Maomao Keeps Looking After the Mystery Is Solved

Spoiler scope: Season 1 of the television anime, specifically episodes 1 and 4. No later-season or novel spoilers.

Maomao can seem uninterested in people right up until she notices something about them that everyone else has missed. That is what makes calling her indifferent feel incomplete to me. Look only at how warmly she speaks and you get one impression. Follow how carefully she examines what is happening to someone, and a different person comes into view.

She has good reason to be cautious. In the opening episode of The Apothecary Diaries, she has been kidnapped, sold into the rear palace, and put to work as a servant. She did not arrive hoping to become everyone's friend. I would not treat helping the people around her as something she automatically owes them. Wanting to get through an unwanted situation quietly can coexist with finding it difficult to leave a strange problem alone.

When she hears that a curse is responsible for the deaths of the emperor's children, she looks for another explanation. I read that as more than an introduction to a clever protagonist. Accepting “a curse” could bring the questioning to an end. Maomao's attention goes toward the cause instead: what is happening, and is there something that can be changed?

That attention does not have to come from pure generosity. Medicine and poison fascinate her. Finding an answer is interesting in itself. Turning her into someone whose every action conceals a warm heart would flatten the curiosity that makes her so distinctive. Wanting to understand a problem and helping someone through it can be part of the same action without being exactly the same motive.

Knowing the cause has not made Lihua well

Episode 4 is where this becomes much more concrete. The mystery behind the children's deaths has been solved, but Lihua is still unwell. Ordered by the emperor to treat her, Maomao finds that the attendants obstruct her attempts to give Lihua the food she has prepared. The face powder that should have been banned is still being used.

So the answer was known. Lihua is getting weaker anyway.

That is the part I like about this episode. Maomao cannot finish by being right. The explanation has to change what happens around the patient, and that is precisely where things have gone wrong. Who gives her food, what keeps being applied to her body, and whose instructions are followed all matter. Knowing something useful does not make those obstacles disappear.

If the story stopped at the solution, Maomao would be an impressive investigator. Staying with what happens afterward lets me see something else in her attention. She is still looking at the person who has not recovered. Her knowledge becomes care through the specific things she tries to change, including the unglamorous work of getting past other people.

The attendants make that uncomfortable to watch. Taking someone's side, or believing you are looking after them, does not guarantee that your choices help. Their position beside Lihua is no substitute for noticing what is happening to her. Maomao gives more weight to that reality than to keeping the exchange pleasant. In this situation, getting someone to stop what they are doing matters urgently.

I do not think that makes every harsh word from her justified. The way help is offered still matters; the person receiving it has feelings too. But if I look for care only in a gentle voice or a reassuring expression, I miss the effort of checking why someone is still getting worse. That effort is part of what draws me to Maomao. She seems less like someone who acts because she likes everybody than someone who cannot comfortably put aside a problem she has recognized.

There is no need to call all of that hidden affection. Curiosity may lead in one moment, an order in another, and an inability to leave something harmful alone in a third. I would rather keep those motives in view than decide she is kind first and make every scene prove it.

In these early episodes, her reserve does not read as a lack of concern to me. What stays with me is the moment after everyone thinks they know the answer, when she looks again and asks why the person in front of her is still suffering.

For the approach behind this collection and its viewing-order guide, start with Why The Apothecary Diaries Belongs in Affection Archive.

Scene references: the official synopses for episode 1 and episode 4. Crunchyroll's episode 4 listing also identifies Maomao, Lihua, and the attendants' interference. The reading of care and mixed motives here is interpretation, not an official account of Maomao's inner thoughts.