At Anime Expo 2025, Anime Corner had the chance to sit down with two of the incredible voice actors from the equally incredible series The Apothecary Diaries Season 2: Aoi Yuki, who voices the protagonist apothecary Maomao, and Asami Seto, who voices Loulan / Shisui.
During our conversation, the voice actors discussed their experiences bringing the characters they voice to life in The Apothecary Diaries anime adaptation (with special attention to Season 2), starting with their first encounters with the series and moving toward their work on the anime. Both gave some useful insight and perspective on how they interpret their characters and how they synthesized direct instruction (or lack thereof), individual interpretations of the characters personalities, and some personal flair. We also covered some of the difficulties associated with their roles, characteristics they share with the characters they voice, and some of their favorite moments from throughout the series.
Portions of this interview have been lightly edited for clarity.
Q: To start, can you both talk about how you first encountered the series?
Yuki-san: The first time I ever had an encounter with The Apothecary Diaries is the audio drama CD that came with the light novels. And that was my first time ever playing Maomao. And since there was no picture, it was just very word-heavy and monologue-heavy. But as I was going through all the monologues, it was a pleasure to kind of feel the beauty of the literature that was there and what was written in the original works, and really kind of tapping into all of the things hidden inside the literature as well. So to see that come full circle has been such a great pleasure.
Seto-san: My initial encounter with the series is after I got the role and I started reading the original works more closely. My first debut or recording session for the series was for Loulan. But I always had Shisui in mind, knowing that she would come in the later season. So how I approached my acting was with Shisui in mind, but also trying to create the gap between the two characters.
Q: What was your initial impression of your character(s) when you first came onto the project? What aspects of their personality resonated most with you?
Yuki-san: When I play Maomao, I really channel my inner feline, my inner cat. So however a cat would think, I try to incorporate that into my acting with Maomao. It’s hard to say — it’s kind of embarrassing to say this about myself, but people around me have also told me that I resemble a cat in my personal life (laughs). But I think Maomao and how she’s extremely focused and tunnel visioned into the things that she enjoys doing or that catch her attention is cat-like as well. The way she’s clever — she’s really cool on the outside, but actually very emotionally intricate and passionate on the inside — is something that I really try to incorporate when I play Maomao.
Seto-san: As the story progresses within the series — and I can finally speak on this now because it is evident that Loulan and Shisui are the same person. So like I said previously, when I first started recording in Season 1, I only came forward with Loulan. But with Shisui in mind, I really wanted to focus on creating the gap between the two characters and their personalities so that it would come out through my acting as well. Shisui is very bright and very positive and happy-go-lucky. But also she has times where she’s worried or ponders or she’s confused too. So adding that flavor to Shisui while maintaining the gap between Shisui and Loulan was something that I really paid focus to when acting and creating that distinction between the two. But also Shisui is very passionate about bugs. So that was an opportunity for me to add that extra flair for Shisui and a different side of her.
Q: What kind of direction did or do you receive in how to make your character sound? And what was your approach to finding a voice for that?
Yuki-san: I did have that initial experience playing Maomao within the audio drama CD. So using that to my advantage, I think, and how it overlaid with the animation, I think that was a great tool for me. And I often listened to Jinshi’s voice, Otsuka-san [Takeo Otsuka], and his acting and his cadence and how he spoke and how he kind of portrayed the character of Jinshi and tried to create a good balance between the two when watching the animation come to life. And in the recording studio, there’s really no hard direction on how to play the characters, but it’s always about what they want to portray from the scene itself and the important parts that need to come through through the acting.
Seto-san: So when prepping for the role of Shisui, often I was told by the team “brighter, more brighter, more upbeat, more more more.” At first, I wondered “Is this too much? Am I doing too much? How am I going to keep up with this throughout the entire series?” So I was a little bit worried there, but I later understood that it was to create the gap between the two characters, like Loulan and Shisui. I learned a lot there.
Q: Did you find yourself learning about things your character has a passion or interest in, such as insects or poisons?
Yuki-san: (laughs) I personally did not look into poison before starting to record, but as I was going through the script, I was learning along with playing Maomao.
Seto-san: I personally am not a huge bug person myself, but the drawings that Shisui would do, I thought, “Wow, these are just really amazing drawings.” I think it was great.
Yuki-san: Neither of us did anything in particular to research in advance.
Q: Seto-san, how did you approach Shisui and Maomao’s relationship?
