English Dub Review: The Apothecary Diaries “The Late Emperor”

Overview:

Maomao’s investigation of the “curse” reveals more about the late emperor than anticipated.

Our Take(Spoilers):

This episode was very uncomfortable but revealed many things that I find fascinating. True to form, Maomao solved the mystery of the former emperor’s “curse.” The previous emperor loved to paint but for some reason that was a hobby unbecoming of the most noble man on Earth. He was eventually given a room to do his painting in private and the paints had a chemical in them that could slow down decomposition. Since he spent so much time around these chemicals it seeped into his body and that’s the reason his corpse looks so different from the empress’s.

The uncomfortable part came from a flashback we saw courtesy of Anshi. We learned that the previous emperor was essentially a pedophile who was only able to be intimate with young girls. Sure there’s a traumatic reason he was this way but it’s still an awful thing to do. I have to applaud the show for not shying away from it and handling the subject in a way that didn’t glorify the practice. It also seemed that Anshi is Jinshi’s mother but I could be wrong about that.