エピソードの概要
If it's anything like real Chinese history, somebody's mom's family wants to take power
away from whoever the actual ruler is right now, and is trying to kill off the appropriate people
in order to get the other side of the family to inherit instead. Welcome back to 2AM OTTACK!
I'm your host Mayu, a born and raised Japanese non-otaku, and I'm Cisco, an American otaku.
In this podcast, we share our reviews of anime and manga through our distinct perspectives
with commentary on Japanese culture, history, and language. Cisco, we are back with the
Apothecary Diaries episode. Previously, we talked about all sorts of history in China,
including printing press, eunuch, guns, bathhouse, poison, and more. Now I'm excited to dive into
the history behind it, especially on episode 38 and 39. Episode 38, there was like a ghost story,
and like it's related to a mirror, magic mirror, which I'd like to know about more. And on episode
39, Mama was making ice cream. Yes. So I want to know more about ice cream. Okay. All right.
Before we start, we would like to hear from you. Share your thoughts, ideas, questions, or even
suggestions what we should talk about. Send us a message to the email in the description,
or you can use Spotify and YouTube comments section as well. All right. Let's start from
魔法の鏡の解説
episode 38. The title is The Dancing Ghost. Do you remember this episode? Yeah, it feels like
there's a lot of episodes called The Dancing Ghost in this particular anime though, right?
Not specifically for the title, but a lot of dancing. There's a lot of dancing and a lot of
ghosts. Yeah. So yes, I do remember the episode. Okay. Can you explain briefly? Sure. So the
crux of the mystery in this episode is that one of the maids in, God, what's her name? The little
one. Lishu's pavilion is seeing a ghost through a window. And there's a little bit of this,
oh, but no one could possibly have been there. Like the window was shut. Why was the curtain
moving? Kind of a thing going on. So it's unclear why she's seeing a face and why the windows or
the curtains moving even though the windows closed. And the explanation for the moving
curtain has to do with there being a bath inside the building and draining the bath and letting the
hot water out, creating this updraft of steam that's rotting the floorboards and also sort of
escaping through the house and making the curtain move. And the question of the image is coming from
a magic mirror. And so I had not heard of a, I guess I'd heard the term magic mirror, but I didn't
really, I would, you know, for me, that conjures Snow White, you know, mirror mirror on the wall,
who's the fairest of them all like that kind of magic, not like a an actual literal mirror that
does something cool. So I didn't know about this. But apparently a magic mirror is a mirror that
casts a reflection when light hits it, that makes an image projected onto like another surface,
like a wall. And these were a thing from ancient China. There's like record of these going all the
way back to the Han dynasty. And the way they're made is kind of complicated. You don't actually
etch the image into the mirror side. Instead, you create an image on the backside of the mirror,
and then like basically cause the thing on the backside of the mirror to deform the other side
of the mirror in a barely perceptible way. So it's very, very tricky to get this right. But if you do,
if you look in the mirror, it just looks like a regular mirror. But if you allow light to hit the
mirror and bounce off onto a surface, it reveals the image that's on the other side of the mirror.
And so if you can see the backside of the mirror, it looks like light is going through the back of
the mirror somehow and then being projected somewhere else. If you can't see the back of
the mirror, it looks like the image is coming from literally nowhere. It was, it's a very cool idea,
but the technology or the technology, the skill used in creating these is sort of dying out. I
think there's one guy left in Japan who knows how to make these and that's it.
And then it takes such a long time to make one.
Yeah. Yeah. I don't think they've figured out like a machine process to try to make these yet.
宗教的な用途と歴史
And what was the purpose? What's the reason a mirror was invented?
Well, a lot of them seem to have religious like connotations or use in religious rituals. So
there are a bunch of them that are associated with Buddhism, where the image that appears or
is projected is either like a name of the Buddha or an image of the Buddha. But I think they were
also just cool. Like it sort of doesn't matter. You could have like the image be like a cool skull
and people would be like, damn, that's tight. So they were also used as gifts. And in particular,
I think Zhaowei from the Three Kingdoms period in China seems to have sent magic mirrors to
Queen Himiko in Japan, like very, very early in Japanese history. And it's thought that one
of the reasons that like one of the three treasures of ancient Japan is a mirror is
because of these magic mirrors. So maybe it was like a magic mirror with something special on it.
Nice. When there were Christians in Japan and Christianity was like banned by the government,
people used the mirror to reflect Jesus or cross and they prayed to them to the reflection hiding.
