YMMV / The Apothecary Diaries

• Adorkable: Maomao due to how excited she gets over things such as poisons and medicines. When she's first allowed access to the doctor's office and medicinal cabinet, she even does a little Happy Dance.
• Awesome Art: The anime's visuals, much like the manga, are consistently excellent, particular the character animation, which is well done even for small actions like eating.
• Base-Breaking Character: Jinshi seems to have become this mainly in the Western side of the fandom, especially after the anime came out. While a lot of fans find him amusing, there are others (Natsu Hyuuga included) who think that he's annoying. In addition, many of the detractors find several of his actions creepy and disrespectful of Maomao's boundaries, citing incidents such as the one scene where he tries to get her to suck honey off of his finger or when he pins her down during the ‘frog incident’.
• Broken Base: Some debate crops up between the Gangan and GX manga adaptations. While the former has what is generally considered the more polished art style, GX fans criticized how the Gangan manga skipped over various chapters and scenes from the original text where the GX version kept them in. Gangan fans, meanwhile, thought the GX version wasn't as expressive and was too straightforward of an adaptation.
• Catharsis Factor: Maomao slapping the handmaid responsible for Lihua's makeup and tearing her a new one for still using the same poisonous face powder on her mistress that killed her child and left her in her current sickly condition. Maomao then dumps the powder on the maid's face and makes the others clean up the mess. This is especially cathartic since the maids were harassing Maomao relentlessly earlier and preventing her from doing her job of treating Lihua's illness properly. Whenever the maids recognize Maomao, they usually run away in fear even if they were talking smack about her behind her back a few moments ago. Additionally, it is later revealed a majority of the ladies-in-waiting were eventually dismissed and replaced with more competent ones by Lihua.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Maomao is commonly interpreted by fans as being autistic, or at least neurodivergent in some way; she has an almost single-minded fixation on poisons and medicine (which can easily be read as her special interest), is usually calm and stoic unless she's getting excited about her interests, tends to think very logically, and is distant from most people to the point of mentally referring to those she doesn't particularly care for by nicknames for convenience's sake.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Jinshi's name in Chinese pronunciation is exactly the same as the term for "Person (人士 / rén shì)." So it comes natural for the Chinese fanbase to nickname Jinshi as "[Jinshi the] Cat Lover (愛貓壬氏 / ài māo rén shì)," as he is in love with a girl by the name of "Cat."
  • "Frog" is also a common nickname used for Jinshi, as there's a scene of Maomao mistaking Jinshi's crotch for said animal before finding out he's not an eunuch.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: The friendly moments Shisui had with Maomao and Xiaolan become this after it is revealed that she's actually Consort Loulan, especially after learning about her past and that she was Good All Along, as those were times where she could get away from her mother's control, hang out with friends and be herself. Also, Shisui was Suirei's original name before Lady Shenmei stripped it away from her, meaning that Loulan was probably trying to keep her half-sister's name from disappearing. Additionally, in the versions of the story outside of the original Web Novel, it is implied Loulan survived her ‘death’, and she’ll be able to live life on her own terms now.
• Nausea Fuel: Any mention of the Former Emperor's paedophilia; even the characters in-story are disgusted. It gets even worse when Anshi's memories flash back to when she first met the Emperor when she was eight, since it emerges that her father knew about the Emperor's preferences and deliberately sent Anshi along as her half-sister's maid in order to attract the Emperor's interest and favour; since Anshi had already started menstruating, her father hoped that she would become pregnant with the Emperor's child. And other noble families soon followed suit. On top of that, Anshi was fully aware of her father's plans and what would happen should the Emperor take a liking to her.
• Signature Scene: The scene at the garden party where Maomao tastes some of Gyokuyou's soup (technically Lishu's due to Kanan swapping their bowls) and determines that it contains poison. A version of this scene was used heavily in the promotional material for the anime.
• Squick:
  • The previous Emperor's pedophilia is reviled in and out of universe: to keep it simple, the Empress Dowager gave birth to the current Emperor at the age of ten.
  • In the Light Novel, Maomao is interested at the idea of giving birth to a child... simply because she planned to see if the placenta can be used as medicine. She thinks this is fine because it wouldn't break her promise to her dad (to not use human body parts as medicine) if the body part comes from her own body.
• Values Dissonance: The Western audience is generally less receptive of Jinshi's antics and violations of Maomao's boundaries. The honey incident and the "frog" incident are frequently cited examples.
• The Woobie:
  • Consort Lishu. First of all, she was made a consort to a notorious pedophile when her age was still in the single digits (though thankfully the previous Emperor died before he could lay a hand on her and the current one has no interest in her that way). Next, she is constantly bullied by her maids and even her own food taster due to her timid personality and for other reasons that aren't even her fault (like not getting any night visits from the current Emperor, even though she's simply still too young for that). Even after her taste tester changes her ways indirectly due to Maomao's warning along with finding out that her bullying was actually far crueler than she thought, Lishu is still mistreated by everyone else. That's not even getting into how her other ladies-in-waiting, outside of Kanan, framed her for betraying the Emperor in hopes of being assigned to another mistress.
  • Consort Loulan turns out to be this. Her own mother would physically abuse her when she was young and later on tried to use her as a pawn.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Lady Shenmei, mother of Consort Loulan. Her hatred towards the previous emperor led to her plotting rebellion against the whole kingdom. She doesn't care that she might sacrifice innocent lives.

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