Kusuriya no Hitorigoto - Ch. 64 - The Masked Gentleman

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Don't know why I didn't realize the Chinese-Japanese inconsistency from Suiren or Gyokuyou, especially Gyokuyou which sounds very Japanese. But Jinshi's real name definitely threw me off, because Zuigetsu is obviously a Japanese name, specifically the Getsu reading of 月.
 
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Given that they're finally connecting Jinshi with the Emperor's younger brother, I wonder how/if the fact that Jinshi is actually the emperor's son, will play out. Who knows? Does Jinshi? Will she expose it, once he exposes his 'true' identity?

Will it happen in the next 20 chapters?

And for those not knowing what I mean - relate back to chapter 18 and the story of the now-returned and former consort Aaduo, childhood friend of the emperor, whose child was swapped with the former emperor's, born at the same time.
 
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ngl the tag romance should be removed at this point . its been 64 chapters and 1 she still doesn't know who he is and 2 she still doesn't even have much feelings for him . he does yes but it seems the author is just unsure on how to proceed in their romance . IF this was weekly i wouldn't have any problem with it but waiting soo much for nothing to happen between this 2 is fucking annoying
 
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Here's one thing I wish scanlators would do to make it easier to understand the characters is to write them as is (i.e. 桜) and then put the romaji on top, as if it were yomigana.

The (much more competent than the official) fansub of Redo of Healer used this technique to deal with ちんちん (can be both "begging" and "dick") by having the meaning of the word under and the romaji for the pronunciation on top.

Another manga that I saw doing that was the Brazilian translation for Kekkaishi that had the translation under and the reading in romaji on top every time they activated, deactivated or destroyed the barriers.

Now that I look back at what fans have been doing, I start to wonder why this isn't standard yet (I mean, we did implement -chan, -san, -kun before official translations started doing so, now we have a new trend to implement).
 
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help can someone summarise the situation at hand because i can't really remember what's going on 😭😭🙏🙏
I'll try (and i will probably fail miserably).
Jinshi is the son of the former emperor, and from the looks of it, he has the right to succeed the throne, his mother might not be the same as his brother's, who is the current emperor. Some people wants him dead (2 direct tries by now), the reasoning behind why, is not clear for now (seems to be a big ass organization). Mao Mao somehow ignored all what was happening around Jinshi, because she "didn't want to get involved", even though she almost saw Jinshi get killed in those 2 murder attempts, (she almost got killed in those attempts as well), she somehow still believes that he is a regular guy pretending to be a an eunuch, that is lying his way into the court with his unbelievable beauty.
Jinshi values Mao Mao insights to figure out what the deal is against him, and keeps dragging her deeper every time, even though she says she doesn't want to.
No spoilers cause this is what has happened so far.
 
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ngl the tag romance should be removed at this point . its been 64 chapters and 1 she still doesn't know who he is and 2 she still doesn't even have much feelings for him . he does yes but it seems the author is just unsure on how to proceed in their romance . IF this was weekly i wouldn't have any problem with it but waiting soo much for nothing to happen between this 2 is fucking annoying
Just read the light novel
 
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Can someone please refresh my memory who is the imperial prince that died last year? Was it the baby of the consort Rifa?
 
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Don't know why I didn't realize the Chinese-Japanese inconsistency from Suiren or Gyokuyou, especially Gyokuyou which sounds very Japanese. But Jinshi's real name definitely threw me off, because Zuigetsu is obviously a Japanese name, specifically the Getsu reading of 月.
My thoughts exactly. Caught me so off guard
 
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It's not historically accurate yeah and it's kind of a fantasy imperial China setting, but the first chapter has a picture of the palace and it clearly is the imperial city or at least modeled after it (you can even see jinshan in the back too), and the time period (given all the interactions with 'Westerners' and the gun technology) does place it in the Qing era. Seems like the author was going for a Beijing setting in the 1700s but as if the Ming dynasty continued with influences from previous eras.

The time setting is a total mess, but it's clearly not in Beijing despite the way the palace is drawn in the first chapter. My guess is that the mangaka only knows the Forbidden City to use as the template. The reason I think this is actually meant to be Chang'an or Luoyang instead is due to the description of the Country of Ri in chapter 60 (which the inconsistent maps don't actually represent very well), but the idea is that the capital is a major city in the middle of the country right to the north of their equivalent of the Yellow River but directly south of a large mountain range. It's also clear that there are more large provinces north of the capital. This is very much unlike Beijing, which was always a northeastern fortress city very far away from the Yellow River, and which in most of Chinese history was actually located in the northernmost province. Furthermore, the story's equivalent of their Silk Road terminates in the capital, which is not the case with Beijing but was definitely the case for Chang'an.