Yeah, I think that makes sense. Although if anybody saw the back of the mirror,
they would theoretically also see the image that was being projected and still get in trouble.
But maybe you could like tastefully cover the back of the mirror. And certainly looking into
the mirror wouldn't give you any sense that that's what was going on. But yeah, so I think
they were used in religious rituals in lots of different contexts, including that one.
氷クリームの起源
Yeah, that was really cool. All right. Let's talk about episode 39, when Mao Mao makes
ice cream.
Yeah. So this is another one of those moments where you're kind of like,
unsure what time period this is supposed to be set in. And like, where'd she get this recipe,
right? Or like this idea?
She's heard about it or read somewhere.
Yeah.
Right. But she had never tried it.
She'd never tried it. Okay, so maybe that explains why she's like,
accidentally able to make very Western looking ice cream. In researching about the history of
ice cream, there are a lot of unsubstantiated claims about who invented ice cream and when.
There is some suggestion that a type of kind of like frozen yogurt might have existed in ancient
China that involved taking buffalo milk, heating it and fermenting it, like making it into yogurt,
and then cooling it back down with ice to make some kind of like beverage or dessert that also
included other ingredients like possibly rice or flour or camphor, like an herb. So I don't think
anyone today would consume that product and be like, oh, it's ice cream, but it is a chilled
dairy product. And so there's a claim there, I think, to be made. I wasn't able to track down
any original sources that actually say this. So it feels like it's a little bit in the realm of
the legendary, but like, maybe by the time of the Tang dynasty, we get like some kind of cooled off
milk based beverage and or dessert in China. Better documented are sources about Persians
eating ices. So ice desserts flavored with fruit or honey. And so you have like both legendary
things saying like Alexander the Great enjoyed eating snow with honey. Okay, it's not really
ice cream. But is it like a shaved ice? Yeah. And I think the idea of shaved ice was like,
present in lots of cultures. So you get that in Japan during the Heian era, you get that in
Persia, probably even a lot earlier. And you get that spreading to other places. And for sure,
like the introduction of ice desserts to Europe seems to have been via Italy. Italy got these
first and how they got to Italy matter of dispute. Some people are like, it's Marco Polo. Some people
are like, it's not Marco Polo. Italy seems to have been the first place to do frozen ice desserts
in Europe, and then from Italy to France, and then from France to Great Britain. And in England,
maybe in part to be like, we don't like what the French people like, they seem to have decided to
do frozen desserts with cream or milk rather than just ice and water. And so there we get like a
transition from using sort of like fruit flavored waters or ices to milk based like creams that are
cooled off or frozen. And by the time we get to the revolutionary period in American history,
I think the idea of sort of what we would have thought of as ice cream seems to be a product of
like England in the 1680s or so. It spread to the colonies. And by the time of the revolution,
people like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were eating things that we would recognize today,
as ice cream and writing their own recipes for how to make it. I think like more modern
innovations in ice cream include things like soft serve and frozen custard and froyo and some other
things that are more like turn of the century and 1900s era stuff. But yeah, I think China has a
claim to like an early dairy frozen dessert. Persia definitely has a pretty strong claim to
frozen ices. And then like the European history from the what 15, 1600s on is kind of well
documented, but it obviously didn't originate there. Can you guess which country has the most
アイスクリームの消費
consumption of ice cream? America? No, no, no. Where? Today? It's New Zealand. No, it's not.
It's just so on a per capita basis. Yeah, I thought it was somewhere cooler. I thought
it was Finland. Like cooler place tends to eat more ice cream. What? That was my knowledge.
Okay. Well, I mean, New Zealand is pretty cool. Yeah. It's pretty far towards the,
you know, the pole. Yeah. New Zealand consume 28
liters per year per person. Wow. And United States, United States is 20 liter per year per
person. Damn. Yeah, that's a lot. Way to go, New Zealand. I think United States eat a lot. Like I
feel like people in America like eating ice cream. Sheer quantity though. It's got to be the U.S.
350 million people. It's a lot of ice cream. One of the biggest things I was surprised after
moving to United States was like a, you can get a bucket of ice cream at a grocery store, like,
which you never, ever see in Japan. I think Japan sells anything on that scale.
