The Apothecary Diaries

Have you ever seen the amount of anime that are power fantasies for men for the audience to self-insert into? Well, you don’t have to worry about that in this show, because this decided to do the “innovative” idea of making a power fantasy but for women, with Maomao serving very clearly as a Mary Sue to do this.

I mean, when you look at the conversation around this show, you see people being fine with the protagonist, which honestly confuses me, because this is the kind of show that, if it had a male protagonist, it would be rightfully called a self-insert power fantasy. The exact moment that I got to this conclusion was when Maomao put on makeup, because this moment showed that Maomao isn’t some plain girl and that her freckles are actually fake but she puts them on for safety reasons, which means that she makes herself uglier on purpose while she is actually so pretty that she surprises people with her beauty, a blatant example of the “looks ugly but is actually beautiful” trope being used to make the protagonist look better.

I’m fine with Maomao being good at testing poisons and having deep knowledge about the subject, she worked as an apothecary after all, and has even tested poison on herself. Maomao being a detective might be fine, her scientific interest aligns with critical thinking, but the fact that she actually guesses correctly every single thing thrown at her can make her look too perfect at a job she doesn’t actually have. She also teaches concubines about how to have sex, despite being a virgin, and this is a problem, as she is better than other people in their areas of expertise when she is supposed to just be an apothecary, and that extends to things beyond this point. It’s fine if she is smarter than a quack doctor, but it almost seems that without her, the palace won’t be able to continue running because she solves almost everything.

You can just look at her qualities and see that her flaws aren’t actually flaws. Being ugly is a completely self-imposed thing, as she’s apparently the most beautiful around. She is very quirky and shows no interest in men, but that’s what gets her Jinshi being interested in her, since unlike the other girls who are lusting over Jinshi everywhere he goes, she is not interested in him as she is not like the other girls and her quirkiness makes her “interesting”, so she ends up getting attention from the perfect guy despite the fact that he doesn’t receive any reciprocation from her. I thought that we made fun of this when a romcom is about a 10/10 girl talking to the completely average guy just because he is nice, why is this suddenly okay when the exact thing is being done here?

Also, there are other girls who don’t like her and they are always proven wrong by saying they were just jealous of how amazing she is, I swear that I could barely look at the screen on episode 4 where she scolds that lady-in-waiting and slaps her in the face, I mean, Maomao was in the right (she always is) but it made me cringe at the scene, it almost felt like when in revenge fantasies the MC puts a popular guy “in their place”. I don’t even want to go about who her real father is, is there any other hidden talent or important connection that she has that I do not know?

Honestly, I’m very confused at the very positive reaction this series got, maybe it’s just that I can’t see this series and think in the MC as anything other than a massive case of a Mary Sue MC, because to me she is just blatantly written as one.

Thank you for reading.