The World is Still Beautiful

それでも世界は美しい (Soredemo Sekai wa Utsukushii)

7.6(152,729)

MAL Score

Ranked #1891

Popularity #826

Adventure
Fantasy
Romance

Episodes: 12
Duration: 22 min per ep
Aired: Apr 6, 2014 to Jun 29, 2014
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

In the Sun Kingdom, clear skies are a way of life and rain is little more than an unheard-of notion. Far away in the Rain Dukedom, the world is turned on its head: its people can call down rainfall with their voices, making water and weather a part of daily living.

After ascending the throne, Livius Orvinus Ifrikia rapidly extends the Sun Kingdom’s reach across the world. When word of the Rain Dukedom’s gift reaches him, he seeks a political marriage with Princess Nike Remercier. Stories circulating beyond his borders paint Livius as a merciless tyrant, leaving Nike braced for a grim fate—until meeting her intended reveals a side of the young king that doesn’t match the rumors at all.

Otaku Consensus

The World is Still Beautiful earns its reputation as a dependable shoujo fantasy romance by pairing Hajime Kamegaki’s steady, unfussy direction with a compact 12-episode pace and Kousuke Yamashita’s music-forward handling of the series’ weather magic. Critics and fans consistently single out the central romance as sweet, emotionally direct, and easier to recommend than many game-derived royal romances, while the most persistent reservation is the age-gap and arranged-marriage framing, which can make the feel-good tone harder to accept for some viewers.

Why You Should Watch

Watch The World is Still Beautiful if you want shoujo romance with royal pressure, emotional sincerity, and actual momentum, without the harem mechanics or route-based structure of a dating-game adaptation. It scratches a similar itch to Snow White with the Red Hair for courtly romance and Yona of the Dawn for fantasy royalty, but its appeal is more intimate: two strong personalities learning how affection survives politics, public image, and unequal power. The 12-episode run keeps the melodrama concentrated, the comedy frequent, and the romantic beats unusually direct for TV shoujo. It is best for viewers who like their fantasy romance earnest, musical, and character-led rather than lore-heavy or battle-driven.

Key Characters

N
Nike Remercier
Nike stands out as a shoujo heroine whose power is tied to performance, giving the romance a rare mix of emotional candor, comedy, and literal voice-driven spectacle.
L
Livius Orvinus Ifrikia
Livius is the source of both the show’s appeal and controversy: a young ruler written with enough vulnerability to complicate his tyrant image, but tied to an age-gap marriage premise that viewers often debate.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
Studio Pierrot produced the anime as a single-cour, 12-episode adaptation, which gives it a tighter romantic throughline than longer fantasy shoujo that spend more time on travel or faction-building.
2
Kousuke Yamashita’s music is unusually central to the concept because the series’ supernatural element is activated through singing, making the soundtrack part of the storytelling rather than just background atmosphere.
3
The adaptation is built around shoujo conventions without coming from a dating-game template, a distinction noted by reviewers who praised it as a solid girls’ anime with a more focused romantic spine.
4
Shinzou Fujita handled series composition and personally scripted episodes 1-3, 6, and 9-12, giving the beginning and final stretch a notable degree of writing continuity.
5
AniList’s tag distribution strongly reflects the show’s identity: Female Protagonist at 93%, Shoujo at 90%, Super Power and Marriage at 79%, and Age Gap at 76%, which neatly captures both its hook and its biggest point of contention.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: The anime is based on Dai Shiina’s original manga and aired in Spring 2014, running from April 6 to June 29 for 12 episodes.
Fun fact 2: Hajime Kamegaki directed the series at Studio Pierrot, with Ichirou Uno on character design and Kazuko Hayakawa credited for prop design.
Fun fact 3: The sound side had two credited sound directors, Keiko Urakami and Yasuyuki Urakami, a fitting production detail for a romance where voice and weather are dramatically linked.
Fun fact 4: Its audience reception is notably durable for a one-cour shoujo fantasy: MAL lists it at 7.57 from 152,729 votes with a popularity rank of #826, while AniList records a 73/100 score and 1,237 favourites.
Fun fact 5: Review coverage repeatedly describes it as a sweet, pure, feel-good romance with comedy, action, and emotion, while also acknowledging that the age-gap and political-marriage setup is the element most likely to divide modern viewers.