Three POP Designs That Double as Bookmarks
The giveaway is a tanazashi clear POP (棚差しクリアPOP), the clear shelf-tab card that Japanese bookstores wedge between volumes to flag a series, shrunk to fit a home bookshelf. Three designs are on offer: Maomao, Jinshi, and a Maomao-and-Jinshi pairing, each one studded with scenes from Minoji Kurata's manga that show off the pair's expressions. Snip the tab off and the card becomes a clear bookmark, or a plain clear card. Shogakukan says the designs are available nowhere else.
The fine print is all in the PR TIMES release. Which titles qualify for the freebie differs from store to store. Supplies are limited, and each store's fair ends once its stock runs out. Some regions also start later than October 1. The participating-store list and the qualifying products are posted on the series' official Sunday GX page, and Shogakukan asks shoppers to check at the counter how their store is handing out the POPs before buying anything.
51 Chapters Free for Exactly 72 Hours
A second campaign runs alongside the fair. Sunday Webry, Shogakukan's manga app and website, unlocks the first 51 chapters of the series from midnight on Friday, October 2 through 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, October 4, Japan time. Shogakukan pitches the window as a recap of everything the anime has covered through the end of season 2. That is where the third season picks up the same Friday night.
Which Apothecary Diaries Manga This Is
This is worth spelling out, because two of them have been running at once since 2017. The fair covers Kurata's version, The Apothecary Diaries: Maomao's Notes on the Inner Palace, serialized in Shogakukan's Monthly Sunday GX (on sale around the 19th of each month). It is up to 22 volumes, ¥770 each, in B6 format. It adapts Natsu Hyuga's light novels, with character design concepts by Touko Shino. The other adaptation, drawn by Nekokurage, runs in Square Enix's Monthly Big Gangan and has been available in English for years.
Both work from the same premise. Maomao, an apothecary's daughter sold into service in the emperor's inner palace, uses her knowledge of medicine and poisons to unpick the deaths and intrigues around her. In the anime, Aoi Yūki and Takeo Ōtsuka voice Maomao and Jinshi, the two characters whose faces are on the fair's POPs.
Looking Ahead
Season 3 premieres Friday, October 2, 2026 at 11 p.m. JST in Nippon TV's Friday anime block, with OLM animating on its own this time. Crunchyroll holds the series worldwide outside Asia and carries the new season, while Netflix has it in select regions. The season is scheduled for 24 episodes split into two 12-episode cours, with the second half arriving in spring 2027. Yorushika performs the opening theme and Eve wrote the ending theme "AIYOU," both previewed in the second promotional video on the TOHO animation channel.
The film follows on December 11, 2026 in Japanese theaters. Its Japanese title is 劇場版 薬屋のひとりごと 亡妃の秘宝, which Anime News Network renders as The Apothecary Diaries: The Deceased Empress' Treasure, and it uses a new story written by Hyuga rather than an existing novel arc. No international release date has been announced for it.
For readers outside Japan, the more useful date is October 20, 2026: Viz Media publishes volume 1 of Kurata's manga in English that day, in print at $22.99 and digitally, the first official English edition of this particular adaptation. The fair is Japan-only and in-store, so the POPs are a domestic bookstore pickup.