Krystallina: In just a few pages, The Apothecary Diaries volume 7 goes from the heroine chatting about the papermaking process to demanding a man to finish stripping in front of her. Add in Chinese chess, roses, and, of course, the death trap Maomao managed to interrupt at the end of volume 6, and yep, the (mis)adventures of Maomao certainly aren’t stopping any time soon!
The “s” at the end of (mis)adventures is key here. Volume 6 ended on a dramatic note, with Jinshi panicking about Maomao’s injury as she passes out. But while Maomao is laid up for days off-screen and the manga includes some introspectives from Jinshi and Lakan, Maomao is soon helping out or being dragged into more situations. I do wonder how some of the shorter events were presented in the original novel. Does the manga keep the same order? Were these side stories? Were they condensed, or is this just about the right length? Because Maomao offers up more advice here than number of chapters, so the story just keeps moving along. By the time you reach the end, it’s easy to forget Maomao is almost deliriously celebrating she seems to have discovered a rival in volume 7’s opening chapter.
However, all of the comedic eccentricities and palace mysteries are right in line with Maomao and The Apothecary Diaries as a whole, particularly as some of the story threads start intertwining. With that also comes Maomao taking the initative. As rare as that is (at least in terms of Maomao admitting she’s doing so), just as important is the person she’s challenging: Lakan, her biological father.
There are still quite a few questions about their respective backstories and how this tense relationship came to be. Lakan’s scenes may be relatively short, but I find myself greatly intrigued by the missing pieces. Readers are likely to be suspicious of Lakan because of Maomao’s and Jinshi’s opinions of him, but perhaps he’s not as unreadable or Machiavellian as he first appears to be.
The Apothecary Diaries also incorporates Chinese chess here, which is translated as “elephant chess”. I don’t know about you, but my knowledge of Chinese/elephant chess is 0, and it’s times like this I wish there were some translation notes. It’s revealed Lakan sees people as go or elephant chess pieces (which are just circles with a Chinese character on them), and there are one or two instances where the manga doesn’t translate what piece a person’s face is. Combined with my lack of knowledge of elephant chess, I felt like I was missing out on something on this front. Not saying there needed to be a whole primer on the game, but a little extra detail would have helped.
But overall, this is another enjoyable entry of The Apothecary Diaries. After finishing, it’s easy to pick out the less interesting parts of the manga, but while reading, it’s like audiences are drifting through the days right along with Maomao. Whether it’s painting roses or saving lives, I just want to see more Maomao. The intrigue with Jinshi and Lakan is just icing on top.
Krystallina’s rating: 4.5 out of 5
Helen: After the last volume’s explosive end, this volume finds the story in a less dramatic place: explaining what Maomao’s sudden revelation was and setting up both another conflict (Maomao’s showdown with her father, the renowned strategist Lakan) and a few hints that I recognized as set-up for future plots. It’s appropriate that this volume is a bit less intense than the last one since Maomao is recovering from her injuries sustained while pushing Jinshi out of the way of a potentially fatal accident — not that she’s letting them slow her down when rare medicinal ingredients are on the line (to no one’s surprise and everyone’s dismay). Maomao is quick to recall the lady-in-waiting who didn’t seem to fit in, Suirei, and who seemed to be taunting her with secret knowledge of poisons and antidotes, and with her single track mind it doesn’t take Maomao long to zero in how the trick of the living corpse was performed, even if she and everyone else is none the wiser as to what the actual goal of this plot was.
One mystery that is no more, for the readers at least, is the confirmation that not only is Jinshi not a eunuch but also a member of the imperial family, although the confirmation that Gao Shun is also not a eunuch is perhaps more surprising until you recall his prominent seating position at the spring banquet and the fact that he has kids. Admittedly any genre-savvy reader could have guessed these revelations about Jinshi as soon as the story started but I do still like how understated these reveals are, as if the story itself acknowledges how expected they were. Maomao is still unaware of all of this and is purposefully trying not to think about why Jinshi would have been involved in an elaborate ritual in a prominent role, likely the target of this assassination, for once following her adopted father’s advice about keeping her nose out of imperial drama.
But drama is on the horizon as Maomao confronts her father over a game of elephant chess (J-Novel Club’s translations refer to it as shogi but the board definitely looks like xianqi rather than a shogi board) with an interesting set of stakes on the line. There’s a short preview for volume 8 at the back of this volume which goes a bit more into Lakan’s past and, as someone with moderate face blindness, I can understand what the series is doing visually/narratively with Lakan’s condition but it is absolutely not like how the condition manifests in real life (in my case, it is quite literally “face” blindness and there are plenty of ways to tell people apart, let alone their gender, besides the face and recognizing people as game pieces would be a greater amount of recognition than Natsu Hyuuga seems to realize). All in all, another enjoyable volume and with the recent announcement of an anime adaptation this year, soon even more people will be discovering what a fun, gremlin of a protagonist Maomao is.
Helen’s rating: 4 out of 5