The Winter 2025 Anime Preview Guide

The Apothecary Diaries Season 2

Maomao is back with Gyokuyou to help the consort with her second pregnancy, but also to help further the education of all of the women in the inner palace - both in literacy and in something else. When a kitten is discovered on palace grounds, she ends up taking charge of her care, too, but these everyday details may be upended when a caravan from afar arrives in the capital. What new items and poisons will it bring? And what new people?

The Apothecary Diaries Season 2 is based on a light novel series by Natsu Hyūga and Touko Shino. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Fridays.

Preview guide reviews for second seasons are always kind of funny to write. After all, the preview guide is meant to give quick first impressions to help people decide what they do or do not want to watch; if you've already watched the entire first season, you probably don't need this to help you make up your mind about whether to watch more. And yet, here we are.

This sure was another episode of one of the best shows in recent memory! The gang's all here: Maomao, Jinshi, Gyokuyo, Gaoshun, the doctor. The story of the episode is a bit piecemeal, but I can't really complain because it's a progression of things I like. The concept of sexual education, novels, adorable toddlers, calico kittens. Jokes about Maomao's mistaken belief that Jinshi is a eunuch. Little character moments like Gaoshun and the doctor excitedly heating water for the kitten. It's like the episode was tailor-made to please me, to which I say, thank you!

I was especially pleased with the little princess, Gyokuyo's little daughter. She's super-cute, of course, but what's more, I totally buy her as a one-year-old. She's energetic and curious, with more energy than can be contained in a small pavilion. As she toddles around on her little walks under the watchful eye of her guards and Maomao as her teacher, she explores the world as it exists at the eye-level of a very young child: full of exciting surprises, small spaces to explore, and things to climb. I witness it every day at my school, and I love it almost as much watching it put to animation.

It's also chock-full of foreshadowing for later episodes. No doubt the curious princess being the only one of the emperor's children to survive to her first birthday points will come into play later, as will Jinshi's plan to increase literacy in the inner palace.

After hearing so many good things from friends who were fans of the original novels, I'm glad that The Apothecary Diaries' first season managed to live up to the hype and become such a big success. With how well most of the first season balanced weekly mysteries with ongoing court drama, I was expecting this premiere to follow suit, so I was surprised this episode ended up fairly laid back.

For the most part, this is all about easing us back into the setting and Maomao's unintended level of influence within the palace, as we discover that all the…adult reading material she was giving out last season has caught on enough that the emperor wants her to sneak more to some of the concubines to help them better perform their duties. This, in turn, leads to Jinshi coming up with the idea of trying to make novels popular among the court ladies to drive more of them towards learning how to read. While the end result is certainly positive, it is kind of funny to think that this all happened because Maomao decided to teach the other girls some sex ed. From there, things lead to Maomao looking after a mysterious kitten after she runs into it while walking with Lady Gyokuyo's daughter.

While it's certainly not the most exciting way I can think of to kick off a new season, it's hard to get too upset when the kitten in question is super adorable. Plus, this does lead to the punchline of Jinshi finally piecing together that Maomao is basically just a cat in human form, and watching him be so down bad that he starts sniffing the cat while dreaming about Maomao is incredibly hilarious.

While there isn't too much else to this premiere beyond all that, I am at least glad to see that the show remains as good-looking as ever, and its vibrant use of color and solid visual direction does a great job of helping to keep your attention while navigating its walled garden setting. Unfortunately, the laid-back premiere means it's a little hard to guess where this new season is going. Still, judging by the fact that it ends by introducing a pair of blond nobles, I suspect this means we might be dealing with nobility from other nations. If so, then it could certainly provide an opportunity to help learn more about this show's world, as while we've learned plenty about the politics of the palace, we don't know too much about what goes on outside it, and I'm eager to see what that entails. Exactly what that'll lead to is also hard to guess. I have no doubt it'll drag Maomao into some mysteries and drama that she'd rather not deal with, and as long as the show can continue to deliver on those things, I'll be right here for whatever else this season has in store.