Seto-san: Going into acting for Shisui, I know that Shisui had something to hide from the very beginning, so I had to channel that into my acting. Sometimes I found it a little bit difficult because as Maomao and Shisui grew closer throughout the series, there were so many moments where I wanted to express a little more familiarity or just kind of fast-forward the progress of their relationship, but there were moments that I had to hold back, and there were also moments of unexpected opening up that she did throughout the series. And I think working with Aoi was a very comfortable experience. And through our characters, I know Shisui is more upbeat and Maomao is a little bit more connected, but it’s really interesting to see how such diverse and polar characters have connected inside the series.
Q: Yuki-san, what is your overall impression of Maomao’s relationship with Jinshi and how has it evolved over the course of the series?
Yuki-san: Maomao and her distance toward Jinshi haven’t changed a bit throughout the entire series. It’s Jinshi who is trying to close in on his own. With that said, going back to Maomao thinking like a cat, she’ll show kindness or affection to her owner or whoever throws her food when she’s hungry. So whenever there’s a benefit for her, she’ll be a little bit more nice. But with that said, I think there have been many times where Jinshi comes to her rescue and where Maomao comes to Jinshi’s rescue throughout all the crazy episodes that they’ve been through together. The most beautiful thing is, I think, with all of that, they somehow can reset back to being completely normal as they were.
Q: Seto-san, how do you approach especially emotional scenes or scenes that reveal things about Shisui’s past with the appropriate intensity?
Seto-san: I played Shisui for a long time within Season 2 until finally playing Loulan, or when Loulan’s true intentions came out. I think it shined a light on Shisui and Loulan’s final intentions in that moment, which was unclear throughout the first half of the series. And in Loulan’s perspective, I think it was important for me to portray that it was her plan all along, which was not apparent at first. And she is basically going about her life in the way it was destined, and she knew that this is what she had to accomplish in her lifestyle, and that there was no argument about it. That was set for her. So I think playing Loulan and making sure that she was portrayed in a way where she was playing a character, or that she was destined to go about things the way she had to, was something that I really paid attention to.
Q: Yuki-san, was there any difficulty or awkwardness when it came to thought / internal monologue heavy scenes?
Yuki-san: I think the most difficult episode that I ever encountered was Episode 7 of Season 2 [The Shrine of Choosing, Episode 31 overall]. I’m not sure what the English title is. But it was all monologue, all throughout. There are many different intonations between the different words. In Japanese, some words sound similar, but the accent is a bit different. I think within that certain episode, it was almost like a mental exercise and a rhythm game to memorize which tone went where and how to pronounce every single word. There are so many different colors that showed up. I think when she was doing her apothecary duties, there were a lot of colors that came up as well. There are a lot of things to memorize and making sure that it was thorough. It’s not so much about the emotions behind the words, but it’s more just getting it right and making sure all the technical terms and technical words were correct.
Q: For both of you, what’s a favorite scene of yours so far, either involving or not involving your character?
Yuki-san: So one episode in particular is when Maomao’s mentor, Luomen, comes back. He has this conversation with the doctor. Actually, that conversation between the two was completely ad-lib, so it was not scripted. I really enjoyed watching the banter back and forth going on there without having any kind of script in hand.
Seto-san: So there are so many to choose from, but I think my favorite would be Maomao and Xiaolan in Season 2, throughout the opening theme in last quarter of the second season [opening theme “Kusushiki”]. I think this in particular resonated with me because it was like a ‘protect Xiaolan at all costs’ kind of moment, and Shisui also appears. But there’s also conversations between viewers about, oh, Shisui maybe appeared because of this, or there’s a lot of directions that it could have gone that’s up to maybe the viewer’s imagination as well. So that’s a really fun thing, too. It has a lot of depth.
We’d like to thank Aoi Yuki and Asami Seto for taking the time to speak with us about The Apothecary Diaries. We’d also like to thank Crunchyroll for their invaluable assistance in coordinating this and many other interviews over the course of Anime Expo. You can stream both seasons of The Apothecary Diaries now on Crunchyroll. A sequel anime was announced after the conclusion of the Season 2 finale.
This interview was conducted by Jay Gibbs and Grant Wolfgramm, with questions contributed by Jay Gibbs.
All images via Crunchyroll.
©Hyuganatsu, Imagica Infos/“The Apothecary Diaries”Project
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