The forces of corruption can only last so long until.. the DAY of RECKONING. This episode is that day for our antagonists Shishou and Shenmei.

Video Review

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What Stands Out the Most?

The Ending is Always a New Beginning

There’s nothing more heart-palpitation-inducing than building up episode by episode, for a widely popular character’s demise. It is a priceless moment in great storytelling where the feelings of the character and everything that has led up to this very moment—feels like the reality of truly losing something irreplaceable. That is one half of what this episode accomplished in delivering a web of unfortunate circumstances, into animated cinema of a bittersweet end.. at least for Loulan’s character.

Worthy of an END

Shishou

By the episode’s end, we find out that Shishou, Loulan’s father actually was very aware of all the corruption being spearheaded by his wife, Shenmei. Out of love for both the empire & his wife, he would accumulate all of the darkness in one place, just to make it easier to eliminate the rot that has slowly proliferated itself into the powerful Shi clan. In the waning moments of seeing the real side of Shishou’s character, we find a self-defeated man that couldn’t save his wife from the envy and embarrassment and never got to see Loulan for who she truly was inside, until it was too late.

Even with Shishou’s shame, he still acted with one last display of total aura like a true villain, acting as the necessary evil for the grand display of ending all rot—that starts with himself.

Shenmei

Shenmei might be the most classic female villain out there. A woman’s worst enemy might be the self-value derived from the “social value” that shouldn’t matter, but it does.. It is this episode that Loulan explains the context behind her father’s goals and how much she did for Shenmei. It almost culminated in her escape with Shishou for good, to elope to a far distant land and live life without having the responsibilities of the empire and the social webs that tie them down. However, that is Shenmei’s eternal damnation—her shame and pride cannot allow her to see the brighter side to life, except the voices of those looking down on her.

Until the very end, this is the kind of vindictive person that truly creates your classic villain. At the same time, the empire that leads all the way back to the previous emperor has partial fault in all the wrongdoings in the rear palace. A feeble man that can only rely on his mommy empress that can only love those way too young—provided shame to a person that wanted all the social clout that would have allowed her to stand near the top of the “totem pole.” The funny thing is that she did gain a lot of power under the Shi clan and her husband saw it all happen right under his nose, until he decided to do the best thing for the empire and let it… KABOOM!

An Even GREATER END.. or is it?!

Loulan was the mystery, the surprise and the bittersweet end for the episode. It may not have been until the kidnapping of Maomao that people may have felt more firm about the Shisui and Loulan connection, but this is the superpower of The Apothecary Diaries. Xiaolan felt like the lovable golden retriever of the show and with the introduction of Shisui in the first episode of season 2, this felt like a double down on the heartwarming characters. However, Shisui had inklings of something more mysterious and mature.

Without turning the entire blog into a Loulan essay, it was Loulan that ultimately becomes the grand mastermind of taking the Shi clan down because of her mother’s ambitious ways. With her father gathering all the corrupt to one clan and her mother’s vindictive ambitions of a rebellion to regain her pride from what the previous emperor did by embarrassing her—this becomes the perfect climactic point in the story where the villains’ corrupted ways catch up to them. With all that, combined with the reveal of Loulan being Shisui and redeeming her family by ending the rot herself, it becomes a beautiful poetic end for “Loulan.”

Being born into a family and being groomed by her mother to be her retribution, it was Loulan that ended it all to redeem her character. She saves her half-sister Suirei, gives a big smack to the universal cheek spreader mother, made amends with her father and gifted us the conclusive end to Shenmei’s metaphorical end of “ending herself.” However, the end was far from done, as Loulan decides herself how she will go out.. That is literally and gracefully with a BANG!

No words can perfectly describe an experience of a painful, emotional gut-wrenching end of a character that you can feel absolutely sick to your stomach for the awful tragedy of being trapped in circumstances you have no control over. That is the perfect defining thematic end for the second to last episode of The Apothecary Diaries that encapsulates the ending of the character we know as “Loulan.”

Support both of my anime YouTube channels! Otaku Sinh – How to Anime and Otaku Sinh