Also called “Looking Up at the Half-Moon”: a fine title that I should have used for one of my stories

This 6 episode drama OAV aspires to be, and should have been a quiet, believable short story about the struggles and joys of two hospital patients. The unsynthesized and unpretentious opening song (a wonderful song, by Nobuko) promises as much, and at its best, the show fulfilled that promise. But more often than not, it preferred soap opera histrionics and out-of-place humor to realistic character-driven action. I see a story that, in the hands of more skillful writers, could have become a genuinely affecting tale without being melodramatic–the way Honey and Clover was at its best. But the most I could feel in the final episode was “oh. It’s over. Wonderful.” And that, unfortunately, is pretty much a death blow for a show of this kind.
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