Why are The Mysterious Play, Colour Cloud Palace and Raven of the Inner Palace not as popular as The Apothecary Diaries ?
| Actually the answer is pretty easy I think Fushigi Yuugi was popular if you look online a lot of people gonna talk about how it was their childhood. It’s was a generation before me but I still remember this anime from CDs that I have so it was popular but not for the same reason The apothecary Diaries is ,the biggest difference is the main characters people LOVE Maomao and her character that pretty different while Yuugi was more your typical naive girl character and actually their themes pretty different too ,one of them more advanture romance while the other is Drama ‘Medical. For Saiunkoku Monogatari the reasons pretty similar actually this anime is pretty old and it’s was in my childhood I remember watching it and remember liking it but again it’s pretty old and it’s Reverse Harem so yes both are historical but they are very different. I don’t know anything about Raven so I can’t talk to much but for it I think the reasons was the popularity of the novels , Apothecary was already popular light novel while Raven is adapted from a novel and it was not popular at all so people didint talk about it from the start. Of course let’s not forget animation and voice acting and the proper translation to other languages oh and which sites you can find them do popular platform have them |
kirA_-_Mar 26, 2:38 AM
| Cus Reverse Harem. And iirc Fushigi Yuugi was popular, at least relative for its time, no? I even remember watching it alongside Inuyasha and Fruits Baskets as shoujo manga/anime recommendations. |
| Keep scrolling |
| The first two are old. Nobody will be talking about Apothecary Diaries in 20 years. Raven of the Inner Palace is not talked about because it has fewer episodes. And it will never get more episodes, which means it will never become popular. |
| その目だれの目？ |
| I had the exact same thought as this post about 7 episodes into Raven of the Inner Palace, though it got a lot better in the latter half. Mcsuper said: The recurring issue I find with this show is that it's too "ambitious", or in other words, sets up too much, and finishes the plot lines too quickly. The cliffhanger with Bingyue's possession of Jiujiu last episode left me quite excited for this episode, but today, it wrapped up that plot line way too quickly. Is the writing bad? Not exactly, it's more the execution that hurts my enjoyment here. There are so many characters, so many relationships, so much lore, but how much do I care about all of it? Not a whole lot, if I'm being honest. The ending to each plot thread has felt very meaningless, and as such, I feel like with every episode that passes by, I get more and more checked out on this series. I want to like this, I really do! That said, Gaojun and Shouxue's evolving relationship is still intriguing to see, along with the aesthetics. I will temper my expectations a bit here as we go along, hopefully there's something to look forward to here. I also think these anime that release multiple episodes or long first episodes at the beginning, work in their favor as well, capture attention immediately. They released three episodes right away for Apothecary Diaries IIRC I wonder how frequently anime will release like this in the near future, Freiren released four, Oshi No Ko had a huge first episode, Sasaki had a long first episode, but failed to live up to it (definitely needs this 2nd season). |
GakutoDeathGlareMar 25, 6:30 PM
| The Apothecary Diaries LN was always big even before the anime came out and I’m sure seasonals got a lot more attention because of Frieren taking over |
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| From those, apart of Kusuriya no Hitorigoto, I have watched only Fushigi Yuugi and Koukyuu no Karasu. Raven of the Inner Palace is pretty great, especially in its detective and fantasy aspects. Mysterious Play on the other hand is pretty dull, "painted by the numbers" and overly melodramatic reverse harem...so naaah. PS On a side note, Kumo no You ni Kaze no You ni may be a short movie, but in a similar setting and quite fun. |
alshuMar 26, 1:25 AM
