The Apothecary Diaries Season 2

Episode 44

“There's a kind of magic in masks,” wrote Terry Pratchett in Maskerade. “Masks conceal one face, but they reveal another.” Although the plot of his Phantom of the Opera parody has nothing to do with Maomao, like all great writers, he hit on a universal truth with this line, and one that has no end of applications in this arc of The Apothecary Diaries. Almost everyone in this story is wearing a mask of one sort or another, and it's only now that some of those masks are being taken off – or, in the case of Loulan, put back on.

Loulan, it turns out, has been wearing a mask for her entire tenure on this show, and her mask takes several forms. The identity of “Loulan” is a mask, one donned not just by the actual woman but also by her ladies-in-waiting to allow the real Loulan to escape. I don't think there's any real question that the true identity of the erstwhile consort is Shisui. When she wears that face, Loulan can be the self she views as real, a girl interested in bugs with an irrepressible energy and joy. Her mother, Shenmei, did her level best to suppress that person, with the result that “Loulan” became the good girl who did what Mother ordered while “Shisui” became the person she might have been in another situation. Whether you see “Loulan” or “Shisui” as the mask is a matter of opinion, and maybe the woman herself doesn't know. If she wasn't a tanuki before, her mother has made her one, forcing her to develop two distinct selves to survive this long.

It's fitting that Shenmei's garishly made-up face looks almost like an opera mask. Even before Loulan claims that Maomao has found a potion of eternal youth, we can see that Shenmei is trying to look much younger than she is, attempting to make herself resemble her daughter with the same makeup and hairstyle. She's trying to use cosmetics to apply a mask over her age, hearkening back to Jinshi's earlier comment to Maomao about how makeup changes her entire appearance. The Shi clan has been using this technique to infiltrate the Rear Palace, which is also the place that warped Shenmei so badly. She may have been a lucky one, able to return home, but clearly what she saw twisted her badly, perhaps freezing her mind in a moment she can't escape from when she closes her eyes.

In any event, Shenmei's actions and those of Shishou, once again, speak to the long, dark shadow the previous emperor cast over his country. His abuses warped the women he came into contact with, and they, in turn, have turned into abusers themselves, albeit of a different sort. Loulan casually recounting her mother's punishments to Maomao as if it were perfectly normal is a statement to that effect, and this week, she quietly thinks about the way her mother forced her to behave, making her retreat behind the impassive “Loulan” mask to stay safe. The hot spring village's mask ceremony takes on a more sinister feel in light of these revelations, with burnt masks carrying wishes to the heavens functioning as a symbolic escape from the Shi clan's plotting (which risks wiping out the entire clan, infants included), while those that sink represent the way that, ultimately, everyone is trapped in a world dictated by their rulers.

Interestingly, the only people in this arc who could be said not to be wearing masks are Maomao's family. Luomen's mild demeanor might fool you into thinking he's wearing one, but he and Lakan never pretend to be anyone or anything they aren't, and Maomao is the same. Lahan may be a bit less open (he's not genetically related, after all), but his actions still show that he's pretty much who he presents himself to be – he doesn't say he's going to get Luomen to calm Lakan down, but that doesn't make it an underhanded move. It's fitting, then, that it's these three who tell Jinshi that it's time to take off the mask: if he's going to stop the Shi clan and save Maomao, he'll have to do it as Ka Zuigetsu. “Jinshi” has outlived his usefulness, and if he wants to move forward, the mask will have to fall.

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