Learning to be an apothecary from her father, Maomao honed her skills in the brothels of her town. However, one day she is kidnapped and forced to work as a servant in the rear section of the Imperial Palace that houses the emperor’s consorts.
While trying to stay under the radar until her contract was up, Maomao catches the attention of the emperor’s favorite consort when her skills as an apothecary end up saving the life of the consorts’ baby daughter.
This act leads to her being taken on as the consort’s lady-in-waiting and food taster due to Maomao’s prolific knowledge of both medicine and poisons.
A simple premise can be a stellar anime if supported by a likable main character, and this series proves it in spades. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like The Apothecary Diaries, head on down below.
Anime Like The Apothecary Diaries
For Fans of The Imperial Palace
The Raven of the Inner Palace
Within the imperial palace, the emperor lives with his consorts. One such woman is the Raven Consort, who does not perform night time duties and remains in solitude.
This Raven Consort, a title currently held by the young Liu Shouxue, is charged with handling spiritual matters brought to her – everything from finding lost items to sending on spirits. It is even said that she can perform curses.
After living her days often undisturbed, she is visited by the young emperor Xia Gaojun, whose visits become even more frequent as the pair bond and she assists him in unraveling the spiritual mysteries of the inner palace.
What The Apothecary Diaries does with poison, The Raven of the Inner Palace does with supernatural curses.
Both series take place in the fictional, but Chinese-inspired Imperial Palace of the emperor and follow quiet, shrewd, and subtly cute girls who have a specific job. Maomao tests for poisons and makes medicines while Shouxue is a consort charged with not servicing the emperor, but handling spiritual problems.
While both series are focused on the main characters solving various issues in the inner palace and making friends with everyone she helps, they also have a subtle romantic element. Both Raven of the Inner Palace and The Apothecary Diaries feature very slow and subtly building romantic relationships. They build so slowly, you often can’t say the series is a romance anime, but the build-up is there.
The Story of Saiunkoku
Although her family was once nobles, they fell on hard times. Now, with her father making a pittance as an archivist, Shuurei takes odds jobs to make ends meet.
One day, she receives an offer to become the emperor’s consort for a huge sum of money. She accepts in hopes that it could further her own governmental ambitions.
Both The Apothecary Diaries and The Story of Saiunkoku are shoujo anime with a similar setting and a similar sort of plot.
They both take place in the a Chinese-inspired Imperial Palace and follow young girls that end up working there in positions that they think are above their station.
While Maomao is a food taster and apothecary, Shuurei is more akin to a normal government worker in the palace who is in charge of hopefully reforming a lazy emperor.
However, while notable for a similar setting, what The Apothecary Diaries and The Story of Saiunkoku really share is a dynamic between the female and male lead. Both of them are slowly growing closer while the female main character believes the male lead is a homosexual and the male lead is very clearly interested romantically in the female lead.
Unfortunately, because of this set up, it does mean romance moves slowly in both series, but the non-romantic plots are full of intrigue and interesting enough to keep you invested.
For Fans of Medicine
Parallel World Pharmacy
After dedicating himself to creating medicines as a pharmacist, Kani Yakutani works himself to death at the age of 31.
He awakens in the form of a ten-year-old boy that has been struck by lightning. He discovers that he is the son of a prestigious family as well the host to the guardian deity of medicine. This allows him to immediately diagnose illnesses in others.
While this is a miraculous ability, he discovers the state of medicine in this world is primitive and takes up his previous profession from his past life as a pharmacist once again.
Although Maomao’s real passion is for poisons, she does also make medicine and other remedies that heal people. Parallel World Pharmacy is another series that focuses on the surprisingly rare storytelling area that is diagnosing and healing people.
While Parallel World Pharmacy is an isekai anime, it isn’t an adventure isekai. Instead, the main character gets the ability to diagnose people by looking at them and uses his knowledge as a pharmacist in a previous life to create medicine to help people.
Although The Apothecary Diaries is often about healing people, it does explore other plot lines as it goes on. However, Parallel World Pharmacy is fully dedicated to the main character doctoring others as its primary plot.
The Saint’s Magic Power is Omnipotent
Sei, a young office worker, is summoned to a new world. However, the people who summoned her to banish dark magic from the world only meant to summon one person they would call Saint. Instead, they summoned two, and Sei discovers that they actually like the other girl better.
