They deserve better.
Light novels and manga spoilers ahead!
Summary:
- Lakan reunites with Fengxian in Season 1 finale.
- Fengxian dies in the light novels.
- There’s still hope that the anime will change her fate.
Lakan and Fengxian finally reunited in the finale of The Apothecary Diaries (Kusuriya no Hitorigoto) Season 1. It was a beautiful moment of Lakan finding out his love is still alive and running to her just to suggest they play go together.
It looks like this love story finally has a chance at a happy ending, but The Apothecary Diaries readers ask anime-onlys not to get their hopes up. Lakan and Fengxian do not live happily ever after.
Source material
The web novel is the cruelest, since in it, Fengxian dies during Lakan’s three-year absence, and the two are never given the chance to reunite.
The light novels are a bit kinder, though. Fengxian and Lakan do find each other again after the three-year break; they even get married. However, Fengxian has syphilis, which she contracted due to her job, and the disease causes her death soon after the marriage.
Fengxian’s story is yet to be finished in the manga, since she is also ill but is receiving treatment for the disease. However, the manga has been pretty faithful to the light novels so far… so, you can see where this is all going.
What about anime?
All of that makes fans curious about the anime. It’s still unclear whether the story of Lakan and Fengxian will stay the same in the adaptation and the woman will die. But viewers are still hopeful that something magical will happen and there’ll finally be a somewhat happy ending.
Fengxian has suffered enough. She worked as a prostitute, she fell in love with one of her clients, Lakan, she lost her mind when he left her. Her pregnancy made no one else want her, and she went so crazy that she even cut Maomao’s pinky off.
Of course, it doesn’t make Fengxian a good person, who deserves to get married and live a quiet life with her husband till the day she dies of old age, but it means that she deserves some peace.
Fengxian did horrible things not because she’s a bad person, but because her life turned her into this. She lost her mind and became practically insane. But imagine how impactful it would be if she were given a second chance. If the anime decides to change her story, there would be some outstanding character development.
Unfortunately, fans don’t believe that such a drastic change will ever happen in the anime. Fengxian is also ill in the adaptation, and viewers don’t really see a way out of it. They feel like the anime will follow the light novels, and Fengxian will die after marrying Lakan.
There’s still a sliver of hope that some magic will happen and Fengxian will be cured, or at least her lifespan will be increased in the anime and we’ll see more of her. Fengxian deserves redemption, and we’d really love to see that.