The character dynamic between the doctor and the assistant get really stale, and the character with the "disease of the week" really don't have much of a unique personality. There's a clear understanding by the doctor as to why they are afflicted with the disease. Basically, the afflicted person always has this one large mental problem with their personal lives that they have to solve and Ramune essentially gives them the push and resolve to do so. The problem I have with this format is that the "problem" is so obvious and there isn't much of any analysis into a person's psyche. It's just, someone's doing something wrong, and their mysterious disease gives them a hint as to what they're doing wrong, and they have to resolve this issue before it gets out of hand.
I wish that each case was more complicated, and instead of one case per episode, to build up a case, why not have 2-3 episodes dedicated to one disease so that we can actually have a more in depth analysis on any given person? Instead, we're given just enough information about any given patient and have them go through the cycle of gathering the resolve to fix their own situation, which of course, is also quite formulaic.
It's not a particularly "dark" show as far as I'm aware, as there's only good resolutions for the most part. It would be much more satisfying and give a more layer of mysteriousness so that the conclusion isn't always a peaceful resolution. I can't for the life of me remember the name the manga this was, but I read a very similar episodic manga, where people were given supernatural items with drawbacks, just like in this show. However, in that manga, the ending wasn't always good for the people receiving the item. Rather, it was dependent on their moral scale and decisions as to degree of the end result. If they chose bad decisions, they could die. Other times, they chose correctly, and nothing happened to them.
I'm not saying that this show has to adopt my suggestion, but there definitely has to be something that gives it the "oomph" that it unfortunately lacks for me to consider watching this particular episodic anime.