kirA_-_ said: ^This^Actually the answer is pretty easy I think Fushigi Yuugi was popular if you look online a lot of people gonna talk about how it was their childhood. It’s was a generation before me but I still remember this anime from CDs that I have so it was popular but not for the same reason The apothecary Diaries is ,the biggest difference is the main characters people LOVE Maomao and her character that pretty different while Yuugi was more your typical naive girl character and actually their themes pretty doferent to one of them more ada türe romance while the other is Drama ‘Medical. I can confirm that, at least here in the Philippines, Fushigi Yuugi/The Mysterious Play was very popular here in the 90s/early 2000s and is now considered a classic. I'd also agree that Maomao's uniqueness as a female protagonist of a drama story is a big reason Apothecary Diaries is being appreciated. These 2 titles aren't really comparable, IMO, since AD is more of a weekly mystery drama format with different episodic situations that plant individual seeds for its plot, while FY is more of a whole romance/shojo/fantasy story that's slowly unfolding. I'd say the biggest difference is that FY's female protag (Miyaka, I believe?) is the usual damsel-in-distress who's tangled up in a fantasy situation by fate, while Maomao ended up in her situation due to a common situation in that era of being kidnapped and sold to the palace, and is more of a 'hero of the story' than a 'protected princess'. |
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KingSunWukong said: Why are The Mysterious Play, Colour Cloud Palace and Raven of the Inner Palace not as popular as The Apothecary Diaries ? Because they don't have Maomao as a protagonist. |
This dance is the pinnacle of human achievement. |
| The first two are old and were popular at the time. The third came and went without much attention but it was still a solid seasonal among shoujo fans. |
| The same reason why Madoka Magica is consider to be the definitive dark magical girl anime even though there were works in similar vein before it that did it better. Some anime will be lucky and end up as most popular of their genre even if they were not the original. |
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| Just because they share the same setting, it doesn't mean they're all equally good (the correlation between being popular and being good isn't perfect of course, but it's true to some extent). And I'm not the biggest fan of Kusuriya no Hitorigoto, I still like it but the overuse of tropes detracts a lot from it. |
NirinboMar 26, 3:18 AM
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KingSunWukong said: Why are The Mysterious Play, Colour Cloud Palace and Raven of the Inner Palace not as popular as The Apothecary Diaries ? The Mysterious Play, Colour Cloud Palace, Raven of the Inner Palace and The Apothecary Diaries have all in common that they are Japanese anime television series adaptations of Japanese works that have a fictional world mostly reminiscent of Imperial China created by Japanese people, illustrated by Japanese people and written by Japanese Very simple, it's not the setting/aesthetic that is the reason Apothecary Diaries is popular |
| These are 4 completely different anime that are only similar in one small way, so it doesn't really make much sense to compare them. It's kind of like asking why every random fantasy anime isn't as popular as Sousou no Frieren, even though they all have elves, magic, and demons. These are really trivial similarities. Also, Fushigi Yuugi was insanely popular in its time. Probably way more popular than The Apothecary Diaries will ever be. |
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| I haven't seen Many Coloured Cloud Palace but I've seen the others. Fushigi Yuugi is a bit melodramatic with all the rape/attempted rape and off then on again romance (star crossed lovers pulled apart), very raw shoujo writing, still I liked it and loved the OP and the MC's best friend/enemy was super hot. Raven of the Inner Palace was really good but had a focus on mythology, whereas Apothecary Diaries was more grounded and had better written main characters in Maomao and Jinshi, whose banter and chemistry was S-tier imho, so much fun watching those two circle each other. Raven was an 8/10 and Apothecary Diaries a 9/10 for me. And timely reminder for me to pick up Many Coloured Cloud Palace, thanks OP. I love ancient Chinese setting for anime (Koihime Musou and 12 Kingdoms). |
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| Different eras, The Apothecary Diaries had a big following before it was adapted too. |
| Saiunkoku Monogatari (aka Color Cloud Palace) is definitely a hidden gem. If you ask me, probably part of the reason is that the source material never got an official English translation. Heck, the light novels never got fan translations either to my knowledge. Which doesn't help matters considering the light novels for Saiunkoku Monogatari weren't selling as much as The Apothecary Diaries. Also, probably the shoujo aspects of the show might have been a turn off for some viewers. Another factor to consider was that the show released in a time when anime wasn't as big as it nowadays. I can only imagine the boost Saiunkoku Monogatari might have gotten if it was released post 2018. Damned shame the show never got a third season, as that would have at least fully adapted the entire light novel series. |
Reply to Alpha-Nine
Saiunkoku Monogatari (aka Color Cloud Palace) is definitely a hidden gem.