Here's a fun tidbit – my friend's parents have a cat named Maomao, and she looks like an adult version of the kitten in this episode. It's not surprising, given that they're Chinese, but it still adds a little something to the basic lore of The Apothecary Diaries to know how common the name really is for cats. (They also say that their Maomao is the emperor of the house, sleeping with a different person every night.) It really feels like it was only a matter of time before a feline Maomao joined the cast to drive home human Maomao's more cat-like attributes. That makes for one of the best scenes in the episode, when Jinshi is listening to Maomao recite what people say about cats, and it slowly dawns on him how very feline Maomao is…and immediately transfers that to shoving his face in the kitten's belly to get his Maomao fix.

Yes, Jinshi is still wrestling with his feelings for Maomao while simultaneously attempting to figure out how to get her to behave in a way consistent with living in the Inner Palace while she remains unabashedly herself, and I'd be lying if I said that wasn't a draw of this series. Following up on the sex education materials she brought in for the emperor's four consorts in the previous season, Maomao is now ready to educate the rest of the ladies, and it's hard to argue with her reasoning. Women shouldn't be kept in ignorance of their own bodies, and it says something about the emperor that he's all in with this effort. Could it simply be because if he wanted to engage with a woman, he'd rather she was at least aware of what was going on? Yes, certainly, but it could also be a marker of how he treats women in general: as people, not ornaments of the court. Given how he agrees to let Maomao the kitten stay in the palace at Princess Lingli's request, I'm inclined to think it's at least a little of the latter – as Maomao notes, he's remarkably human in many ways.

This episode primarily serves to reacquaint us with the cast and setting, and it does a good job of it. The way the kitten is introduced mimics the format of the mysteries Maomao solved in the last season, and we're also reminded of how different Gyokuyou's household operates compared to Loulan's – it's homey where Loulan's is aristocratic to the point of snobbery. Jinshi's reactions to the books Maomao brings in demonstrate how he tries to cope with Maomao herself in her more difficult moments, while he also reminds us of how terrible he is at hiding his crush on her. It's a comfortable return to a place we missed, and it knows not to linger there, setting things up for a major cultural encounter next week when the caravan appears in the city.

It hardly needs to be said that Aoi Yūki's Maomao hasn't suffered a bit, even if she doesn't have many opportunities to make odd little noises or be too acerbic, and the art and animation are still lovely as well. I also appreciate that the kitten and Lingli aren't too twee in their depictions; Lingli's baby talk when she finds the kitten is even a credible sounding “meow meow” noise that a toddler might make. This is off to another excellent start, and I can't wait to spend another season with Maomao and Jinshi.

I feel sorry for Ameku M.D.: Doctor Detective. When there are two medical mystery anime airing during the same season, but one of them is the second season of The Apothecary Diaries, it almost feels like a given that the other show—no matter what it is—will not only be doomed to being constantly compared to The Apothecary Diaries for the rest of its days but also, frankly, to pale in comparison. Don't get me wrong: I love to be surprised, and I'll happily eat my words if I must. But the first season of The Apothecary Diaries was so great, and we're already off to a good start here in season 2, so you'll have to forgive me if I already think I have a feel for which of the two shows I think I will enjoy more.

In any case, it's good to see Maomao and Jinshi on my screen again. They just don't make protagonists like Maomao all that often. Smart, sassy, with a good head on her shoulders, and never trying too hard (if at all) to be as funny as she is, she's easily one of my favorite anime protagonists from the past few years. And Jinshi—overbearing, a bit dorky, and with so much earnest love for his work and Maomao—is the perfect foil for her. They're such a wonderful duo, and this episode is testament to that.

Honestly, if someone had told me at the start of the season that the main plot of one show's first episode is that our protagonist gets caught trying to smuggle ahem adult materials into their community, I absolutely could've predicted it'd be The Apothecary Diaries. That sounds like something Maomao would do (and lo and behold, for she has done it). This is so quintessentially The Apothecary Diaries, and I couldn't think of a more on-brand way to kick the new season off, aside from maybe a (literal) bite-sized mystery. I assume that was probably not done in favor of setting the stage.

I went into the first season on a whim, having known nothing about it beyond that everyone around me seemed to enjoy it. I was surprised at just how much I liked the first season of The Apothecary Diaries as well, so I have high hopes for this second season—high hopes that feel affirmed by such a fun first episode. Interesting mysteries, A+ protagonists, good animation, and sound (speaking of which, I like the new opening—it suits The Apothecary Diaries very well). This is one of those anime that's been checking all the boxes for me, and this episode leaves me no reason to think that it plans on stopping any time soon.

Also, the cat is cute, and I hope we get to see more of it.