Spoilers to follow:
Theme: Expand your mind is my default guess?
Story: Hmm.... This feels like it would have been better as a story sans visuals, than one with. When we have visuals, I want to see these moments of anxiety. Therapy is very much telling, and I'm staring at people who at most approach or retreat from each other (and occasionally the scenery changes). We don't even get a visual of the sketch.
I feel like it was attempting to hide the twist, but the twist is what guides the convo. I don't even know if he was even a therapist at the end, or if he just knew everything his partner had been through from years of being a partner as was instead some sort of other scientist instead to be chosen to work on this. I think more overt acknowledgements of the framing, even if they point to the twist, would have done more to carry the story along rather than just getting what felt pretty impersonal therapy session barring the overt hints that our "present" character knew the past one.
When one of the characters knows exactly everything about the other one, it kind of lessens the impact of the conversation (because what change will happen for this illusion?), even more so when the other is just like, an accurate capture of the personality at the time. There was no change, in the narrative. It was just a lens to look at to say "I regret not being able to be there for you", which is the real story. It tries to hint at it within, but then it kind of just amounts to a more-interactive vignette of looking at like an old vhs tape or photo or something like that, for me.
It felt pretty intuitive that they were in some relationship at some point, although I couldn't tell what the purpose of this was, in a way that kind of reflected what you said in-universe was a use case-- to connect with someone gone or if this was something else entirely.
Presentation: Nice custom sprites, the music was apt, it was nice how the scenery was changing to reflect the story, but we didn't see the sketch, we didn't see anything that actually happened to our patient. We just had a sorta one-room show. While I liked the Solarpunk seeming inspiration in the aesthetic, the sterile office room felt at odds--I would have expected something outdoors, or at least, more hybrid in space. I think to the Robot & Monk books, where the titular "Monk" does "therapy" via tea ceremonies, which are often outdoors.
Creativity: I enjoyed the premise of a realistic simulation based on lots of data that could be engaged with in a sentient manner (ostensibly for the purpose of therapy).
Overall thoughts: The execution felt off, for me. Because I didn't see any of these items (and sure, that can happen in these sorts of narratives, but we were in a space where there wasn't even a leadup to the disclosure, it's where they were expected to be shared in that manner), the emotionality behind them didn't quite carry as much. It felt a bit constructed (ha). For all that the narrative admits that "it won't take a (global? or whatever word was used as a prefix here) second", I think we could have had difficulty going into details with the therapist and then we see him at the "next" session (which would support the illusion of the life of the patient), having had another attack and thereby being a bit more receptive to talking about the situation. For someone that was forced into therapy by their mother, he was immediately ready to disclose (which I could say would be attributed to the subconscious similarities between the past and present wolves he crushed on, except the past wolf wasn't even properly in the picture yet).
I think the framing has potential, but where the focus was presented lost me, especially when I've read other visual works (manga/manhua) oriented around therapy/psychology/psychiatry. The weight of doing the therapy session (with someone who won't be able to be receptive to it, given they're a memory ghost) and the "twist" that it was the past husband were at odds with what felt like the agenda of the narrative, to me.
I do however, appreciate the supportive focus of the work, and the attempt to perhaps help those who may not recognize these signs in their own lives.