Kusuriya no Hitorigoto Episode 24 Discussion

@Alfredo-Sauce Well, in a way Meimei sacrifices her own happiness for her loyalty towards Fengxian tho.

Meimei is the oldest of the princess, she's already very nearing retirement age (for a courtesan), so she needs to be bought out real soon if she wishes to have a stable future (that's just how the society works at that time). Secondly, Meimei is heavily hinted to has a crush towards Lakan as well. Even Lakan knows that if he wants to buy out a courtesan, it has to be Meimei for her own good.

If I'm not mistaken, Maomao's original plan was for Lakan to buy out Meimei as well. As she said, Fengxian is so sick, she doesn't have long to begin with. There's no point in reuniting the two, so it's much better to let Meimei has a better future instead. But Meimei has a different idea. She reunite Lakan and Fengxian instead, ultimately giving out her chance of being bought out by Lakan. Nevertheless, she was still so happy that Fengxian is finally reunited with Lakan.

@ssjokg Thanks for taking the time to reply.

"Lakan assumed Fengxian was dead": I still don't 100% buy that a military strategist who loves her that much would just give up searching for her. But I can accept that he probably didn't know how he could face her even if he did find her...

"Maomao saw him as a stranger when she was a kid": I now remember that she said something along those lines to Jinshi, thanks. Someone pointed out that Maomao was the brothel's "property" because she was born in the brothel, so there's that, too; Lakan couldn't have simply asked Maomao to come with him.

I now have a better understanding and more sympathy for the characters involved, even if the mistakes and choices everyone made had such horrible consequences that I still feel icky about this. Still, a good story, in the end.

They skipped the reason why mao mao kept making that face when larken was mentioned wtf

The dried blue rise and the little cut finger, Lakan may still have his regrets, but with Mei Mei having taken him in for recovery, he gets introduced to the Verdigris House's courtesans, and that includes Mei Mei as well. But, she has an offer for him: choose her, or the woman that he has been long awaiting to see for the longest time: his own wife Fengxian, kept in a private and sick room while singing her lullaby, which he instantly recognizes, and buys out immediately for regardless her price. Needless to say, Lakan's salvation is guaranteed.

Maomao with Basen after seeing Loulan and her father, she's fine and all. The same reason why Maomao managed to become part of the Imperial Palace through Lakan as well, it's a guise of observant traits and trickery. Despite the biological linkage between father and daughter, with Lakan able to only distinguish both his daughter and her adopted father Luomen, Maomao's two halves worked to ber benefit. Still though, Lakan as a person, he's not to be underestimated.

Maomao receiving a shawl from Meimei, which was supposed to be used for a courtesan's purchase sendoff, is used for another's instead: Lakan and Fengxian. And now, with her dress, like Concubine Fuyou earlier in the series, she does her dance on the top of the walls, which is an exquisite dance of immaculate animation. But Jinshi appearing straight at her after he'd heard rumours about her climbing up the outer walls, Maomao definitely got a shock, though she doesn't know that her biological parents have reunited after 3 years. But none of that matters now, as with a new fingertip and being an adopted daughter, she is fine, but not without her leg's wound reopening and Jinshi having to escort her like the last when facing Lakan.

Maomao's confession to Jinshi, while it is indicative of love/romance, she's more into poison with the ox bezoar, like a cunning cat lols. Eventually, she still gets the ox bezoar from him, and things within the rear palace are back in order.

After Frieren, Kusuriya is also the matched-unmatched masterpiece.

Season 2 scheduled for 2025, it's not long now.
https://x.com/kusuriya_PR/status/1771573748803543250

What do you mean ”He should have figured it out"? This is an extremely cryptic message, to put it generously.



When she was a little kid, the dude deadass walked up to her, totally bloodied, and started cackling, creeping closer and closer. Apparently she didn't even know who he was.



Anime really fucked it up by making her look so absolutely livid, when in the manga, she looks disgusted. That wasn't a "Oh god, no!" face, It was a "I will hoist you by your balls and saw them off with a single strand of hair if you ever bring him up again" face.

@HyperlinkBlocked
Because Lakan IS smart despite fucking it up once or twice with Fengxian.

If his daughter who definitely got her braincells from him(Fengxian is just as smart) can deduce all that shit in the series then he should as well.

Maomao is even jealous of his intellect, which is stopped only by his lack of motivation.

Honestly, it's this post which is completely ridiculous, not the story or its writing of this subplot. Other than having a neurological condition of face-blindness, being somewhat eccentric/quirky and awkward around people because of his condition, upbringing, and the way he's lived up to now, what exactly has he done? Fell in love with a woman, impregnated her unbeknownst to him during a time chosen by her and of her planning, and then got unexpectedly sent overseas for years to study and train after being ordered by his family, only to come back and find out his life and the woman he cared for were shattered and in pieces due to unfortunate circumstances and knowledge he wasn't privy to? It's set in a high fantasy alternate world version of medieval/dynastic, like 1400s era China, not modern 2020s Earth where he was conveniently accessible to receive a call or text message and simply turned his new smartphone off for three years.

