Apothecary Diaries Episode 23 (EARLY UNCUT ACCESS)

Flexie if you want to learn more about the game GO, there is an anime about it called Hikaru no Go. Which i highly recommend. Not sure if anyone else has mentioned it but worth adding to your list lol

Clarissa

Seems like the blue rose is symbolic of meowmeow's mother.

Sean Dame

Notice it's not just faces Lakan doesn't see, when you see Meimei from his prospective. 17:41

Alex Hencher

interestingly enough, when maomao's mother offered Lakan the chance to "get anything he wanted from her if he wins", he could have easily pickled CHESS as the game board where was undefeated, but instead he picked GO knowing that he's almost always lost to her in GO, because even though the idea of "winning to sleep with her" crossed his mind, and frankly, having intruisive thoughts is OK no matter what the cancel culture people say, he CHOSE to not act on the intruisive thoughts and picked the game SHE was good at, to make it a fair game and to give her the winning edge out of respect for her... that's when she noticed that and told meimei to leave the room instead: SHE (maomao's mom) already planned to sleep with him at that time, win or lose, or at least, she had entertained the idea and succumbed to her love for him and mutual respect between them... It's such a small detail but it speaks a LOT of his character: even when he tried everything possible to let her win, to play by the rules of the world around him, he still internalizes the pain that he caused her and blames himself for it and villifies himself above all: he hates himself for what he did to her, even when it was outside his control, and that's one of the reasons why he plays the self-loathing "evil" man when talking to jinshi, because he believe himself to be the bad man that ruined a life because he thought of life like a chess board instead of looking past the logic and more into the emotion of things... (you can also see why he's so defensive for maomao because he already ruined her life once, and he saw jinshi and the rear court as if they're enslaving her there, that's why he hates jinshi, but he JUST found out this episode that she's actually on a mutually beneficial contract, so his suggestion to "save her" by moving in with him, was actually him also making the wrong assumption again, and not seeing that maomao wanted to be there via contract.

Cyber

You are the first reactor I’ve seen who actually understood the Laban back story. I’m so proud of you 👍

Caradoc Elmet

To be fair, the show is fairly accurate when it portrays "real world" conditions or events. I'm certainly not an expert, but I don't think Laken's symptoms of face blindness are common with autism. Prosopagnosia fits the depiction of the condition so much better.

Jon

Hmmmm okay so I had considered this particular diagnosis, along with a few others, but I eventually decided that this probably wasn’t what the show was going for, and that it was likely more meant in a metaphorical sense that Laken ‘can’t discriminate faces’. Which is why I eventually landed on this most likely being a metaphor for autism and everyone’s expressions blending together. I mostly fixed on that because it seemed like a more mainstream interpretation.m, and I didn’t expect a lay audience to know about neurological conditions impacting face discrimination. But you might be right.

Laura Bea

Also worth noting is that there is no cure or even treatment for prosopagnosia, but there are ways to work around it. Luomen described them for us - associating different people with how they walk, their posture, the sound of their voice, and in some cases the person suffering can even start associating the shape of someone's face with an object or even an animal which can help with recognition.

Milosz Skowronski

Prosopagnosia or Face Blindness is a neurological condition where individuals have difficulty recognizing faces, even those of familiar people. It can be either acquired (due to brain damage) or developmental (present from birth). There is not enough research however that connects Prosopagnosia with autism to draw a definitive conclusion one way or the other.

Unpaid AstroNOT

i didn't realize that maomao's adoptive father is her biological father's uncle!

Koko

this is probably a fairly obvious point but I haven't seen it explicitly mentioned so i thought i would bring it up in case it was missed: I'm fairly sure the 'not being able to see faces' thing is supposed to be a reference to Laken being neurodivergent in some way, possibly autistic. Thinking of people in terms of chess pieces might seem a bit dehumanising at first glance, but it was his way of actually navigating the world . Also, considering that he had that issue, it must have been such an unbelievable relief to finally see someone in Fengxian.

Laura Bea

I love this way of looking at the situation for his behavior. This episode always hurts so much because nobody wanted things to turn out the way it did

Eli Gamarra

I feel like a lot of people initially distrust Lakan and view him as a villain, and they are not mistaken in doing so, because he portrays himself as one. He feels so horrible about the events that transpired, that he blames himself and when recounting these events to others, he tells it in a way that makes him out to be this horrible person that he believes himself to be.

Unpaid AstroNOT

The show has a lot of unreliable narrators, chief among them Maomao. As far as Lakan is concerned this is the first time we ever get his thoughts. Previously everything we've seen of him is filtered through Maomao and Jinshi both people who have reason to dislike Lakan.

Cronshaw

I actually think it was kinda smart, tbh. maomao keeps repeating throughout the show that she shouldn’t speak based on conjecture, and yet here we are, wrongly judging a man based on conjecture

PredZero

I think it was mostly Maomao's reaction in front of Jinshi that made me feel that way. I felt it very much implied visceral hatred and maybe even murderous intent on her part. But then later on it just kinda seems like she finds him annoying instead

KeanuofRivia

I never actually thought he was necessarily pure evil even in that first interaction with jinshi. After all, all he said was what effectively amounted to was a truthful and pragmatic response about his courtesans could lose their value. And it's obvious that his tone with it is due to his own guilt which you find out later on. When it comes to maomao reaction to him and how she thinks of courtesans losing their value might be the only misdirect, but even then when it comes to maomao, I thought it was either due to possible trauma, but when it comes to her specifically, she just seemed too logical and pragmatic to have that much of an emotional response towards something like that. So, I can understand why the tone of the show made it feel that way, but I left the door open at the possibility that just like maomao, he was an awkward individual who is usually very coarse and straightforward, not necessarily evil, which sad confirmed later that he is those things with just huge pangs of guilt.

jastop94

The terrible thought he had was that he wanted to play chess, which he never lost to her. If he had said chess, not go, he would have been able to choose what happened. Instead he let Fengxian choose, by playing go which she never lost.

Jeff Schaller

Lakan is the biggest red herring in anime history lol

Saekoa

Was definitely not an episode I expected. It was really interesting to see how strategic Maomao could be too.

Ryne

Classic misleading leading to a plot-twist, I wouldn’t call it lying.

victoria t

The Lakan/Fengxian story is super tragic, the finale is heart wrenching Lakan talked that way to Jinshi out of guilt even though it was all consensual

victoria t

Probably my only issue with the entire series is how hard the show tries to make us think Lakan is just pure evil before this. I think it kinda crossed the line from subtly misdirecting us to straight up lying to us.

KeanuofRivia

I mean it's the same voice actor lol, wouldn't call it a theory at this point. Maybe that's a bit meta but the cane really sells it too

KeanuofRivia

There are two details in this episode that I find interesting and that at this point are no longer spoilers. First, Lakan has never beaten Fengxian at go and she has never beaten him at chess, but when she asks him what game he wants to play when they make the bet, Lakan chooses to play go. At this point he chose to lose the bet on purpose. Second, Maomao's memory of her mother holding a knife was the moment when Fengxian cut off Maomao's pinky finger, which is why she always stares at her pinky during the show because it reminds her of that day. In the bag that Fengxian sends to Lakan, there is her ring finger and the tip of Maomao's pinky finger.

Leonardo Fabiano

One of my fave eps from season 1. Edit: Wait the next episode is the one.

HollowedSlayer

Ryne