The Apothecary Diaries Volume 3

Title: The Apothecary Diaries 薬屋のひとりごと Kusuriya no Hitorigoto, “Apothecary’s Soliloquy”

Volume: 3

Mangaka: by Natsu Hyuuga (Author), Nekokurage (Author), Itsuki Nanao (Compiler), Touco Shino (Designer)

Translator: Julie Goniwich

US Publisher: Square Enix Manga

Age Relevance: High School & Up

How Essential Is It?: Essential

Curricular Connections?: Medicine, Critical Thinking

Reader’s Advisory Tags: Mystery, Romance, Based on Imperial China, Seinen

Anime: Crunchyroll (Second Season Confirmed!)

Content Warnings: Allusions to sex, prostitution, mentions of suicide, attempted murder, poison, alcohol consumption

Publisher Synopsis: After explaining to Jinshi the circumstances behind the poisoned cup at the garden party, Maomao returns home to the pleasure district for the first time in ten months, thanks to the ornate hairpin she received at the party. But there, she gets swept up in yet another mystery?!

Cover of volume 3 of The Apothecary Diaries (Manga).

Review:

In this third volume, Maomao returns home to the pleasure district. She utilizes a hairpin given to her at the banquet from the preceding volume, negotiating with a court official- he gets an introduction to one of the high-ranking courtesans Maomao knows, Maomao gets to go home for a few days (leading to a bit of a misunderstanding on Jinshi’s behalf).

Maomao no sooner returns home than she finds herself entangled in an apparent poisoning and convoluted plot involving a nobleman, a courtesan, and what quickly becomes a tangled web of members of the pleasure district. What seems to have been an attempted lovers’ suicide is actually an attempted murder gone wrong, and most of the volume details the convoluted twists and turns of who has a grudge against the nobleman (basically everyone, but particularly the younger sister of a courtesan who completed suicide after having been wronged by him). The method of attempted murder- drinking tobacco- is actually fairly complexly executed. This is fairly standard for this series, meaning that the mysteries are often fairly complex and Maomao needs to explain it in-depth. This volume is perhaps the one where readers will require inference skills the most- nothing is quite said explicitly, and that’s purposeful. The intent is to show the obscure nature of the world Maomao inhabits, and Maomao herself points out that the pleasure district and the inner palace are actually quite similar.

At this point, we are about three-quarters through the first novel, and the mysteries are being given more chapters to breathe. It’s the first time that Maomao is not necessarily all-knowing, and that we are given subtle hints that her background is more than it seems. Maomao admits that she still has much to learn, and she grapples with the complexity of the “case” in this volume and its somewhat muddled resolution. Jinshi also shows his immaturity and his consistent misunderstanding of Maomao. In short, we are shown how much characters will need to grow moving forward.