This kind of lack of understanding, unforgiving ruthless attitude toward someone who hasn't even been shown to do something overtly cruel or malicious themselves, whether to Fengxian, Maomao, or anyone else depicted in the series, is a lot more "vile" and "despicable", in my view, than anything Lakan is either shown or even said to have done.

And I'm not one obsessed with or overly emotionally-invested in these characters to even say this. I enjoyed the show, but it's just a good and solid, 7/10-tier series to me. But for the life of me I cannot understand what would motivate a person to be so extreme and narrow-minded toward a random person (or even fictional character's!) slightest flaws or mistakes. Perhaps that's a lack of imagination and failing on my part, but it just seems completely bizarre and unwarranted, like "The punishment not fitting the crime" times a million. In this case the "crime" wasn't even a crime. It was a simple misunderstanding and human miscommunication error that could literally happen to anyone on any aspect of life anytime for any reason.

@ssjokg This isn't about deduction. She gave him a flower. She didn't "deduce" the message, she made it. I don't think the man even knew the woman was alive at that point, so he literally lacked the information needed to even begin to interpret said message. Never mind the fact that it's extremely cryptic. Fact is, this could only be understood in hindsight.

@HyperlinkBlocked I didnt say that giving him a flower was a deduction. I said that things she has done so far in all cases were deductions with random pieces of evidence, less than circumstantial evidence most of the time.

@ssjokg There's a big difference between piecing together events from evidence, and reading someone's mind through wilted flower divination. They're two different skillsets, the same way you can profile people down to a T, but never actually know what they want. By your logic, Autistic Savants should actually the best in social situations. Again: Adding to that, the fact that the man probably still didn't know the woman was even alive, and there was no way he could even begin to process the message, much less reach the right conclusion.

Now unless I'm forgetting some other incident in the show where someone sent Maomao a coded message with chicken gizzard and nail clippings, I'd wager we haven't actually seen her excel at the task either.

Yes, but it became clear to me in retrospect upon watching the last few episodes and finishing the series that that was just an example of clearly intentional misdirect. The writing and direction took, what now seems to me to be obvious creative and artistic license, to frame things in a certain manner so that a new and different perspective could be gained on the character who was hitherto presented as all one way and in the opposite light (as devious and villainous, not tragic, sympathetic, and himself a victim of circumstances), so as to make for something of a surprise and even greater emotional catharsis later on. At least from a certain segment of the audience. To those for whom it was not successful, obviously all that can really be said is that it's naturally completely subjective. But anime and good television and film in general does this all the time as it lends a sense of depth and certain mystery and richness/complexity to the world where any individual person, place, event, or other thing can be perceived multiple different ways based on the inherent bias or prejudice of the individual characters perceiving and reacting to them, those of the audience, unreliable narrators, etc.

A character can be presented a certain way just because that is the way the other characters onscreen at the time are perceiving them, or because they are written with a certain tone, flair, and exaggeration to underscore certain aspects of their personality, but when you look just at what they literally said and did throughout the length of the series and their appearances, line for line, scene by scene, dramatization and emotionally-reflexive reaction to it removed, you find that it all can easily be explained or seen another way.

@Unoriginality it's not just that. Anime skipped Lukan scaring moa when she was a child. When granny beat him he tried to reach out to moa while being still a stranger and all bloddy. It traumatized her or something, that's why extreme reaction.

Whatever happened to Fengxian is all on granny. She's Fengxian mother and forced her to be a streetwhore as punishment for getting pregnant (historically, low rank courtesans on streets wouldn't last, majority wouldn't reach 20th birthday due to diseases, failed pregnancies etc) and after everything happened, she blamed Lukan and tried to make moa, her granddaugter into a courtisan.

She's a selfish hyprocrite.

I wish story would acknowledge what a terrible person she is and would get a fitting bad end for herself.

WTFFF WHY THEY CHANGED THE LAKAN SCENE INTO A NIGHT SCENE and also made it as meimei opening a set of doors instead of a window.. in the manga it was that she opened a window that was right there next to her (and she didnt say much except her "pride line" and it was a direct line to the other courtsan room, and it was day time outside and her window was open as well , than he saw her and heard her song and ran from the doors.... making meimei opening the doors and making it a night scene instead of day scene, BASICLY HALVED THE MEANING OF THE PLOT THERE, IT WAS LESS IMPACTFUL in the anime (just like they changed the scene of maomao and made it a jump scare instead, when they could have just copy pasta the scene from the manga lol

ALSO WHY THE HECK THEY CHANGED MAOMAO'S MOTHER BACKSTORY!>!>!>!!!?!?!? SHE DIDNT BECAME SICK BECUZ OF THE MEN SHE SLEPT WITH, SHE BECAME SICK AFTER GIVING BIRTH TO MAOMAO SINCE SHE WAS THROWN AWAY TO THE SLUMPS AND CAUGHT SIPHYLIS THERE... IF SHE GOT SICK BEFORE HAVING MAOMAO, THAN MAOMAO WOULD HAVE HAD IT HEREDETERY (BUT SHE DOESNT: HER HAND PATCHES ARE FROM HER EXPIREMNETS)