If you ask me, probably part of the reason is that the source material never got an official English translation. Heck, the light novels never got fan translations either to my knowledge. Which doesn't help matters considering the light novels for Saiunkoku Monogatari weren't selling as much as The Apothecary Diaries.
Also, probably the shoujo aspects of the show might have been a turn off for some viewers.
Another factor to consider was that the show released in a time when anime wasn't as big as it nowadays. I can only imagine the boost Saiunkoku Monogatari might have gotten if it was released post 2018.
Damned shame the show never got a third season, as that would have at least fully adapted the entire light novel series.
If you ask me, probably part of the reason is that the source material never got an official English translation. Heck, the light novels never got fan translations either to my knowledge. Which doesn't help matters considering the light novels for Saiunkoku Monogatari weren't selling as much as The Apothecary Diaries.
Also, probably the shoujo aspects of the show might have been a turn off for some viewers.
Another factor to consider was that the show released in a time when anime wasn't as big as it nowadays. I can only imagine the boost Saiunkoku Monogatari might have gotten if it was released post 2018.
Damned shame the show never got a third season, as that would have at least fully adapted the entire light novel series.
Alpha-Nine said: Which doesn't help matters considering the light novels for Saiunkoku Monogatari weren't selling as much as The Apothecary Diaries. That's the first I'm hearing of this. I'd assumed they sold exceedingly well to warrant two of the longest seasons of any novel adaptation I've seen. |
| その目だれの目？ |
KingSunWukong said: Why are The Mysterious Play, Colour Cloud Palace and Raven of the Inner Palace not as popular as The Apothecary Diaries ? The Mysterious Play, Colour Cloud Palace, Raven of the Inner Palace and The Apothecary Diaries have all in common that they are Japanese anime television series adaptations of Japanese works that have a fictional world mostly inspired by Imperial China created by Japanese people, illustrated by Japanese people and written by Japanese. Good luck getting your hands on decent copies of "Mysterious Play" or even "The Story of Saiunkoku" on physical copies to actually enjoy watching them in decent quality. While I remember seeing "Mysterious Play" being offered for streaming recently, I wouldn't waste my time trying to watch any Anime released before the turn of the century digitally converted into a visual crap festival (it would likely be a shitty experience) and "Mysterious Play" isn't even currently being offered for legal streaming either. As mentioned by others these series are far too old for modern viewers these days. I can barely get some friends I know in real life who claim to love fantasy Anime watch "Slayers" (Even when I will lend them any of the Official physical copies I personally own let them borrow) simply because it just looks too old for them. As for "Raven of the Inner Palace", it simply wasn't as entertaining to watch as "The Apothecary Diaries" for me, regardless of it's length. Simply put "The Apothecary Diaries" is just seen as a more interesting Anime to watch over "Raven of the Inner Palace". For one thing, when I personally started watching "Raven of the Inner Palace" a while back I only watched a few episodes then something else popped up that I found more entertaining to watch and simply just never returned to finish "Raven of the Inner Palace". While I have never watched "Colour Cloud Palace", I barely remember watching "Mysterious Play" in the 2000s and I didn't even finish the series or even had the luxury to view the series remotely in a chronological order ( I might have missed a few episodes here and there and simply just lost interest in the series when I originally watched it back then). |
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| The bird consort anime was actually pretty good, no idea why that wasn't watched by anyone. |
This dance is the pinnacle of human achievement. |
