Kusuriya no Hitorigoto Episode 14 Discussion

@Wildflower3 Jinshi was not asked to hire MaoMao speifically for this. But it was convinient. And two of the influental people actually involved asked specifically for her. WHat is the reason for him to bother searching for another candidate?

@Nachtwandler_21 Yes, I totally get their reasoning for doing it but it doesn't mean it makes sense. At least not for me. To think that out of ALL people in and surrounding the palace Maomao was picked for this "lesson" just because she grew up in the area of the brothel district. Why not let someone come directly from the brothel? Even given the fact Lihua could recommend her for the one occasion and even Gyokuyou did which might have been the main factor but as far as I know Maomao isn't even known for that kind of knowledge mainly and it could have been she knew one or two things and that's it. And mainly because they concubines grew up conservative it makes it even less likely someone like Maomao would be picked. Also there was no hint Jinshi was asked to do this. It rather looked like he was surprised himself when he received these notes/recommendations. I'm going based off what the anime shows, I didn't read the LN and if it's explained better there then well, that's good. It would still be a weird choice bot acceptable from a writing perspective. But judging from the anime, what we've seen it just doesn't make any sense. And the fact that someone who might know the source material (of course I don't know if you do) has to point this out and it still doesn't make sense goes to show it's not executing it well enough. I'm someone who usually pays attention to such details which comes with my occupation. If I'd missed something I'd admit it but here it just doesn't make sense to me, not matter how you see it (even if Jinshi was asked to I would have liked to see it communicated between Lihua, Gyokuyou and him better than they did).

Regarding the fire, that might be true and I understand this point given I've heard the LN is far advanced and the story seems to be longer, more complex and detailed. So of course you have a build-up for certain scenarios to play out in a certain manner or even make sense and get picked up later on. I don't know how many episodes the story would need to be told properly but surely more than 24. So I admit I might be a little impatient when it comes to this and wanting explanations for events that just can't be given yet... So that's on me (:. But what bothers me about this (and I have no idea if it's the same in the LN or manga) is that we get thrown in all these bits without a single connection (once again, that's fair) yet Maomao connects every dot flawlessly (actually maybe we don't know that, she could be wrong about some things too. But at least at the moment the anime makes it seem like she isn't wrong). This just doesn't reflect too well on the characters given we just rushed over the part where Maomao was fired to the point when Jinshi bought her back ONE episode. You have world-building which is done very nicely but then when it comes to characters you just want your audience to accept certain things without really showing (I mean they did but very rushed and not convincing)? And let others explain some of the details that might have gotten lost in this strange pacing? For me personally that isn't good storytelling. And I'm not saying the anime is bad and not even the writing is entirely bad. But it has certain flaws and I simply wanted to address that (and this explanation doesn't even include how the writer clearly worships Maomao for the sake of other characters. And that's my pet peeve. Sorry. If you disagree that's fine but that's my personal opinion).

Edit: And I just noticed your username is German. That's cool :)

@SkyFullOfStars Thank you! This is really cool. Where exactly did you get the character though? I guess the name of the kingdom appears more later in the story.

@Nachtwandler_21 In-universe explanations aside, the story is very insistent on having Maomao educate almost everyone on almost everything. There are some scenes where she's wrong, and where others know things she doesn't, which saves her from being an absurdly perfect character, but she's still hypercompetent even in areas where she probably shouldn't be—or at least I'd argue that the story would benefit from having some mysteries be solved by someone else.

We know so far that she's not easy to memorise stuff she's not very interesting in, but then she seems to produce an entire course on kamasutra. There's one thing for her to know of one trick she's been told about one time, and another to write an entirely library's worth of documentation on the topic. Her 'sisters' in the red district must have reaaaally wanted her to join their workplace.

@Wildflower3 Jinshi was not asked to hire MaoMao speifically for this. But it was convinient. And two of the influental people actually involved asked specifically for her. WHat is the reason for him to bother searching for another candidate?

I second this, as I noted above I feel like the show pushes too many accomplishments on Maomao. It doesn't reach the terrible levels of main character worship most anime reach, and it's also tempered by instances where she is wrong and makes mistakes, but personally I agree that having perhaps a few more such instances would make her even more relatable. Either way, this is a very good show and I'm glad to have picked it up.

@issen-ken-taka Like she is a POW character. She is asked to deal with things that she is comptent in, which is why it may look like she is competent in everything. Yes, she has a bunch of other skills besides her pharmcy knowledge, but they are explained by her upbringing and not as diverse as you may think. For example, she literarly failed the court exam last episoide because she did not bother learning things like geography, history or etiquete which are a must for any official or noble. And

TL;DR: It is just a protagonist bias. She looks more competent than she is because she only deals with the things she is good at on-screen. Obviously there is not much reason plotwise to show that much things she is bad with as it will not afdect the plot.

@issen-ken-taka It's not that bad... at least not yet. Unfortunately I came across some spoiler for this series (unintentionally). Don't worry... I'm not sharing any details but it's about something regarding the characters and I had my suspicions from the very beginning because something about the way the characters are written bothered me. After I got this confirmation it just changed my entire perspective on the story and its characters (and I'm probably more critical than I would be otherwise). Not to say that it's bad or the worst (even in this regard). But it's just disappointing to see how nowadays the focus is so much on writing superior female characters when there is so much more to writing them than simply making them some kind of goddess (at least Maomao is not in your face with it but it's still noticeable). Even one of the current animes from this season which I absolutely love is kind of guilty of this. And it makes me especially sad because it's clearly written by someone who is good at writing (as you can see with most of the world-building from this anime). But sacrificing your characters for the sake of just one of your characters is really not doing anything for any story in my personal opinion. A well written story thrives from its various characters and their talents (mainly from the main characters) but there needs to exist a certain balance. Something I haven't seen in the more recent works of fiction but I personally try to implement when I write characters,

And then when I see the hype surrounding it I can't help but wonder if it's really that popular there must be something wrong with me because I just can't accept this.

Is it me or the whole scene with Xiaomao "instructing" the Concubines felt heavily censored? Was expecting some dialogues at least, like when she told Lihua about titjobs several episodes ago.

That aside, I liked what they did with the color palette when introducing Loulan's character. Highlighting red while leaving the background in grayscale looks so pleasant to the eye~

I have heard that both LN and manga doesn't have dialogues for that scene as well. So that's why studio didn't included dialogues for that scene.

Do people in this kingdom really don't know that clouds of flower can ignite easily? Really? I feel it somewhat detracts from Maomao's ingenuity if the mysteries she solves are common sense. Like when Maoyuu Maou Yuusha's Maou blew everyone's mind with crop rotation, something that's been around since around 700 BC.

@issen-ken-taka What? People nowadays don't even know that. It's not exactly common knowledge.