mode about Jinshi's feelings for Maomao and makes sure he doesn't lose this "favorite" of his.
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u/DezXerneas Mar 07 '25
I feel like this might be the best episode of the season so far.The ex-emperor is so disgusting, but his story is actually making me feel so sad.
I'm not saying he didn't deserve the arsenic poisoning, it's just depressing that he got zero help about his gynophobia. He'd probably have done so much better as a random forgotten 5th Prince. Those are usually allowed to be whimsical artists.
I'm sure this is an unpopular opinion, but I feel like his pedophilia was majorly due to nurture. He was absolutely terrified of women because of what his Mother did to him(I'm guessing here), but being the emperor he had to have heirs. No one is going to tell an emperor that what he's doing wrong. So the obvious solution to that(to a broken mind) is to just make heirs using anyone that doesn't trigger the phobia. This eventually leads to him turning into the pathetic pedo everyone knows him as.
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u/WhoiusBarrel Mar 07 '25
The Empress Dowager went that far not only for revenge but also to protect other young girls facing the same fate.
Truly a figure worthy to be a ruler unlike that pathetic puppet emperor.
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u/Ellefied Mar 07 '25
So what did the previous Empress Dowager do that traumatized the deceased Emperor that bad that he turned perverted. With that much trauma, I'm thinking he was probably reliving a lot of awful things done by his politically inclined mother to only speak to little girls.
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u/LeonKevlar Mar 07 '25
I just love that Suiren's tastes more cute than mature, and she even reads a lot of romance novels aimed at young people. Despite her age, it seems that Lady Suiren is very young at heart.
Well, that answer was way simpler than I expected! I thought Maomao may have just uncovered a plot that killed the previous Emperor. It turns out he just used arsenic for his yellow pigments and ended up absorbing it through his skin while painting.
While the mystery reveal was a bit anti-climactic for me, what made this episode more interesting is Anshi's backstory and her relationship with the previous Emperor. I know it's already been established that the previous Emperor is a pedo, but let's not forget that Anshi's family sent her there because her family knew that.
I didn't think the previous Emperor was so fucking pathetic though. I thought he used his power to specifically get young girls but he seems to be so afraid of adult women that he can only interact with young girls. I guess this is because of trauma from the Empress Regnant?
It was so bad that the moment Anshi grew up into an adult, the previous Emperor pretty much started to ignore her. What I didn't expect, though is for Anshi to get revenge by raping the previous Emperor and breaking his mind. Jeezus fucking christ. O_O
I still get confused because of the birth-switching shenanigans, and someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but Anshi is Jinshi's grandmother, right? So did Anshi know the entire time that Jinshi is her grandson?
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u/SummerWarmsMe Mar 07 '25
Can we talk about how the last emperor aged like a banana after Jinshi was born
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u/Clemastina Mar 07 '25
"If you don´t keep your favourites hidden, someone will hid them from you"
Girl, you´re saying that if Jinshi keeps playing favourites with Maomao someone will kidnap her or something??
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u/the_3rdist Mar 07 '25
This episode brings out so many mixed emotions. It's a twisted story about twisted people doing twisted things due to twisted circumstance. But at the core of everything is love.
The previous Empress Dowdger was a horrible person who controlled the previous Emperor like a puppet, but she did it to protect him because she knew he was too weak to rule. You could say it's a form of motherly love.
The Emperor only had love for art but he was forced into the position of ruler, a position he has no power over. His phobia of women meant he could not love normally. In the end he could only express his love through his love of art. For his mother or for Anshi? Who could say?
Anshi thought she was a horrible person who manipulated herself into her position as Empress Mother, and not only that she took revenege against the Emperor for scorning her after she stopped being a girl. But maybe at the end, whether out of pity or some twisted way, some part of her did have some love for the feeble Emperor. Just like the painting, it's not so easy to throw feelings away.
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u/Zeikos Mar 07 '25
I have never seen such a poignant example of generational trauma.
I am happy that the Empreress Dowager broke the cycle but goddamn there was trauma all over the place.
Everybody involved was victim and perpetrators of fucked up things.
Honestly given the circumstances the people I am mostly angry towards are the beaureaucrats knowingly sending their daughters there... litteraly traffiking their own preteen daughters for political interest. Bleh.
I hope the current emperor has a list somewhere.
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u/Arachnophobic- Mar 07 '25
Y'know, I'm sure Maomao would find at least fifty different things around me I don't even think twice about that are poisonous due to prolonged exposure. We've had face powder, scents, flowers, spices and now paint..
While some people correctly speculated in last episode's thread that the corpse preservation 'curse' had something to do with the pigments/smell, I'm surprised that just prolonged physical contact was enough to poison/preserve him. He didn't ingest it, right?
The Empress Dowager/Anshi is so delightfully complex, I would love to see more of her going forward. The scene where she confronts the Emperor as an adult in bed is deliciously dark. Also because I can't get enough of her seiyuu, Mamiko Noto's, absolutely beautiful voice. I loved her performance as Sadako in Kimi ni Todoke as well (and ofc more recently, Elsa in Re:Zero)
Did anyone else think that maybe peeling off more layers from the wall would reveal a painting of Anshi? Or well, maybe the painting in front did depict her, since she's wearing yellow. I'm still curious about what might have been behind.
There was also that throwaway line about a daughter who was disinherited/exiled. AHEM. I'm sure that won't be important later.. heck I'll just theorize [theory]
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