| I was alive when Fushigi Yuugi was being released in the 90s, but definitely didn't know of it or pay any attention to its existence as I was completely unaware of the existence of anime in general at the time. However, flash forward two decades later, and when I started watching anime in 2016, one of my first series was Inuyasha and because it was so comprehensively and thoroughly everything I ever wanted out of the experience of watching any series, shortly thereafter I looked for similar enough series which might scratch that same itch or fill the void after finishing it, leading me to also watch Rurouni Kenshin right afterwards. Well, during this time it wasn't long before I "discovered" Fushigi Yuugi for the first time when looking for more historical drama + romance series, and I learned that that even if I was completely ignorant of it/anime as a whole back in the mid-90s, it still must have left enough of a big cultural footprint to where something in me instinctively recognized it immediately. It seemed so familiar and nostalgic, even though I had never watched it back then. And I realized then that it must be because I saw some of the commercials/TV spots and other promo material, probably on TV for some English dubbed version on Cartoon Network or whichever other channel it may have aired on, maybe a few years after its initial Japanese release. So if it originally aired from 1995 - 1996 in Japan, maybe what I was remembering was from the late 90s or early 2000s on U.S. TV. But the point is, that it was definitely at least "big" and prominent enough to make a transoceanic splash then and lodge itself into my unconscious mind back then, lying dormant in hibernation like some sleeper varicella-zoster virus in the trigeminal ganglion waiting to activate. |
| @WatchTillTandava Fushigi Yugi was definitely not as popular as Inuyasha back in the day. Do you remember hearing about Inuyasha back then too? |
| その目だれの目？ |
Lucifrost said: Fushigi Yugi was definitely not as popular as Inuyasha back in the day. Do you remember hearing about Inuyasha back then too? Yeah - Not so much literally hearing about it, but in a strictly visual sense I remembered seeing images of some of the characters, which would either be also from a commercial or when I was channel "surfing" or flipping through TV channels and it at the time was just like any other random program then I didn't know about. This memory didn't come to mind though until, again, late 2016 when I actually started watching anime and sought series out. And even then it was mainly visual. I remembered seeing/hearing the name/title of the series and a few of those character designs, but that was it. I didn't even know of any of the characters' names (or even know that the main character had the titular name of the anime). Similar vague memory as for things like Neon Genesis Evangelion, Sailor Moon, etc. Just random out-of-context fleeting memories of images. |
WatchTillTandavaMay 26, 1:03 PM
| Those other shows don't have occasional glances of Pairin-neesan's oppai to help hold viewers' attention. But Fushigi Yuugi was pretty well-known and popular in its time. Maybe not quite on par with shows that got US TV airings like Cowboy Bebop and Inuyasha, but "TAMAHOME!! MIAKA!!" was a fandom meme in a similar vein as "KAGOME!! INUYASHA!!" Very few shows from the mid-90s are going to be enduringly popular at this point, aside from things like Evangelion that've attained all-time classic status and have modern remakes/reboots to keep some spotlight on the franchise. ColourWheel said: Saiunkoku was one of those shows released by Geneon and temporarily picked up by Funimation in the wake of Geneon's collapse, so it's not legally streaming, and the DVDs are rather pricey. But Fushigi Yuugi has been on CR for awhile, and even the 2012-13 Media-Blasters DVD releases aren't terribly expensive. They're certainly far less than what I paid in 2006 for used copies of the Geneon DVDs.Good luck getting your hands on decent copies of "Mysterious Play" or even "The Story of Saiunkoku" on physical copies to actually enjoy watching them in decent quality. While I remember seeing "Mysterious Play" being offered for streaming recently, I wouldn't waste my time trying to watch any Anime released before the turn of the century digitally converted into a visual crap festival (it would likely be a shitty experience) and "Mysterious Play" isn't even currently being offered for legal streaming either. |
Lucifrost said: That's the first I'm hearing of this. I'd assumed they sold exceedingly well to warrant two of the longest seasons of any novel adaptation I've seen. Allegedly, all of Saiunkoku's light novels sold an estimated 6.5 million copies. While it did sell well enough, it pales in comparison to The Apothecary Diaries, which had "24 million books in circulation at the end of September 2023." And that alleged 6.5 million isn't enough to warrant a third and final season in the eyes of the show's production committee. 😔 |
Reply to Alpha-Nine
Lucifrost said:
That's the first I'm hearing of this. I'd assumed they sold exceedingly well to warrant two of the longest seasons of any novel adaptation I've seen.
That's the first I'm hearing of this. I'd assumed they sold exceedingly well to warrant two of the longest seasons of any novel adaptation I've seen.
Allegedly, all of Saiunkoku's light novels sold an estimated 6.5 million copies.
While it did sell well enough, it pales in comparison to The Apothecary Diaries, which had "24 million books in circulation at the end of September 2023."
