I imagine a lot of people waited and waited for Season 2 of this anime. The previous season, The Apothecary Diaries, boasted the third-highest popularity among Fall 2023 anime, behind only Jujutsu Kaisen and Uma Musume. Given that the original light novel was already hugely popular before the anime adaptation, maybe that's only natural — but, with all due respect, before it aired in 2023 I never imagined it would become a work with this much of a response.
Still, once you watch the anime, you find it's loaded with hooks designed to draw in all sorts of audiences — classic shojo-manga elements, curveball shonen-manga elements, and more — and I remember thinking, oddly convinced, "Ah, I see, this is a quality anime." There's a part of it that's characteristic of so-called "narou-kei" works from those novel-posting sites — I'm not sure how to put it, but maybe it's that sense of invincibility where everything you do just works out. On social media, the protagonist Maomao is apparently called the female Kirito. (As an aside, Sword Art Online is not narou-kei. That said, its style probably had a considerable influence on narou-kei works.) And romance with a beautiful eunuch is arguably one of the genres women have long admired.
As for the depiction of an old-China-esque world that is one of The Apothecary Diaries' signature features, people from China are apparently posting praise on social media along the lines of, "Why is such a great anime made in Japan and not in our own country?!"
A soundtrack whose "Chinese" character has deepened even further than in Season 1
Season 1 opened with a beautiful, dignified sound — chords played on hard tones from a glockenspiel or piano — letting the story begin softly. This installment, however, starts from a soundtrack with a "this-is-China!" atmosphere. Right, when you say Chinese-style music, this is the feel — a soundtrack that scratches exactly the itch you needed scratched. Using instruments of the Chinese Han people, like the erhu and the guqin, it's a lively piece colored by a pentatonic scale that, unlike Western music, doesn't use the notes "fa" or "ti." The powerful yet sociable atmosphere rooted across the vast, vast Chinese continent comes through, conveying the mood and even the sense of really being there.
Then a scene transition, with beautiful chords of piano and strings, then another scene transition. Next it shifts to a pleasantly up-tempo piece using a Chinese-style scale again, then yet another transition; with a single sweep of a string instrument — I can't tell whether it's a sanxian or a pipa — it moves into a leisurely, solemn piano that evokes a sense of history, and as if to entwine with it, the sounds of a Chinese flute and Han-style string instruments bring in a matching melody... and so on, the pieces matched to each unfolding scene change one after another without a moment to breathe. The bold approach of handling the "oh, Season 2 has begun" excitement and the explanation of the world entirely through music and a few scene transitions is a real joy to watch.
For both the people who, thanks to the solid popularity earned in Season 1, were waiting for its continuation, and the "nice to meet you" crowd thinking "I've heard the name, so even though it's Season 2, maybe I'll give it a watch," a soundtrack that lets you immediately grasp the world and get drawn into the story is, in a word, masterful.
By the way, the soundtrack is by three composers — Satoru Kosaki, Arisa Okehazama, and Kevin Penkin — which is more composers than most anime. Yet even as you keep watching, you can't tell (in a good way) which piece is by whom, and you'll find, as you keep watching the anime, that it's all firmly crafted to suit the work that is The Apothecary Diaries. Why not watch this installment together with that wonderful soundtrack?
Cited from the official site https://kusuriyanohitorigoto.jp/season2/
