Ironically people who want to say it’s misogyny that makes fans elevate Jinshi in Apothecary Diaries beyond female characters do much the same from a sexist point of view of devaluing his character as a male.
I’ve said this before but while Maomao is the main character, she wouldn’t be able to do much of what she does without Jinshi. A fact she is well aware of and doesn’t begrudge. He introduced her to Gyokuyou which is how she became integral to the rear palace, she used his status on multiple occasions to help her grant access where she wouldn’t have been able to go otherwise and she even tells Lishu to ask him about her problem as she knows she cannot help directly without his assistance. He even helped her get back to the rear palace after she basically got herself fired by bringing her in as a maid and paying off her debt at the Verdigris House. Jinshi is the shadow behind Maomao that helps move her character through the story. People love to comment “they grow / propel each other” which I’m aware of and agree but this is about people’s dislike and devaluing of Jinshi in the narrative specifically. If he weren’t there Maomao’s story would feel incomplete.
As for other women in the series, they too benefit from Jinshi which again shows his permanence to the narrative vs their transience and less integral nature to the story as whole. Shisui for example, while important to the Shi clan plot, was only able to have impact at the final part of her story because of Jinshi’s kindness. He could’ve killed her when he discovered the gun was a fake, as she said overpowering her would’ve easy. Instead he listens to her, watches her whole performance play out and takes on the knowledge of the Shi clan and guilt of the previous Emperor for her. He promises the children will be safe and her sister and is the only one who seems to understand the meaning behind her dramatic death. Without him there would’ve liked been more bloodshed and she wouldn’t have had what little redemption she did manage at the end.
Gyokuyou is also a prominent female character who relies on Jinshi. In the rear palace she trusts him to protect her from the schemes of the other women and to care for her child. Afterwards when she is Empress she has to hope he will not unseat her own son in a succession bid. She’s also the one who puts much stress on him by putting pressure on Maomao to return to her service and expecting him to continually deny having her as a wife because of the discomfort it will cause the Empire. Without his continual denial of his own wishes while still fulfilling his own duties for the Empire, Gyokuyou would’ve been put into many difficult positions a long time ago but he has tried as much as he can to respect and protect even her no matter the political issues between their stations.
There are more female examples than this but my point here is that while Apothecary Diaries certainly does not have one-dimensional female characters, it does not have flat male characters either. So saying that just because Apothecary Diaries simply has more female characters means that Jinshi must be less relevant is underestimating just why he has been the central male figure for all of the light novels, features as Maomao’s love interest and basically holds the place as secondary main character.
His plot may not always take center stage but the difficulties of him being Crown Prince have been an undercurrent since novel 1, from his identity to now what position he’ll take in the future. Expanding arcs that even Maomao is involved in at the periphery play into what will happen with the Empire and the succession which Jinshi has been at the center of since the beginning.
People can dislike it, they can want to ship whatever is not canon but as a character himself, Jinshi is important and irreplaceable to the Apothecary Diaries world. You can like Jinshi and still appreciate the female characters while knowing that many of the female characters simply do not take up the of narrative space he does. It is not misogynistic to say so. However, to deny his place in the story as a male and elevate the women’s just because they are female regardless of the actual contribution of the character is sexist. You can enjoy both without saying that the women have to be better because they’re female. Because they’re not even on the same level in the narrative. Where Shisui appears for 4 novels out of 14 so far and even Gyokuou may appear for a few chapters and be a background figure overall, among other women, Jinshi is only behind Maomao herself in being integral to the driving narrative.
It’s not wrong for people to like and appreciate a character who is literally helping make the plot what it is, that is actually what they’re meant to do. The problem here is people who are unwilling to recognize that just because a character is male does not mean they cannot contribute to a plotline as much as a female character, have as much depth and be featured more than other female characters in the plot without it being any kind of hidden misogyny or meaning other than they enjoy the characters how they’re written.
For anyone who thinks a modern-day Maomao would smoke or be a backyard drug dealer, she would not, as quoted from Light Novel 5:
The product of the hemp plant could be used in small quantities as medicine, but smoking it on a daily basis could create an addiction, and wasn’t something Maomao would recommend.
Maomao isn’t interested in addictive substances or mind-altering drugs.
“Addictive substances are not to be trifled with. There’s no way to get the poison out of your system, and even if you want to quit, doing so is harder than getting out from under the covers on a cold winter morning.”
She has intense intellectual curiosity which can get her into trouble with her experiments but as Jinshi says “So there are toxins even you won’t touch.” And no I don’t think it has to do with whether the drug is illegal or not, it’s about medicinal properties. Even if Maomao was brought into the present it’s safe to assume she’d be more likely to be the woman hanging herbs in her kitchen and making nettle tea than growing hemp in her backyard.