The reason I said it's a Tang Dynasty that never fell is the story of the first empress dowager (whose husband's name is forgotten). The story is old enough to have become legend, which was actually impossible in the lifespan of most Chinese dynasties because China was governed with a rigid bureaucracy that kept a detailed record of their own history and it's the rare Chinese dynasty that lasted more than three centuries. For the first dowager story to have become a legend the way it did, more time needed to have passed. I figured this put the founding around a millennium before the setting, so right around when Tang dynasty would have existed in our era. Furthermore, the ruler of the Shihoku province is clearly either a jiedushi or even a Han-style vassal king. These are positions that no longer existed in the Song, let alone Ming/Qing, dynasty because it was blamed as the cause of the falls of the Han, Jin, and Tang dynasties.

As for the really messy time setting, the "modern feifa" is actually a 1640s pattern flintlock pistol but solid chocolate was only invented in the mid-19th century. More confusingly, the "Western envoy" twins are actually representative of Crimean Khanate culture in the 16th century. Soooo... well, it's fantasy.
 
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help can someone summarise the situation at hand because i can't really remember what's going on 😭😭🙏🙏
Yeah, I got time and I'm bored.

About 18 years ago, the king (the pedo king) and crown prince (our series' current king) both had sons around the same time. Only the pedo king's son got the utmost care since they had a higher status than their nephew. The crown prince's son dies, and the youngest son of the pedophile lives.

The youngest prince is Ka Zuigetsu, The Pedo king dies and our series current king takes over.

A few years before Maomao is taken to work in the palace, the two brothers make a bet and Ka Zuigetsu takes on the guise of Jinshi. To do this they fake an accident that ruined Zuigetsu's face so he can step away from court and is assigned a few individuals who know the truth to help him as Jinshi. We have yet to know what the bet or objective of the bet is. (unless somebody who reads the novels wants to let me know), but it definitely has to do with the inheritance of the throne since they are royalty. Jinshi takes hormonal drugs to suppress his testosterone and wears a mask when he returns as Zuigetsu.

During the manga, it is heavily hinted that Ka Zuigetsu isn't the king's brother but his firstborn son making Jinshi the true heir of the throne. The most noted time is when the king's oldest consort Ah-Duo, the one Maomao said looked A LOT LIKE JINSHI leaves the court to retire. Meaning 18 years ago, Ah-Duo had her son swapped with his uncle to ensure he would get the care he was denied. It is also suggested that the king knows that Jinshi is his son, which is part of why they are making this bet.

Maomao can sense that Jinshi is important but would rather be left of it since it sounds troublesome. So the whole part when she finds out Jinshi has his nuts intact and was really pushing her frog theory to stay out of his business was comedy.
 
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Yeah, she's the kind of blunt person who don't make much of a difference between people even if they seem to change who they are.

She's such a goof when it comes to her favourite topics and items.

Politics. Eh, not that interesting if they're just talking about background stuff, and it's not particularly groundbreaking.

Find yourself someone who looks at you the same way Maomao looks at ox bezoars.
Not sure that's possible unless you get yourself a yandere.

There it is, the Japanese pronunciation vs. Chinese pronunciation issue
The "Ba" in Basen is the Japanese pronunciation of Gao Shun's family name "Ma"
Yeah, those are sometimes a bit of a problem, since they're fairly important.

Given the setting is imperial China (Beijing during the Qing dynasty), I guess the mandarin ones would be most 'authentic', but having a mix of both always seemed odd to me.
Set in "China", written in Japanese. So which is more authentic is a matter of opinion.

After speedreading through sites about ox bezoars, it's possible that Maomao's clamor about this supposed "holy grail cure" is just undigested food remains turned into stone and nothing else.
That's the case for a lot of those special ingredients and remedies. They're just rare stuff that gets a reputation because they're rare, much like how rare and expensive food is generally seen as "better" even if it really isn't. Not that it means it isn't something that works or is good.

Jinshi you fucked up, if you want to tell something important to Maomao then tell her before giving her some super rare medical ingredient and probably say it twice even.
Yeah, once she gets fixated on something, she doesn't let up. Door's closed.

MaoMao is a high Int, low wis build isn’t she?
More like a low Cha build. Her Wis isn't bad, just very selective, and mostly on purpose.

Girls literally only want one thing, and it's disgusting
Nah, Mao Mao isn't "girls". She's one of a kind. It's not so much that "she's not like other girls", and more like "she's not like anyone else at all".

Oh you will be surprised... A lot of the high and mighty claims are likely bogus, but there are still plenty of wisdom in folk medicine.
Same holds true for old European folk medicine. While they didn't have the same understanding we do, they did understand that some things seemed to work more often than not. For more common things, with more data, they were probably more likely to be correct, while with rare things they just didn't have that much to go on to form a reliable opinion.
 

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