this could be us but you got shot

😍 she learned to settle! #truelove

also "not many people with whom she felt so safe" about the guy who gets her involved in all kinds of bullshit when he's not busy choking her. lmfao

ok i'm being facetious. he did push for the implementation of a new job title that would allow her to practice medicine despite being a girl. the narrative makes this guy stumble a couple of times when it's desperate to remind everyone that he's half alpha male on his mother's side, but since this is ultimately a cringe ass fantasy fulfillment romance, he needs to have her best interests at heart if he wants to keep his dreamy guy status. whatever

tbh the story goes through a handful of metamorphoses and by the time the last full volume is out, it's unrecognizable. it starts off as court drama slash light mystery, maomao is a rare female sherlock holmes stuck in a fictionalized chinese emperor's harem as a servant girl. lovely premise. usually long-winded stories tend to get better as they go with the best arc being around the middle or the third quarter. this one, though, has had its prime within the first quarter, and becomes increasingly mid after that. because it betrays that premise that made it nice actually.

second quarter is maomao being stuck with the purple guy as he courts her. the narrative completely abandons the lovely rear palace, the mystery solving and the complicated family dynamics of different whomsties in lieu of that guy desperately trying to make her his concubine, while she's none the wiser and does pretty much nothing on her own. boring! a very prolonged and embarrassing flop era.

third quarter gets a bit better, the guy is put on a high shelf and maomao starts her medical training. no sherlocking but she's dissecting bodies, which is nice. nothing much happens, she's just chill for a while as she passes time pursuing a new interest. it was a nice segment actually.

then fourth quarter she sets on a voyage for reasons unknown, because surely this diversion will be of no importance later. i think. i can't say i liked the western capital arc 2: 2 western 2 capital. rather than maomao it was more about chue. i liked chue. i think i'd grow much more fond of her if she ever made it into the anime but tbh i don't really see it happening, it's one 12 episodes cour per one volume, and since this industry simply does not make titles that aren't one or two cour at most, i don't really think volume 12 will ever see the light of day. adventure, sure. they had locust plagues and then new family drama nobody gives a fuck about because it's not interesting. eh, whatever.

to be honest i'm not particularly invested. if the anime is a solid 8.5 in my book, the light novels are maybe a 5.5. passing, but not good, hardly decent. if they were good, i'd be either invested or feel attachment, but it's neither. i love maomao, she's a wonderful character, thoroughly unique, very charming, but the romance aspect severely weighs her down and makes the story worse than it could have been. in all honesty i didn't want to watch the anime initially because the guy on the poster gave me the impression that it will turn out to be exactly what i'm talking about, but then i read the synopsis and it said that he's a eunuch. i was like ok cool maybe they'll just be besties or something. i mean, he IS her watson. but you know... it could use some work.

would i call this series overall GOOD? nuanced question. the anime is good, everything else isn't. would i recommend it to someone in good faith? the anime yes, the light novels definitely not. do i LIKE this series, everything considered? not really. i like maomao. i like lakan and fengxian. i like a handful of other characters. i don't really care about the story overall, i found its execution boring, and i don't care how it develops further because it's predictable and not exciting.

i think the fault with it is that, conceptually, it's a shoujo at heart, despite the manga being published in a seinen magazine, and it has the shoujo vibe and fanbase, neither of which are to my taste. it's not a bad series though.

all in all i think i will read the rest of the volumes as they come out, given that i don't forget that they exist. but i don't really care about this story overall. this is what happens when something is character driven with a loose plot, in the end it's not very strong. i don't think that the hole gk left in my heart could ever be filled by anything else. i don't think i will ever earnestly love again.