A confession first. This story reached us through our automatic news radar, which translated a Japanese headline and announced that a “cat-loving child” had a rare smile. There is no cat-loving child. The heroine of The Apothecary Diaries is called Maomao, and her name, 猫猫, is written with the character for “cat”, twice. So much for machine translation. The real story is better anyway.
The smile
Episode 52, “The Last Volume”, aired in Japan on Nippon TV on 23 October, as part of the show's third season. Maomao, a palace apothecary, usually greets life with the expression of someone reading a disappointing lab result. In this episode, she traces a missing book left behind by her friend Shisui to a clinic. It turns out to hold notes on grasshoppers and locusts, just what the palace needs against a looming plague of insects.
Niconico News reports Maomao delighted by how shrewd Shisui had been, with viewers writing that they'd never seen her look so happy. Over on X, one fan called an earlier moment, when she bangs the table, “a really rare expression for Maomao”. When your fanbase logs facial expressions like rare bird sightings, you're doing something right.
The grasshoppers
Then there's the scene fans talked about most. As part of a plan to get the palace eating the pests, Maomao feeds fried grasshoppers to Jinshi, the elegant official who has adored her for 52 episodes, by hand. He grimaces. He eats them. According to Anime News Network, the faces he makes bring another character, Zulin, to tears.
Romance fans, meanwhile, got another nudge, as Maomao is pushed to admit she likes him. Reviewer Rebecca Silverman offered the episode's driest summary: “Love is great and all, but you can't eat it and it won't cure ergotism.”
Why people care
The Apothecary Diaries works because it treats biology and chemistry as the plot. Here, the threat comes from insects and a spoiled grain, and the romance is a plate of bugs. The episode ended with a white-haired woman calmly drinking what looks like mercury, so the good mood was never going to last. Enjoy the smile anyway.