gaylord.syble - 2016-04-19 05:34:27

it was cute. I had trouble feeling the romance between the main characters. I did enjoy watching it

hilbert.hodkiewicz - 2015-11-07 00:11:34

This anime is extremely cute! I love almost everything about it, but I do hate that they made her song (the one she sings when she calls the rain) an English song. They should have kept it to the manga. The characters are great and it is so much fun watching them fall in love. I can't wait for season 2 to come out.

rahsaan30 - 2015-08-17 18:31:44

The caracters make me laugh a countless times and the songs carried me somewhere else. It is a good anime if you want to spend good times.

judson40 - 2015-01-19 01:14:41

[Old review is old.]

Yes, it is indeed. Despite the more undesirable aspects that plague society and mother earth today, it’s very easy to see many natural wonders, or humanity’s best, and throughout the world that can be considered to be very lovely. Lots of anime have taken note of this and, in turn, bring us many pieces that give these aspects priority focus in their production and writing. They show us time and time again that the world is still beautiful.

Unfortunately, Studio Pierrot, your incredibly boring show was obstructing my viewpoint.

The story of The World Is Still Beautiful (or in it’s own words, Still World Is Beautiful, taking notes from Diamond Is Not Crash) revolves around a princess named Nike, who leaves her home to travel to a city without rain. There, she uses her magical powers to bring rain using an Engrish pop song, and to meet the prince of the area to which she’s engaged. The anime basically follows Nike as she deals with the (much) younger prince, and how she handles her newfound job of rainmaker for the town.

Nike is your typical good protagonist who can easily get annoyed,inspired, or confident whenever required. Even though she goes through many problems, she stays the same bland person throughout the show, completely unaffected. She isn’t very entertaining or interesting, and when the time comes for her to bring the rain and show off the good that it does, she isn’t moving or inspiring. The prince starts out very unlikable, acting annoying to the lead and his servants, doing questionable things to the city, and it’s all made worse when he’s a little kid. A little kid is in charge of the kingdom, gets away with being horrible to every other character, and pretty much forces a grown woman to marry and sleep with him. When the show’s nearly done the prince is still pulling jerk moves, but Nike is written to gain feelings for him despite the impossibility to stomach their reasoning as to why. Of course it’s because she sees the good aspects in his heart, but it’s hard to be convinced when he’s a constant ass. Their chemistry and dynamic is nonexistent, and more significant development is needed for us to buy these simpleton characters growing to like eachother.

More cutout tropes don’t do anything for me after the protagonists fail completely. The loyal butler, the exaggerated maids, the annoying dumbass bad guys, and the tsundere little sister bring nothing new or entertaining to the table. Anime exhausts these shallow, unpleasant personalities so regularly that they result in an immediate turnoff. They communicate that the writers are lazy and don’t care about the story, so why should I? I couldn’t find merit in them if my life depended on it, so into the endless landfill of bland side characters they go.

Onto a more serious matter: How exactly does this show decide to portray beauty? A normal episode or small arc has a minor problem in town. Examples include the need for rain, or the bad guys are causing trouble, or the prince being a dick. The result is Nike singing the pop song which somehow fixes everything. It was understandable enough with the whole lack of rain thing, despite being a mediocre spectacle, but the resolutions after that point made no sense whatsoever. The show continues, and Nike is still putting up with an undeveloped mean little kid. Suddenly during the finale, important side characters undergo complete personality reversals to force a silly dramatic climax, but even that lazy writing trick doesn’t give us proper impactful development or some wondrous display of magnificence. The show ends up in the same situation it’s been in since the start, and leaves us on a note where, again, nothing too major feels changed.

So what exactly is the message, because I’m pretty confused here. Is beauty supposed to change those people who suck? Why are these people still sucking when they’ve clearly experienced beauty or have been exposed to better aspects of life? Even though you show beauty to people who suck, that might get them to shut up for a bit but they’ll continue to suck? If we put up with those people who never seem to stop sucking then beauty will be more noticeable?

Ditching characters with depth for one dimensional jerks is an inherent failure to relay the message of resilience in a world with bad things. Nike and the rest of the cast are first and foremost products of bad scripting that doesn’t go beyond tropes and thin conflicts. The narrow-minded conclusion they conjure up shows that the writers do not care to work towards a proper resolution to the nonsensical mess they ended up with. So the messages from this setup that we ought to be getting at, being how beauty as a concept enriches life and inspires progress for the best in humanity, are replaced with an unequivocally shallow script that just couldn’t be bothered.

Animation was done by Studio Pierrot, way below the average marks for its time and that means some less than impressive visuals whenever the show wants show its various peaks of sentiment. Now some people might argue that money may have played a big factor in animation quality, so I oughtn’t be too harsh on it. But I can bring up the fact that the artists had a chance to design an entire town that has had no experience of rain at all, and the final product is no different than a normal town from a poor background production team that just wants to get a project done and over with. Some say they had no money (which is a lie, they were just saving it for Tokyo Ghoul), but I say they had no passion.

The usual complimentary background music which ends up being exceedingly stale combined with an effortless tacked on OP and ED don’t really put this OST on high grounds. But instead of stopping there and at least being passable, the anime decides to make the lead sing the aforementioned awful pop song with laughable Engrish. When I have to listen to the same song every time the boring main character does her rain dance, you have a guaranteed moment in each episode that kills the already weak possibility of enjoyment. To add onto that, the voice acting in this thing is ungodly terrible. The relatively young butler sounds 60, the preteen prince sound like he’s 20, and a grandmother character has a singing voice like a young idol which doesn’t help that her song serves as the climax.

The World Is Still Beautiful barely has any idea what to do in every single department. Much like other shows that have no direction whatsoever, any little scene that miraculously winds up working doesn’t last long, and they certainly don’t save the show in the long run. This is one that I can tell anybody to add to their skip lists.

The World Is Still Beautiful (2014):
2.8/10

jwuckert - 2014-06-28 21:47:53

A very enjoyable anime if you want something light on story. The sound in this anime has very little variety but makes up for it with beautiful songs that it does have. The ending isn't something that you would put in a top 10 but is enough for what you have watched. Something about it thought gave me satisfaction when watching it though so I would recommend this to someone that just want to lay back and watch something that has a little bit of story but is still enjoyably.    

little.angelina - 2014-06-09 05:11:34

Let me tell you about the anime that started very well and ended up as a caricature of the worst things in anime.Basic story is nice and all. You get a pushy girl and a moody king's daily life issues etc... Lots of sobs about how he is sad etc...But then at episode 7, shit gets real.His uncle comes to town. He flirts with King's wife. He's found with her in his bed and guess what?The king is depicted as the bad guy for overreacting...Then ensues the traditionally cliché phase where the uncle isn't bad.The girl becomes tsundere and is suprised king is mad.We learn that the uncle also wanted to flirt with the king's "mom" (dead now).And the king still ends up depicted as the bad person here.This wasn't funny nor enjoyable at the end...Still good basic story, art and sound...Spoiled everything.

wisozk.kay - 2014-04-30 17:46:17

Well from the first four episodes Iv'e seen, I really have enjoyed them thus far. I like the plot and characters so far and I'm itching for more!