Right. Or when I, when I still, still lived in Japan and then watching Full House,
people take out like a bucket, like size of like ice cream from fridge and they're like,
you know, you know, digging with spoon and eating straight. It's like, wow. Yeah. I have a vivid
memory of eating like a bucket of ice cream at a Ben & Jerry's with like five other people when I
was young. One of the people was sick. We all got sick. Sick from what? I don't know. They just had
like the flu or something. It was like on its face, a really bad idea, but we did it anyway. And we
all paid for it. Oh my God. It was good though. Yep. Okay. Those are the history of the question
I had. So let's talk about like what's happening right now on the Apothecary Diaries anime.
誘拐されたママと陰謀
Okay. So spoiler alert, we're going to talk about the plot. So Mama has been kidnapped and I,
full disclosure, completely fell asleep during one of these episodes. So I'm not sure I like know all
the ins and outs of what's going on anymore. Okay. She got kidnapped. They took her to a hot
springs village. Yeah. We don't know why. Right. We just know that. Let's see the consort Lolan's
actually a spy and is also Shisui, the like serving girl who's been like obsessed with
bugs and stuff. That's our guess. Okay. That those are the same person. Yes. She's theoretically the
daughter of like that rich, important dude. Which dude? I think you said his name is Shishou. Yeah.
He's got a, Oh yes, yes. He's like a regional landowner. Also, he seems to be a colorblind,
which means he might be part of the Royal family, which is confusing. Yeah. Like
everybody's related. Well, or like, you know, I mean, he is like a powerful regional landowner.
There seems to be like worry that he's like plotting something right. That he's going to
like plot, like overthrow the current king or emperor. And Jin Shi is definitely like, not,
I don't know. Jin Shi feels like his position is somehow in danger from like this other guy.
So Maomao being taken captive there, like it's not clear why they brought her there.
Or like what they're planning, who Shisui is and who Lolan is, is sort of unclear at this point.
Now it's like getting kind of murky. And my only guess is, you know, given that they tried to
assassinate Jin Shi at the hunting party, like a couple episodes ago, this feels like also part
of like a revolution or a political plot to like kill or sideline him and possibly also the actual
emperor in order to get someone from Shishou's family involved instead. Right. And Shisui's
sister is Suirei. Yeah. And Suirei was a person who pretended dying. I mean,
she really died for a moment. Right. Right. Right. And then she...
What was she trying to do that she had to fake her death? Didn't she try to poison someone?
Right. Who was she trying to poison originally? She pretended to be other girl.
Yeah. There was like an attempt to poison somebody. There was an attempt to poison Gyokuyo
or Lihua. Like it seems like a lot of like the machinations have been about like
stopping the current emperor from having a male heir, which makes sense, especially if he's related
to Shishou somehow, because that would mean that Shishou like could potentially inherit the throne
if the current emperor doesn't have any heirs. And we know that like having heirs was a big deal
for the previous emperor because he like didn't want to get it on with anybody except for really
young girls. And so it was hard for him to have an heir at all. Right. So it's, I think there's
probably something there and like, you know, some connection. If it's anything like real
Chinese history, somebody's mom's family wants to take power away from like whoever the actual
ruler is right now and is trying to like kill off the, you know, the appropriate people in order to
get like the other side of the family to inherit instead. Because Suirei was pretending to be a
eunuch. Right. And this somebody witnessed her praying in front of like north side graveyard.
Right. And then does it mean that that the graveyard has a bunch of graves with like people
who got touched by emperor and it never left the palace again, right? So I was thinking maybe she
was like praying in front of our own mother. Could be. Yeah. And then I don't know how that
related to the nurse who tried. The old nurse. Yeah. Who did commit suicide or whatever. Right.
But she survived. Right. Right. Right. They made her throw up. Yeah. Yeah. That part's not clear
either. Because she's also seems like the same person, like not the same person. She also seems
like once she slept, well, she was forced to sleep with like an emperor, but she never left.
The woman who's in the grave. The nurse. The older nurse. Because like she's pretty old,
but like she's like, nobody's like coming, coming me to pick up from outside. So I'll never leave.
I'll never leave again. Yeah. A lot of it seems to be like the sort of fallout from that previous
emperor is like messed up life. Yeah. I don't know. I I'm curious to see why she show seems to
like have designs on the throne and like what his connection to the rest of the Royal family might be
that would enable him to like claim that. It also seems like the current emperor doesn't have a
clear air, right? Like he hasn't had a boy. Yoko is pregnant. That could be a boy. And Lee was also
pregnant. That could be a boy, but Lee was older. Son died from like the face powder. And if Kyo Kyo
has another girl, then he still doesn't have an air. And like, I am still sort of under the
impression that Jin Chi is actually the current emperor's son, not his brother, but has been
raised as his brother. Either way, he has a claim to the Imperial throne that's above whoever she
show is regardless of his connection. Right? Like he would be the next emperor, no matter how you
slice it. So it seems sort of complicated that, you know, like, why is his existence being such a
secret? Like is is unclear, but maybe all will be revealed in the next couple episodes.
