Court is back in session for Maomao, as Jinshi gives our heroine her old job back to keep her away from the grasp of her scheming father. Which is the least he could do when she saved his life. But, while the two of them hate each other, Maomao and her father have a thing or two in common…
As Maomao recovers from her injuries, we get a delightful parlour scene, in mystery parlance, where Maomao breaks down the various pieces that came together to make the plot on Jinshi’s life.
It’s a solid opener, not least of which because it quickly escalates to a frenzy of corpse desecration and makes a very quick steal from the real-life basis for zombies (bless this book for showing its work). Vintage Maomao all around.
With her move back to the court, Maomao gets more involved with the politics than she has been for a bit. Which I can honestly take or leave, so these parts do drag a bit more than the norm. As usual, we don’t have much to catch us up on who is who either, so some of these consorts I should recognize… not so much.
And, as is also usual, the character work just saves the manga every time it flags at all. Maomao can’t help solving problems and that even extends to her being nice to the useless physician we haven’t seen for a bit.
(I also love the way the manga associates all these characters with animals of one type or another and it probably isn’t a coincidence that I like Maomao so much and she’s frequently depicted as a cat.)
With her taking the fight to her father after he sets Jinshi on an impossible task that Maomao has to achieve, we get to see that Maomao is truly the best of both her father and her mother, at least from the little hints we get of the latter.
The confrontation between father and daughter might be basic, but it’s still very cleverly done, much like the bulk of this story. It also takes advantage of Maomao’s father knowing how she is, but her thinking to take advantage of that.
With his temperament to not see people as anything but playing pieces, literally, we get enough to explain why dear old dad is the way he is. It’s not quite worth our sympathy, but it makes it more interesting than I thought, which I liked. It doesn’t hurt that, as a visual conceit, it drives home what he considers worthy in a unique way.
Otherwise, it’s the same old same, but when it’s this good and this much fun then it’s hard to complain too much. The near-nude sequence in this one is a howler from start to finish and gets a great follow-up. It’s one of the funniest things the series has done yet, poor Jinshi.
I’m also starting to really love the lopsided love affair between Jinshi and Maomao. The latter has no interest in a eunuch (or somebody who seems like one), but we know that Jinshi isn’t actually one and his fondness for Maomao comes through in some fun, subtle ways.
5 stars - probably a 4, but that’s just how it goes with this series. Plus, I really appreciated the way it’s going about depicting Maomao’s origins. She’ll never be anything less than a truly brilliant character and if Frieren did not exist this would probably cinch my favourite series spot.