Not really caring about that, she ends up making potions at a research institute using her newfound magic. Unfortunately, while she is unexpectedly talented at her work and happy doing it, she begins to think that she is indeed the Saint.
While The Saint’s Magic Power is Omnipotent is an isekai series, it isn’t one about fighting enemies. Instead, it follows an office lady who discovers a passion for using her magic to create potions that help people.
Both The Apothecary Diaries and The Saint’s Magic Power is Omnipotent feature easy to like, down to earth female protagonists that have a passion for helping people with their remedies. However, while The Apothecary Diaries explores a number of imperial palace intrigues, The Saint’s Magic Power is Omnipotent is more about her traveling and helping various people with their problems.
Black Jack
The genius and “unregistered” doctor known as Black Jack has a past shrouded in mystery.
Together with his assistant Pinoko, he takes on cases that are too dangerous, feature obscure medical ailments, or handle ailments that no doctor has ever seen before.
Thanks to his skills, he can save any patient’s life – as long as they have the money for it.
While The Apothecary Diaries tells a very shoujo style medicine story, Black Jack tells a more seinen version in that it follows a medical mercenary who charges his rich clients exorbitant sums and his poor client next to nothing, but cures everyone none-the-less.
Like Maomao usually can see the cause of most mysterious ailments almost immediately, so too can Black Jack. However, Black Jack, since it is solely focusing on a “medical ailment of the week” style storytelling, does draw out him discovering what is the root cause of the ailment and how to fix it.
For Fans of Life-Improving Shoujo Protagonists
Snow White with the Red Hair
Shirayuki is an herbalist that lives a normal life in the country of Tanbarun. However, when her beautiful red hair is noticed by the Prince Raji, he tries to make her his concubine.
She then decides to cut her hair and flees into the forest. It is there she is rescued by the second Prince of neighboring country, Wistalia, named Zen.
In order to repay her life debt to him, she sets her hopes on becoming the court herbalist in the capital of Clarines.
Both The Apothecary Diaries and Snow White with the Red Hair are pretty standard shoujo anime where a easy to like main character ends up in a palace, helps people with their problems, and everyone loves her.
The biggest similarity between The Apothecary Diaries and Snow White with the Red Hair is that they both follow herbalists/apothecaries who work in a royal palace. However, while The Apothecary Diaries is sluggish at best with romance, Snow White with the Red Hair is a romance anime. This means that while it starts off about her becoming a court herbalist, eventually its romantic plot takes over the show.
Ascendance of a Bookworm
Motosu Urano loves books. She recently got her librarian certification and was about to enter her dream job when an earthquake caused her to be crushed by her collection of books.
She is reincarnated into a new world as the five year old daughter of a soldier. Unfortunately, in this world, books are reserved for the elite nobility.
What do you do when your station in life does not afford you access to books? Make your own.
While Ascendance of a Bookworm is an isekai, it focuses less on the isekai aspect and more on the main character’s passion project, which is making books.
Like The Apothecary Diaries features Maomao having a passion for poisons and remedies, Ascendance of a Bookworm is all about a girl’s obsessive love for books. So much so that the entire plot is about her exploring ways to mass produce books in a way that makes them affordable to everyone and not just nobility.
While both main characters are exploring their passions, they are also using their knowledge to help others with their problems, making them widely beloved by many.
The Ancient Magus’ Bride
After being abandoned by her family, Chise Hatori is a 16-year-old teenager without hope.
In order to not have to worry about herself, she sells herself to slavers, only to be purchased by Magus Elias Ainsworth.
There, she is told she will become his apprentice and, in the future, his bride. Together they work to build a relationship and work to control her own magus powers that will eventually result in her early death.
While The Apothecary Diaries features a main character with a specific skill and passion, The Ancient Magus’ Bride differs in that its female protagonist doesn’t have a specific area of expertise. Instead, she has a rare sort of magic that essentially makes her attractive to fae creatures.
Regardless, both series are the same sort of shoujo anime affair. The plot of each series is essentially the main character learning of a problem someone has, getting involved, solving it, and making a new friend in doing so even if that person started off hating them.
Both series also have very obvious romantic elements that they actually don’t make a focus. The Ancient Magus’ Bride focuses occasionally on the romantic element, but it is a series with too robust of storytelling to be a romance anime alone.
Do you have more anime recommendations like The Apothecary Diaries? Let fans know in the comments section below.
