Parallel World Pharmacy

Episodes 8-9

My family has had to deal with some rather trying medical circumstances this year, and if there is one thing that I've learned, it's that a little bit of empathy can make all of the difference, even in the most fraught situations. A doctor can have all of the knowledge and equipment they need to solve your problems, but I don't know how much true healing is possible without those fundamental elements of empathy and grace—both on the part of the practitioner as well as the system in which they operate. Farma understands this better than most people, given the lives he has lived. “Influenza and the Dawn of a Pharmacy” is all about what happens when Farma can take the lessons he's learned and get the message across to all of the other medical professionals in this new world of his.

Pierre is a local commoner and fellow pharmaceutist that doesn't want to violate the guild's strict orders to avoid any and all contact with the PWP, but his concern for his daughter Marie supersedes any of his business loyalties, and thank goodness for that. It only takes one visit to Farma's revolutionary clinic to see exactly why profits are plummeting for every other potion peddler in town. Our hero's empathetic nature and superb bedside manner may feel like second nature to us, especially since he is essentially just demonstrating the best practices that all modern doctors should be abiding by as a bare minimum, but for the denizens of a world that is still operating at the cusp of something akin to the Industrial Revolution, the Parallel World Pharmacy offers a legitimately seismic shift in the status quo. Pierre's Come to Jesus” (or, rather, “Come to Farma”) moment makes for compelling drama, especially since the episode goes so far out of its way to get you to care about him and his family.

What really elevates the episode, though, is how Parallel World Pharmacy's careful storytelling makes it all too easy to understand exactly why everything is the way it is, and partially because so much of it is rooted in echoes of real history. Of course, it only stands to reason that the head of the commoner's guild is going to be wary of trusting the son of nobility, when the aristocratic class has always been very clear about how much effort it is willing to expend to help those they deem “unworthy” of basic respect and dignity. And while the sacking of Pierre's store is a horrid turn of events, you can at least understand the fear and anger that all of the other pharmaceutists feel over seeing the very foundations of their economy and medical knowledge collapse in front of their eyes. Farma may have the benefit of hundreds of years of technological and scientific advancement, not to mention his fundamentally decent soul, but that isn't going to change the problems of society and human nature overnight.

You know what also isn't going to help Farma's mission to fast-forward this world's social development by a century or two? An outbreak of bubonic plague. “The Story of a Certain Wicked Man” may be somewhat lacking in captivating human drama (especially since we barely get to learn anything at all about Camus, the “wicked man” of the episode's title), but I'm willing to sit through a table-setting chapter of this story when it's preparing us for the arrival of one Yersinia pestis , a.k.a the plague, a.k.a a.k.a The Black Death itself. I just finished reading The Great Mortality, John Kelly's excellent historic chronicle of the 14th-century outbreak of the plague in Europe, so I must admit that I laughed in morbid delight when I realized the same thing that Farma was realizing, and wrote “It's buboes!!!” down in my episode notes.

Based on the aforementioned introduction of Camus the Wicked Man, not to mention the guy's decidedly necrotic look in the show's OP, I reckon that Farma's going to be dealing with some supernatural twists in the coming weeks, but one of my favorite aspects of this show is how it weaves in real-world history and science into Farma's adventures, so I'm greatly looking forward to how the PWP crew handles a match against one of mankind's greatest predators. The good news is that Farma is actually operating at an advantage, since Yersinia pestis is actually pretty manageable in the 21st century. Still, Parallel World Pharmacy has been able to weave compelling tales out of routine check-ups and meetings about developing a burgeoning cosmetics industry, so wherever the anime goes from here, I have no doubt that it will deliver.

Rating:

Parallel World Pharmacy is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.