it’s basically a sub genre of the story, the actual story revolves around maomao and her job as an apothecary. there’s actually a pretty decent amount of romance in here regarding other characters and even subtle hints between the main characters but it’s not the main focus.
It's very slow burn, it's mostly focused on mystery within (and outside?) the imperial palace
The romance is a tertiary subplot
Sorry, I'll go on a quite nerd ramble but Apothecary diaries is never a shoujo since it wasnt published on the shoujo magazines in Japan. It's seinen through and through. Japan uses shounen, shoujo, seinen, josei as a demographics category not a genre type of thing. Basically, it's not marketed for teens but rather to young adult = seinen, josei. There are also other demographic category like kodomo( basically children shows) or Yuri and Yaoi, that are not really the most popular like the first four.
I know this from the popular anime but haven't watched it, does this have actual romance? The tags doesn't have shoujo or romance but the series seems popular in shoujo genre can anyone enlighten me.....