Hanbun no Tsuki ga Noboru Sora (Gazing up at the half moon) – episode 1

February 19, 2006 on 6:12 pm | In HanTsuki | 3 Comments

“Akiko-san, the girl and Akutagawa Ryuunosuke”

Blandly designed and disturbingly blurry, HanTsuki is still a quite compelling title about two seventeen year olds who meet while they’re both hospitalised.

Ezawa Yuuichi is in hospital, recovering from a form of viral hepatitis. Due to not feeling, but still being, ill, Yuuichi wanders the streets of his small town at night. Akiko, the head nurse at the hospital tells him that she will be less severe with him if he agrees to befriend Akiba Rika, a girl who has recently been admitted to the wing designated for critically ill patients.
Yuuichi meets Rika with a reason so contrived that it invokes her rage. To make it up to her, Yuuichi agrees to “obey” her, a move which reveals that Rika can be unnecessarily cruel if she feels like it. It turns out that Rika has the same illness that killed her father ten years previously, and her anger comes from being unprepared to die.
Through this revelation, much is forgiven; Yuuichi is able to sympathise with Rika and Rika decides to be signficantly nicer in future.

That was a lot of exposition; basically this is an odd duck of a series, featuring only six episodes and a distinctly abusive “comedy” nurse. It’s the first time I’ve seen a perverted old man character die and leave his collection of pornography to the protagonist of a series. Even more amazingly, that’s going to be a plot point in the next episode.

The characterisation of Rika initially turned me right off; I have grown a strong aversion over the last few years to women who are unnecessarily violent and cruel. However, the success of this episode was breaking through that layer of anger and frustration to reveal that Rika is a nice enough girl who, in fact, has every reason to feel as she does. In time she is learning not to take something that no one can help out on other people. Takahashi Mikako is becoming one of my own personal poster girls of the modern era.

Yuuichi himself initially feels like a non-character, only given personality by his wandering nature. His coughs, however, and his desire to make a good impression, suggest that there is something deeper than a general niceness to his character.

On top of all of this – the moe magazines, the orange throwing – there’s an almost hilarious and definitely bizarre sentai homage. I think I could grow to like it here, especially with such a rockin’ ED!

3 Comments

  1. I don’t know how nurses in Japan get their qualifications but there must be something wrong with the educational system there if it leads to graduates like Akiko san .She even smokes for crying out loud!!

    Comment by Mohammad — February 20, 2006 #

  2. its nice

    Comment by lantis — February 21, 2006 #

  3. Is Rika going to die at the end? Wouldn’t that be awful?

    Comment by windows — February 22, 2006 #

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