Hit New Mystery Anime Confirms its Hero is One of The Medium’s Most Interesting Detectives

Warning: Spoilers For The Apothecary Diaries FollowAfter 12 episodes, Maomao from The Apothecary Diaries, which currently streams on Crunchyroll, has become one of anime’s most interesting detectives. While she is frequently tasked with solving mysteries within the Imperial Rear Palace, her methods of resolving them reveal her strong empathy and willingness to shirk rules in a way that gives her more depth, compared to the common detective archetype.

The Imperial Chinese setting creates plenty of implications for what it means to “find the truth”. Maomao, cognizant of this, often alters her findings and hides facts.

This gives her much more agency in her detective work than others have and also provides a powerful avenue of characterization that serves the story well. The result is a clever and proactive lead that stands out among her peers.

The Apothecary Diaries’ Maomao Is A Proactive Detective Who Does More Than Solve Puzzles

Episode 12 of the anime cements a recurring pattern for Maomao: while she may be ordered or compelled to solve a mystery, the heroine often massages the truth enough to limit the potential damage. When discovering that Fengming was the culprit behind Lishu’s attempted poisoning, Maomao also advises the older woman on how to turn herself in, both to protect Consort Ah-duo’s reputation and to take her guilt over the death of Ah-duo’s child to the grave. Time and again, the titular apothecary has chosen to dispense her own justice, even if it means hiding the facts from the authorities.

Already, Maomao has chosen not to report that Consort Fuyou’s “sleepwalking” was just to buy time until she departed from the palace with her lover and discreetly warned Lishu’s bullying food taster about the dangers of food allergies, rather than mark her for punishment. All of this stems from the young apothecary’s own quiet sympathy for the disenfranchised women of her era, whose lives are at the mercy of the vast imperial bureaucracy and the men who run it. In such a legalistic society, guilty verdicts mean harsh punishments, but Maomao would rather help everyone live and let live.

Other detectives in modern media are often portrayed as obsessive problem solvers, who’d rather treat a case as a puzzle, than an incident involving humans. But for all their supposed rebelliousness, this ultimately takes away their agency. For them, their role in a case ends the moment they discover the truth and hand the culprit to the police. Maomao’s opinions and love of life, however, are so strong that she chooses to both find the facts and affect the world around her with them. Because of that, The Apothecary Diaries has one of anime’s most dynamic and fascinating detectives to date.

The Apothecary Diaries can be viewed on Crunchyroll.

Watch it on Crunchyroll