Review contains spoilers for Apothecary Diaries season 2

Maomao as a character is an enjoyable personality to watch, but sadly not very compelling beyond that. She lacks flaws and it never really feels like she’s truly threatened, even more so this season because she has all these powerful people aiding her.

The storytelling in this series follows a structure where many different pieces come together like a mystery being solved. This has proven to be the authors bread and butter and is used in (what feels like) every single story arc to move the plot forwards. A gripe I had with this, was in the middle portion of the season, it started to feel quite episodic and like a “mystery of the week” format.

Unfortunately, because of the somewhat repetitive storytelling formula, whenever conflict is introduced, it always feels like no matter the circumstances, things will ‘somehow’ workout in the end, and at this point you as the viewer are aware of that. The most recent example of this is in the final episode, where the children who had died were then resurrected, and Loulan’s death was revealed as a fake out. When the stakes lose weight to the viewer, it diminishes the impact of these moments, because how can one ravish in the return of something they were never convinced they’d truly lost.

I think that predictability was the biggest downgrade season 2 suffered from. When we followed Maomao in season 1, she had far less agency or influence, and the mystery and suspense held a bit more weight because of it. Coupled with less being known about the palace history and figures, our lack of information as viewers left more room for tension. So really the main draw to keep watching is actually just seeing how things play out and the nuance of different characters storyline’s playing out to connect all the story pieces we’ve been together.

What I really didn’t enjoy is the attempted advancement of the so called “romance” if you even reach to call it that. It’s completely one sided and it’s just Jinshi forcing himself onto Maomao over and over again despite her showing 0 interest or reciprocity. That’s not romance it’s SA, but he gets a pass from the audience because he’s attractive… lol. It unfortunately seems inevitable that it’s going to happen eventually but I’d much rather it not, as it’s not a strong point of the series at all. I hope that it will atleast primarily be used as a way to explore maomao’s character rather than it just be presented as generic tropey fan service to satisfy the viewers who have deluded themselves into thinking they’re watching a “slow burn”.

Overall, Apothecary Diaries Season 2 was an adequate sequel. Maomao is a likeable character to follow, and the authors story telling ability keeps you engaged enough to want to see how things will pan out, even with the stakes feeling somewhat artificial from a viewers perspective.

Not a formal review. I was only writing my thoughts in my notes after finishing the show but they became quite lengthy so I decided to format them to submit here. Hence why no clear structure or mention of animation, soundtrack etc.