Back in 2023, I watched 13 episodes of season 1 and thought this was going to be my favorite show of the year. For various reasons: the animation is gorgeous, the level of details is amazing. The soud mixing is also great and makes you feel immersed in the universe.
So the production value is great. I recently rewatched the first 13 episodes and finally finished season 1 and my opinion unfortunaly changed.

So why did my score went from 8/10 to 6...

First, the writing of the characters.

This is actually a procedural show; each episode focused on an event that happened in the imperial court. Jinshi, the male lead, is the one who works for the Emperor so he has to resolve the issues int he court. But guess what? He never does cause that something that Mao Mao, the female lead does, every.single.time.

At first, I was so thrilled to have an anime that had such an intelligent main character - it usually something that is restricted to male characters. Women often in animes, are either angry or too naive (tsundere vs the naive one). So it was refreshing to get away from those stereotypes.

But after 24 episodes, I realized that it was all Maomao ever was. Someone who was better than everyone else, at everything. sciences, cooking, investigating (sorry Jinshi) to the point that none of the other characters can grow and neither can she.

She's perfect so where do you go from there? It took me a while to realize that cause at first Mao Mao didn't feel that perfect. She is blunt and isn't very good with people or emotions, she's not the prettiest...Until she is.

As the season progressed, I realized that every Mao Mao"default" ended up not being one.
She is dense? That juste make the male lead loves her even more!
She's not cute? Wait, she ends up being one of the most beautiful girl on the show (and that's not the male lead biais, that something EVERYONE notice about her).

Basically, the show had the chances to have a female lead that wasn't perfect and work from there. But no, Mao Mao is actually...a Mary Sue. There is almost no progression for her in the first season despite its 24 episodes.

And it's shame because I've seen so many people praising this character "we finally have a good female character". But a good female character is supposed to have flaws, strangely (actually because of misogyny) the audience LOVE when a female character has no flaws and isn't aware of her beauty or how the male protagonist, who is surrounded by beautiful and nice women, only see her.
Actually, there is been this theme in the show that is bugging me: most women in the show don't like Maomao because they're jealous of her bond with Jinshi, which is yet an other misogynistic move.

Heck Maomao does believe she's above everyone else and the story actually is making her right about that. She has almost no conversation with anyone, no even Jinshi, because she already knows everything so she never learns from anyone. That makes the other characters feel useless since they are always so lame next to her. __You have to wonder how the court could even work before she appeared.
It makes everone so one dimensional, only Jinshi gets to shine a little because he actually has an arc on his own.__

Male characters get to have 96523 mangas, animes or even movies when they act like dumbasses, jerks but still get love by the audience. For a good reason, it makes those characters more rounded, they have flaws like everyone else.

Women? They have to be perfect (but they shouldn't be aware of their perfection).

Like I said at the beginning, it's a procedural show so what makes you invest are the main characters. But it's hard to feel anything when the characters aren't developped or doesn't grow one bit, espacially the lead.

I would recommend to watch Yatagarasu instead. It's a similar setting, but the characters and the intrigues are better written :).