The Apothecary Diaries season 3 posted a creditless opening on premiere day. Yorushika performs "Kumo o Nuke Kazashimo e Watashi dake," translated as "Beyond the Clouds, Only Me Downwind." A creditless ending followed the same morning, Eve's "AIYOU." Episode 1 is on Crunchyroll from 8:00 a.m. PT, October 2, in the same window as the Japanese broadcast.
n-buna wrote, composed, and arranged the opening. Ayaka Nakata storyboarded and directed the sequence. Yukiko Nakatani is chief animation director. Kaori Saito of Wish is animation director on the opening. That is a tighter credit than most creditless posts bother to print, and it matches the season's wider desk: Nakatani is also the show's character designer.
Eve wrote and composed "AIYOU." Numa arranged it. The single went up on music services at midnight October 2. It is Eve's first release on Echoes, the Sony Music label that also has YOASOBI and Tatsuya Kitani. The September 25 trailer was where the ending was named. The creditless cut is the version without the staff crawl.
OLM is animating season 3. Akinori Fudesaka directs, with Wataru Nakagawa as assistant director. Norihiro Naganuma is on series composition. Scripts are Yuko Kakkihara, Misuzu Chiba, and Hitomi Ogawa. Music is Satoru Kosaki, Kevin Penkin, and Arisa Okehazama. Anime Corner noted that TOHO animation STUDIO is not on the season 3 staff list. OLM is the name that is.
The cour is split. This half starts October 2. The second cour is scheduled for April 2027. In between, a film with an original story by Natsu Hyuga premieres in Japan on December 11. Hyuga writes the light novels. Touko Shino illustrates them. Shufunotomo publishes them under Hero Bunko. The anime has been the rare adaptation that kept the palace-mystery pace instead of flattening it into a romance with poison as set dressing.
Maomao is the apothecary who got pulled out of the pleasure district and into the rear palace because she could not leave a medical puzzle alone. Jinshi, the official who is too pretty for the job he is pretending to have, is still the one who keeps promoting her into worse rooms. Crunchyroll's season copy is the short version: she solves medical mysteries, he notices. The September trailer pushed the court plot further. The reigning emperor talks about letting Yue start choosing a consort. Jinshi gets a line that coverage described as determination mixed with melancholy. Reina Ueda joins as Bai Niangniang, a pale nymph. Returning voices include Aoi Yuki as Maomao, Takeo Otsuka as Jinshi, Katsuyuki Konishi as Gaoshun, and Sumi Shimamoto as narrator.
Crunchyroll's simulcast territories for the October 2 drop cover the Americas, Europe, Africa, Oceania, the Middle East, the CIS, and the Indian subcontinent. Sub is the day-one track. The guide page went up the same morning as the creditless videos, which is the usual stack: premiere time, then the opening without credits so people can clip it.
Yorushika on the open and Eve on the close is a loud music pairing for a show that usually lets the palace do the talking. n-buna's song title points downwind, past the clouds, one person left in the frame. Eve's single landed the same hour the episode did. The December film is the other date on the calendar, an original Hyuga story sitting between the two cours.
If you are starting season 3 today, the creditless opening is the two-minute version of what the cour is selling before Maomao gets a case. If you are waiting on the film, December 11 is the next stamp that is not a weekly episode.
Are you watching season 3 week to week, or holding until the December film is closer? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.