Yeah, they're skipping one week. Okay, yeah. Let's talk about the opening theme song for
second quarter of the second season, right? Which is by Mrs. Green Apple. Yeah. So what do you think
about the music? I like it. Mrs. Green Apple has not always been my favorite band. Like they're so
popular in Japan in this past year that I sort of like was resistant to them a little bit at first,
but I actually think I like it. It's a pretty good song and it has an epic music video. The music
video for the full version of the song is basically just like Dynasty Warriors or what's the other one?
There's a Japanese one too. And it's got like a slight, I think it's in English. It's called
Samurai Warriors cringe. But yeah, it like looks like a battle out of that where they all have like
magic powers and all fight each other, but are all kind of like getting along at the same time.
It's so it's a lot of computer graphics. Yeah. With fancy dresses. Yes. And they're like fancy
action scenes. Yeah, I loved it. I thought it was really good. And the music's alright. So
I think I like Mrs. Green Apple's style more than I like their music per se, but the music's
totally fine and it's very like appropriate for like anime. So I think I like it. All things
幽霊とその解釈
considered. Okay. What's today's word of the day? I thought we might go with yurei here because of
the first episode we talked about with the magic mirror. Yurei means ghost, but I wasn't really
sure what the first character in yurei means. The you, and apparently it means faint or like dim or
hard to see essentially. And the day means spirit. And so day by itself can kind of be ghost,
right? Or like soul. So the yurei means like a sort of like dark or hard to see indistinct
like spirit. And so I don't know. I've always thought it was like a pretty cool word for ghost
that sort of captures the essence of like what a ghost is in like a kind of cool spooky way. So
that's why I thought it'd be a good word of the day. Yeah, yurei's you is the same as yuyu hakusho's
first you. Right. But yuyu is the same pronunciation, but yuyu hakusho's second you is
like a play of one. Right, right, right. So it's a little bit different. It's like a made-up word.
Right. Yeah. Have you seen a ghost before? I don't think I have. I have. Do you want to tell
us more about that? Sure. Apparently, like I've seen a ghost, according to my mom. So you don't
remember seeing it? I don't remember. But it seems like I saw a ghost when I was two years old. For
some reason, I was upstairs by myself. And I called my mom who was downstairs and like,
hey, come up. And then she was like, what's up? And I pointed to the ceiling and said,
there's a guy. My mom doesn't see the guy. And she was like, okay, can you describe what the
person looks like? And they started describing and she was really scared, or maybe not scared,
but like shocked, because that sounded like the person she actually knew and passed away.
I'm making a really intense face right now. So scary.
Yeah. So I don't remember at all. And after that, until today, I have never seen a ghost.
Yeah. I think I've only seen ghosts in like movies and TV. I don't think I've ever seen a
real ghost. I only see something, some people when I have sleep, what do you call it?
Sleep paralysis. Yeah. I always see a woman or a girl. I'm not sure I wanted to know this.
Which is terrifying because you're trying to wake up, then you can't. And a woman with long
black hair is on top of me. Oh, it's like Sadako every time?
No, no. That's the one time. And the second time was a girl looking at me, pointing a picture.
Okay. That's scary. I don't, yeah.
I know that's not a ghost. I'm just having a brain thing, but it's-
Let's go with that. Yeah.
All right. It is scary. All right. Anything else you'd like to add?
Nope. But I am excited to see how Apothecary Diaries turns out.
キャラクターの関係性
I think, I don't know how many more episodes, but like a close to the end
of second season. So- Cool.
I just want to figure out and hope to figure out the relationship between people and the people.
There's so many characters by now. Yeah, it's true.
I just, yeah. Can't wait to find out more. Thank you so much for listening to this week's
episode. If you liked this week's episode, please give us good reviews on Spotify and Apple Podcasts,
or like and leave a comment on YouTube. Make sure to subscribe and follow 2AMOTAK and 3AMOTAK.
It'll keep us making more fun episodes. See you next time for more 2AMOTAK.
Later.
