I am a sucker for shojo series and over the last few years we haven’t had a lot of solid anime that portrayed romance well.  Series that tend to sideline passionate emotions for overly used fan service sequences that have little to no relevance to the plot.

Now here’s a show I haven’t talked about in quite some time, Soredemo Sekai wa Utsukushii. I’m still trying to backlog a lot of series I had neglected from the spring season due to real life activities, so with a little bit of time on my hands I figured I can at least give some attention to this show as well as Mushishi.

Here is where Nike’s finally getting acclimated into her duties as a princess and traveling throughout the town to understand the people of this nation just a bit more.  The introduction of Prince Bard here was very nicely woven in– he’s a pretty boy with women fawning all over him and as we know how strong Livius’ is at opening up to people, this was a nice contrast between the two of them.   They’ve set this guy up as the next villain in line for this show and it was in a very gentle way by having them competing against each other and it looks like for Nike’s affections. It’s a shame not more episodes could have had the pacing this one achieved, because the amount of buildup the writers used in developing Bard was fantastic.  He’s this womanizer who yearns for Nike and he will do anything to  get what he wants, even seducing her. This just added to the cliffhanger here– a complete reversal in not just Livius character, but the overall dynamic between the two main lovers of this show!

OVERALL IMPRESSION: 9/10

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