Rin Homura AKA "The Chief" has come face to face with Maomao in a new set of illustrations for Ryuhei Tamura's COSMOS and the manga adaptation of The Apothecary Diaries, drawn by their respective artists.

The illustrations are being used for a series of special postcards included with purchases of collected volumes for COSMOS and The Apothecary Diaries: Maomao's Notes from the Inner Palace, a manga adaptation of Hyuganatsu's original novels that began in 2017. A total of four different variations are available to collect, with two drawn by Ryuhei Tamura and two by Minoji Kurata. Rough sketches by Tamura were shared via the COSMOS X account.

Given that very little unites COSMOS and The Apothecary Diaries on a conceptual level, the obvious question is why this collaboration is happening in the first place. Of course, there could have been a request from either creators, but the boring answer is that both series are serialized by Shogakukan in Monthly Sunday GX. Not only does this make copyright issues easier, there lies a certain amount of synergy in using the popularity of both series at once to boost sales.

Volume 22 of The Apothecary Diaries: Maomao's Notes from the Inner Palace and volume 9 of COSMOS are out now in Japan. Don't forget to check out the Sunday GX website to see which stores are distributing the postcards.