Newest Anime: Full Moon wo Sagashite

From left to right:
Top: Johnathan,  Izumi, Madoka, Eichi,
Wakaouji, Oshige
Main Characters: Meroko, Mitzuki/Full Moon,
Takuto

Hey readers! It's been a while, hasn't it? I blame Thanksgiving break (haven't had internet for an entire week). But anyway, since I finished my last anime (which I believe was Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne) I've decided to take the safe road and stay with a manga artist I was familiar with. Her name? Tanemura Arina, author of the aformentioned anime/manga, and my current series, "Full Moon wo Sagashite" or "Searching for the Full Moon" 
 She has a pureness to her stories, even though they usually deal with subjects less thanhappy or pure. I think her characters are always someone you can relate to, or at least symathize with. What I love about them is their ever trusting nature, their honesty, their strenght even through serious heartbreak. Maron and Mitsuki are perfect examples. Both have lost someone they love yet they keep on pushing through, putting their best face forward. However, they're determination to stay strong happens to be one of their worst traits. I suppose you could call her main characters...masochistic. Putting themself in harms way in order to make someone else happy or proud.
"Full Moon wo Sagashite" is practically based off the concept, "I'll do it for him!" Full Moon is about a 12-year-old girl named Mitsuki, who suffers from throat cancer. Both of her parents died in an accident and she lives with her prude of a grandmother. One day she is visited by two shinigami in blue and bright red costumes, one with cat ears and the other with bunny ears. May I say that they put shame to the ones in Death Note, but I must keep in mind that it is a children's show. Well, long story short, when Mitsuki finds out she won't live more than a year, she sneaks out and tries to go to a singing audition. We then learn that she promised the love of her life, Eichi, that she'll be closer to her dreams the next time they meet. Feeling sorry for her, the male shinigami, Takuto, turns her into a 16-year-old so she can enter the audition. The rest of the anime/manga is about her career, her love, her drive to meet him again and be noticed by him through singing, and the struggles she faces in coping with her emotions.
All in all, this is a heart-touching, heart-warming series. It's almost like Fruits Basket, in the sense that you both experience extreme warmth and compassion mixed with sorrow and tears. I would recommend that you both watch and read this series. The manga provides better story lines, more twists, more heartfelt moments, whereas the anime allows you to hear one of the many beautiful songs the series has to offer.
P.S: the songs will get stuck in your head, and since it's in Japanese it'll sound something like, "doushite, unetaka waka oujiiiii, humenooo..nnnnaaa oh ahh naahh" ;)