The Apothecary Diaries Team Addresses Its Original Content and Ties to the Novel

The Apothecary Diaries team chatted with us regarding its source material and original content for the anime.

By Evan Valentine

The Apothecary Diaries' anime adaptation arrived last year and quickly grew in popularity to become one of the most popular anime series of 2023. Thanks to this fact, the anime series starring Maomao and Jinshi was confirmed to receive a second season. Recently, we here at ComicBook had the opportunity to attend this year's Anime Expo, interviewing some major creators and voice actors in the anime industry. When it comes to The Apothecary Diaries, we spoke with director Norihiro Naganuma about the creation of the first season and how its events compare to the source material.

At this year's Anime Expo, we here at ComicBook had the opportunity to chat with director Norihiro Naganuma regarding their work on The Apothecary Diaries. Here's what the anime director had to say regarding the balance between honoring the source material and creating new material for the television series, "So the original work, the underlying story of The Apothecary Diaries, is actually a novel. So in order to tell some of its new more nuanced scenes and elements in the anime, we created original content. The anime uses a lot of different colors and images to make sure that its story is depicted successfully, I think even more so than the mystery, whenever there is some kind of incident, how Maomao reacts as her expressions change and how she feels about that incident, is quite important as well."

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(Photo: OLM)

The Apothecary Diaries: Anime Vs. Novel

Anime adaptations will routinely pull their stories from manga and/or light novels, so presenting a television series based on a novel is much more of a rare occurrence. The Apothecary Diaries first premiered as a novel in 2012 but would then go on to receive a manga and light novel series of its own.

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If you haven't seen the first season of The Apothecary Diaries, the series is streaming on Crunchyroll. Here's how the streaming service describes the popular anime series, "Maomao, a young woman trained in the art of herbal medicine, is forced to work as a lowly servant in the inner palace. Though she yearns for life outside its perfumed halls, she isn't long for a life of drudgery! Using her wits to break a "curse" afflicting the imperial heirs, Maomao attracts the attention of the handsome eunuch Jinshi and is promoted to attendant food taster. But Jinshi has other plans for the erstwhile apothecary, and soon Maomao is back to brewing potions and...solving mysteries?!"  

Want to see what the future holds for Jinshi and Maomao? Follow along with Team Anime on ComicBook for the latest updates on The Apothecary Diaries. 

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