It’s not as though I can point to any single extraordinary element of that episode, but it was one of my favorites so far. Everything flowed and came together seamlessly, the story was interesting, and the humor clicked. I also quite enjoyed the interaction between Maomao and her “father” (I’m starting to develop my own ideas on that). It was smart, well-directed, and looked good (Kursuriya no Hitorigoto has mostly left behind the garishly cartoonish palette of the premiere movie). All in all, I’m very pleased.
Let’s start out with Dad – or “Oyaji” as Maomao calls him. It’s an interesting word, with many possible meanings depending on context. Yes, it can mean “Dad” – but you wouldn’t necessarily expect a 17 year-old small town girl to use it for her father. More commonly it means generically “old man” or “pops”, and I get the vibe that’s how Maomao is using it here. Plus, Oyaji is quite old to be Maomao’s father in this time period, and the way they act doesn’t read as father and daughter. I could be wrong and I still wonder about the suspicion she raised in the premiere, but I think there’s a lot of untold story in this relationship.
What is clear is that Oyaji is whip-smart, and that Maomao takes after him in terms of being a medical detective. Father or not, he’s certainly her mentor – and this ep gives them ample opportunity to assume those roles. Maomao is dragged from her house by a servant girl from a brothel (though not her brothel). There she finds a man and woman unconscious, apparently poisoned, and the man isn’t breathing. She employs her considerable expertise on poison to save them (though she does make one mistake, as it turns out). That includes mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
Is it realistic that Maomao would know about CPR, fingerprinting, and allergies in this (still unspecified) time period? I guess until we know exactly when that is I’m not sure, but she’s certainly fun to watch go through her paces. She tells the girl to bring her father, which she takes her sweet time in doing. The obvious explantion here is a double suicide, not an uncommon occurrence in the pleasure quarter. But Maomao – albeit based on conjecture – isn’t thinking that way. The guy doesn’t fit the mold – too well-dressed, too well-off. And it soon becomes obvious that she’s absolutely right.
Again, Oyaji is clearly a genius of deduction as well as medicine – he’s ahead of the still-learning Maomao every step of the way. His way of instruction is not to explain, but to let Maomao figure out for herself with a little push – for example, the error she made in not recognizing that the poison was already dissolved in water and thus administering water to the patients would have helped. When Maomao figures out what really happened you get the feeling Oyaji already knew and had pretty much from the beginning.
Maomao has been faced with this “look the other way” scenario before, and she’s shown she’s not averse to moral relativism when the moment strikes her. She basically allows attempted murder to go unexposed here, which not the first time she’s ignored a criminal act. Growing up in the “garden
and cage” of the pleasure quarter has certainly made Maomao hard and practical. And that’s not surprising when her role models are people like Oyaji and Han Megumi’s courtesan Meimei (we’re a long way from Gon Freecs here).
Maomao’s return to the Rear Palace (where a poisoner is still at large, let’s not forget) is quite a humorous turn. Jinshi is extremely petulant about her disappearance, and Maomao seems genuinely puzzled as to why at first. The fact that she went with Lihaku is obviously part of it, and Jinshi is convinced that she still has no idea of the true significance of the hairpins. Was Maomao intentionally trolling him with that explanation of how she “paid” Lihaku, or was it unintentional torture? I read it as the latter, but maybe I’m under-thinking it…
Nellie
November 26, 2023 at 3:25 pmIs it too soon to hope this gets a second season? I was told that the first major story arc was four volumes long, and all the LN readers I’ve spoken to says the anime will likely cover only the first two volumes.
Your second paragraph had me wondering more about Maomao’s mother than her father, oddly enough. Given that Maomao grew up in the brothels, I wonder if her mother was a courtesan.
Oh gosh, that last scene- I can relate to Gyokuyou laughing herself stupid at the two idiots. I too think it was unintentional trolling.
Guardian Enzo
November 26, 2023 at 3:42 pmIt will almost certainly get a second season given the massive sales in both printed formats. No idea if there’s enough material yet or not.
I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if her mom was (is?) a courtesan. And that last scene, yeah – I definitely didn’t get the sense she was doing it on purpose.
Dove
November 26, 2023 at 4:54 pmThe original LN series has 14 volumes, 9 of which have been fully translated into English.
Kusuriya had 2 manga adaptations, and the anime borrows very heavily from one of them in terms of visual presentation. That particular adaptation has just started adapting the fourth LN.
I think a second season is inevitable, but we’ll have to wait a good bit.
MFF
November 26, 2023 at 5:05 pmThere is enough material to adapt. A second season won’t even catch up to the manga at this rate.
Current pacing is about 1.5 chapters per episode.
Its quite a dense story.
Nicc
November 27, 2023 at 2:26 pmThe first morning back at home starts off as normal after she gets a good night’s sleep. Her dad was already up earlier to tend to the garden outside. The peace doesn’t last for long as there seems to be a customer who wants help. A young girl drags her off to brothel. As you said, it’s not the Verdigis House and is a different one. She encounters two people in a room who might be dying. That’s one way to get the morning started. She deduces the clues from the scene that it’s a poisoning and starts with treatment. She certainly is knowledgeable about things that are more modern than the time period that it’s presenting. Both of them are able to recover as she sends the same girl who dragged her off to summon dad.
She learns that the two of them were a courtesan and a customer. What appears to be an attempted double-suicide is just that and she’s able to piece the clues together. Her dad seems to have already figured it out and gives her a push. She puts together that it’s a revenge plot made to look like a double-suicide. The mystery is solved, but the situation which led to that has not. Well, the rest is speculation, as she said. Nothing else seems to happen for the rest of her stay and she gets ready to go back to the rear palace. She picks up a very satisfied Lihaku from the Verdigis House and it’s probably safe to say that he’ll be back again. He’ll just need to save up first. Or get a promotion so that he gets paid more.
The ending was amusing as an annoyed Jinshi wants to know what happened between her and Lihaku. Well, what she told Jinshi wasn’t exactly wrong, it’s just that it was missing a bit of context. In any case, Lady Gyokuyou has been having a lot of fun at Jinshi’s expense while Maomao was away. It was indeed a great episode to watch, and I can’t help but think that there’s some kind of connection between Maomao, her dad and the Verdigis House. Maybe I have been “overthinking” like she was in this episode, but I can’t help but speculate that she could have been a child from somebody who works at the Verdigis House and then got adopted by Oyaji. That would explain her closeness to that place and to the people there.