The Apothecary Diaries returns on Friday with one studio instead of two
The Apothecary Diaries returns on Friday made by one studio instead of two. The studio that left is the one making the December film, and the fall schedules crediting OLM alone have not mentioned that anything changed.
Season three of The Apothecary Diaries premieres on 2 October, with a new trailer, a new key visual and an opening theme by Yorushika all revealed last week. Maomao is back, Nippon TV has the Friday slot, and Crunchyroll has it worldwide outside Asia.
The credit on the schedules reads: OLM. That is correct, and it is a change.
Two studios made the first two seasons. One is making this one.
Seasons one and two were a joint production of TOHO animation STUDIO and OLM. Season three is OLM alone.
Crunchyroll's autumn line-up lists the premiere with OLM attached and no note that the arrangement has changed, which reads as continuity rather than a handover. For a show whose visual identity is one of its selling points, a studio dropping off the production is not a footnote.
And the studio that dropped off has not gone anywhere. TOHO animation STUDIO is producing the feature film arriving on 11 December. So the franchise has split its two houses between its two formats, in the same season, in opposite directions.
The obvious explanation — that one studio took the film and the other took the series because both could not do both — is not stated by anyone involved. It is the reading the calendar invites, and it should be labelled as a reading.
Toho Animation and TOHO animation STUDIO are not the same thing
This trips up English coverage constantly and is worth stating plainly. Toho Animation is Toho's production and licensing label — a production-committee entity that puts money and rights together. TOHO animation STUDIO is an animation house that actually draws things.
A title can carry the first without involving the second. When a schedule says a Toho name is attached, that tells you nothing about who is animating until you check which name it is.
The season numbering has its own problem
Season two ran 24 episodes across two cours, from 10 January to 4 July 2025, marketed in Japan as a single season. A good deal of English writing treats the second cour as "season three", which makes the run starting Friday the fourth season by that count and the third by the official one.
Season three is itself split-cour: part one from 2 October, part two from April 2027. Expect the same argument again in the spring.
What is confirmed
- Premiere 2 October 2026 on Nippon TV; Crunchyroll streams outside Asia, Netflix in select Asian territories.
- Animation production: OLM.
- Director Akinori Fudesaka; series composition Norihiro Naganuma, who directed season one; character design Yukiko Nakatani.
- Music by Satoru Kosaki, Kevin Penkin and Alisa Okehazama. Opening theme by Yorushika.
- Season one: 24 episodes, 22 October 2023 to 24 March 2024. Season two: 24 episodes, 10 January to 4 July 2025.
- A feature film follows on 11 December 2026, produced by TOHO animation STUDIO. The season and the film were announced together in October 2025.
What is still unknown
The episode count for part one. Whether the film's English title is settled — at least two renderings are circulating in listings, and no distributor has locked one. And whether OLM working alone changes anything a viewer will notice, which is the only version of this question that matters and the only one nobody can answer until Friday.
A series about reading what is actually written on the label returns with a production credit that quietly lost a name. Nobody has printed the correction, because nobody printed the original.