Just to get one important caveat out of the way, despite the usual anime trope, at its heart Apothecary Diaries is a serious slice of life palace intrigue drama aimed at older anime watching crowd. The show comes replete with the usual anime trimmings, e.g. Ultra cute stereotypical female character designs, beautiful lead male character, exaggerated expression, comical visual transformation, and gratuitous well endowed female characters. Given its context, in which one main recurring location is a brothel, the latter are par for the course and not entirely gratuitous, by the way.
For the more masculine viewers, the show contains romance though it's never the predominant focus. The evolving and developing relationship between the main characters is, however, part of the recurring theme throughout the show. It features often enough in each episode, but never too much to become cloy. If anything, the fraught relationship serves as a counterbalancing comic relief to sometimes pretty dark themes.
Why is this a 10/10 show? The 24-episode series features quirky yet realistically and well written main characters. The same level of love and care are given to most supporting characters, though obviously not to the same depth as the main ones. Background music and scores are memorable and work together effectively to accentuate and deliver the emotional impact of the story being told. The animation is top-notched and features very detailed and beautiful art designs. The animation features occasional virtual camera movement and composition reminiscent of live action shots, often giving the animation a pretty effective cinematic look instead of the usual 2D anime.
The 24-episode format sounds somewhat long outside of famous recurring well established franchises. But pacing of the show feels just right. Viewers are given enough to understand what's going on with clues, bread crumbs, and foreshadowing to stimulate speculating brain cells. Viewers are always wondering what's going to happen next. A 24-minute episode simply flies by quickly, feeling as if the episode just started when it is in fact closer to the ending credit.
Unlike many series where you'll get a few episodes where they feel like fillers. None exists in this series. This is not to say that flashbacks or recaps, reusing older footages, aren't present. They do, but they have been used effectively to highlight and tie together clues and bread crumbs sprinkled over previous episodes that are easy to miss or not easily recognized as inter-related. This is often done just when the arc is about to deliver the big payoff.
When the big payoff does come, you definitely feel it. Some of the mystery and intrigue genre shows come off as unfair when clues have been purposefully withheld or actively misled to produce artificially the big surprise. The Apothecary Diaries does not do this and yet does not feel lacking in big surprises. Whenever the big reveals come, they are a satisfying balance between a surprise and an expectation fulfilled, rather than completely subverted. The best sort of surprises force the viewers to look back and say to themselves, "yeah... I saw and thought about that, but couldn't quite commit to that conclusion." It's not only what is revealed as a surprise, but also how. The Apothecary Diaries delivers its surprises in ways that tugs hard at your heartstrings.
The show was featured as recommended in my Netflix queue for the longest time. I wouldn't call myself a fan of the palace intrigue genre, anime or otherwise. These dramas are also a dime a dozen in live action Chinese and Korean series. I am very glad that I took the chance to check it out. It turns out to be one of those expectations subverted, in a very good way as a matter of fact.