And that alleged 6.5 million isn't enough to warrant a third and final season in the eyes of the show's production committee. 😔
| @Alpha-Nine Only time will tell if 24 million is enough to earn Apothecary Diaries more episodes than Saiunkoku. |
| その目だれの目？ |
Lucifrost said: Only time will tell if 24 million is enough to earn Apothecary Diaries more episodes than Saiunkoku. It's the mystery behind the decisions of production committees, since tens of millions of copies sold for light novels/manga ain't an ironclad guarantee for a show's continuation. |
Reply to Zalis
Those other shows don't have occasional glances of Pairin-neesan's oppai to help hold viewers' attention.
But Fushigi Yuugi was pretty well-known and popular in its time. Maybe not quite on par with shows that got US TV airings like Cowboy Bebop and Inuyasha, but "TAMAHOME!! MIAKA!!" was a fandom meme in a similar vein as "KAGOME!! INUYASHA!!" Very few shows from the mid-90s are going to be enduringly popular at this point, aside from things like Evangelion that've attained all-time classic status and have modern remakes/reboots to keep some spotlight on the franchise.
But Fushigi Yuugi was pretty well-known and popular in its time. Maybe not quite on par with shows that got US TV airings like Cowboy Bebop and Inuyasha, but "TAMAHOME!! MIAKA!!" was a fandom meme in a similar vein as "KAGOME!! INUYASHA!!" Very few shows from the mid-90s are going to be enduringly popular at this point, aside from things like Evangelion that've attained all-time classic status and have modern remakes/reboots to keep some spotlight on the franchise.
ColourWheel said:
Good luck getting your hands on decent copies of "Mysterious Play" or even "The Story of Saiunkoku" on physical copies to actually enjoy watching them in decent quality. While I remember seeing "Mysterious Play" being offered for streaming recently, I wouldn't waste my time trying to watch any Anime released before the turn of the century digitally converted into a visual crap festival (it would likely be a shitty experience) and "Mysterious Play" isn't even currently being offered for legal streaming either.
Saiunkoku was one of those shows released by Geneon and temporarily picked up by Funimation in the wake of Geneon's collapse, so it's not legally streaming, and the DVDs are rather pricey. But Fushigi Yuugi has been on CR for awhile, and even the 2012-13 Media-Blasters DVD releases aren't terribly expensive. They're certainly far less than what I paid in 2006 for used copies of the Geneon DVDs.Good luck getting your hands on decent copies of "Mysterious Play" or even "The Story of Saiunkoku" on physical copies to actually enjoy watching them in decent quality. While I remember seeing "Mysterious Play" being offered for streaming recently, I wouldn't waste my time trying to watch any Anime released before the turn of the century digitally converted into a visual crap festival (it would likely be a shitty experience) and "Mysterious Play" isn't even currently being offered for legal streaming either.
| @Zalis I came across a Blu-ray release of the entire "Fushigi Yuugi" series which was odd because I didn't think there was ever an official Blu-ray release of this series before (it looked extremely professional looking and not anything like some bootleg DVD from some unknown Malaysian company). After doing some research I found out it was just simply a bootleg likely ripped directly from CR and the episodes were out of order too (basically worse than any official DVD volume releases from the 2000s). "Saiunkoku" I have never seen the series anywhere being sold at any reasonable price where actual quality volume releases go from anywhere upwards to $45 each used (which is just not something I am currently interested in investing in). Also your story about Funimation makes complete sense. I remember trying to watch a few old Anime series on Funimation a few years back and noticed the extremely shitty video and audio quality (I actually compared them to Official physical releases I owned of the same old Anime series). Made me question why Funimation would even license something in the late 2010s that looked like it was ripped directly from some old DVDs from the early 2000s and now I realize that's probably what they actually did and they were simply not even licensing them at all. |
ColourWheelMay 26, 9:04 PM
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| It mainly comes down to the fact that the light novel was very popular before the anime came out. When the anime was finally announced, it created even more buzz with it's large audience hyping it up. Based on what I've seen it also seems like the characters are really well liked as well, which no doubtedly helped. |
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