In its best moments Kusuriya no Hitorigoto is a historical royal court detective with a competent quirky girl pharmacist protag – the very sound of it is like a balm for my soul, I have waited for a plot like this for years! Unfortunately, it is still not free of side effects – one or another toxic substance is always present in the narrative and hurts the otherwise enjoyable read.

The premise is perfect. A young female pharmacist from a red light district ends up by chance becoming a harem maid, and quickly gets entangled in intrigue as a willing food-tester, occasional medic, and a detective for "sensitive" cases. When the story opens up more, in the adaptation of the second volume of the LN, the weight shifts more towards the detective work, with our heroine being an ancient China Sherlock – brains, medical knowledge, unusual personality – and a beautiful influential eunuch whose attention she’s caught being a Watson – social knowledge, cases and resources supply. Gradually, the investigations, initially simplistic and short, become more elaborate and/or educational, a slow-burn overarching plot starts to form.

It is fun, it is relatively realistic, it makes sense. A harem would necessary have a lot of the same problems a red light district has, it is logical that a woman can shine on the female side of the forbidden city. Eunuchs are known to have influence in harems and enjoy scheming. Furthermore, it meshes perfectly with the personality of our heroine – she is painfully intelligent, eccentric to a fault, detached, cynical, not stereotypically feminine, relatively amoral, laser-focused solely on production, invention, and testing of medicine and poisons. One could suspect she is on the autistic spectrum, with herbal medicine being her obsessive interest. Her fascination with poisons is so strong it’s almost sexual. She is a natural disruptor, a fascinating character to follow and a great foil to the flowery façade of court femininity.

The art is functional – attractive, easy to digest, but nothing to write home about. The best parts are the design of the main heroine with her many meme-worthy disgruntled faces and, probably, the ornate costumes of the courtesans. The supposed androgyne celestial beauty of an eunuch doesn’t cut it by manga bishounen standards at all, hilariously, however. And the art never rises to be something special or to the levels of elaboration needed for a proper historical period piece. The style is more of a medicine than a poison nonetheless, if we look at the final diagnosis of Kusuriya no Hitorigoto.

What truly plagues this manga is romcom it greedily clings to for some reason, but can’t digest properly at all. Kusuriya no Hitorigoto may be published as seinen, but it displays a lot of romatic comedy shoujo symptoms at any given moment.

The first issue is the tonal clash, born out of the -com virus strain. Kusuriya no Hitorigoto has a lot of “comedic” excessive mannerism and chibi contortions. Sadly, it’s not something like an occasional joke, it’s constant, stalling, annoying and masturbatory. Most characters are assigned 2-3 gags and those are repeated ad nauseam: “she is so wild, lol”, “maids act like school girls, omg”, “he sulks in the corner like a baby, haha”. The self-gratifying, meta nature breaks immersion. The upbeat, silly tone takes away from more serious moments, when a character is killed, banished, or executed. Staging and the subsequent demonstrations of these scenarios waste the page space.

The uncomfortable affectation is most evident in the way multiple characters treat the male lead. According to the lore, he is a gender-transcending beauty without peer, who sways both men and women to a destructive degree. A lot of text in the manga is dedicated to jokes about creeps hitting on him or hiding him from people for mutual safety. It’s not very logical since tastes and sexual orientation exist, it’s not supported by art, as I have mentioned, and it’s overall shitty to joke about sexual harassment. The heroine treats him with disgust overall, but routinely imagines him in sexual scenarios in her head, for some reason.

Yet an even bigger threat lies in the rom- part – in the misguided love story and in the male love interest himself, somewhat separately. The love story is simply redundant: it lacks chemistry and motivation. The heroine is not interested in corporeal matters except for healing and/or poisoning, is visibly disenfranchised in romance after her childhood in the red light district. She is distrustful of men and shows extreme disdain towards the male lead. The male lead is suddenly and inexplicably infatuated with her, his feelings are initially explained as “toying”, then manifest themselves in poor shoujo fashion – control, being condescending, pushing, touching, pressuring. His boundless support from the shadows cheapens heroine's successes. Worst of all is that the inexplicable need for stereotypical romance occasionally contaminates the plot, mostly in the form of heroine being enslaved or sold used as a lighthearted story device (what’s with casual slavery and female-oriented stories? tell me, Mahoutsukai no Yome!).

The male lead is problematic as a character overall. To make him more important the author has put him so high socially that he is essentially tied to the court, and most of the action in the manga is limited to his domains, basically - confined to the palace grounds. The global plot will likely be also driven by him. To make room for it the protagonist is repeatedly barred from making any choices for herself. He is it all – handsome, tall, influential, rich, unnaturally caring towards the MC, cunning, wanted by everyone. But his social position doesn’t seem fully realistic, and, what’s especially sad for me, right from the start it’s implied that he is not what he seems, and especially no eunuch. This is a huge disappointment, because why not? What’s so scary about it in the context of an antisocial heroine with poisoning fetish? Eunuchs existed, had influence, schemed, could seek companionship, romance, even sex. Having such an unusual pair, romantically or not, in the focus would have been madly entertaining.

In the end, Kusuriya no Hitorigoto doesn’t want to fight for its ideas, I am afraid. It may have an eunuch characters, but it doesn’t want to truly study what it means physically, socially, mentally. It may have a really weird socially awkward female lead, but then she is made to show conventional gratitude and affection suddenly. The main character is introduced as unfeminine, but later they go “you look stunning when in makeup” way. The author tries to noblify its main cast as if ashamed of their servant occupation. The red light district is scary and visceral, the sober view of the main heroine on class division is striking, but Kusuriya no Hitorigoto is not consistent with castle policies, social politics or generous with historical data, sadly.

In short, Kusuriya no Hitorigoto is classified on MAL as a historical seinen drama, and it is such a healing remedy indeed to an extent, but it’s also a female-oriented romance comedy placebo of poor quality. Drug tolerance varies by person, so some readers may be fine. The concentration of components varies wildly volume per volume too, so it pays off to be patient and waiting for the right moment with this manga. Personally, multiple times it seemed to me that Kusuriya no Hitorigoto had finally become what I dearly wished it to be – yet something always poisoned the impression in the end.

I would still prescribe Kusuriya no Hitorigoto, with caveats, to those interested in a detective story with medical edge in the ancient China setting, in female investigators, and maybe in court intrigue. The caveat being – don’t expect it to be high-brow or high-class too much to avoid possible disappointment. I definitely don’t recommend it to those looking for a good romance, social commentary, or historical knowledge.
Kusuriya no Hitorigoto is amazing as a recipe, but the realization is dragged down by unnecessary additions. Even for a reader like me, achingly ready for its starting premise, it’s at best more of palliative sweet cough drops for a seasonal respiratory infection, than a radical cure it promised to be and maybe could have been, if it had cut off the pollutants. At its absolute worst - it's a inedible saccarine slush, you should avoid on your menu if you want to get better.