Fantasy is often a romanticized genre. I would say that, more than other genres that go beyond the world we know, stories that delve into period-esque worlds with magic and adventure tend to be ones where you also get idealized love stories. I’m not sure why this is, but I do think that you expect fantasy romance plots to be more sweeping and melodramatic than, say, science fiction. Very rarely do period matters like arranged marriages or unions for the good of the nation rather than ‘true’ love come into play.
The World is Still Beautiful, though,
thumbs its nose at the idea that this is what is or must be done, to
an extent trying to do for affairs of state and political marriage
what Spice and Wolf would do for economics, making a topic that would
be conventionally found dry and making it central and interesting
through clever storytelling and good emotions
As such, we open with the knowledge
that the Sun Kingdom has, over the last few years and by the
direction of Sun King Livius, largely become the hegemon of the known
world. The Principality of Rain begins as one of the few (perhaps
the last) independent power remaining, and that due in large part to
being distant and small, leaving them little realistic ability to
resist any demands the Sun Kingdom might make. And, what do you
know, the Sun King himself has a demand: the hand in marriage of one
of (“the most beautiful” according to the request) the four
princesses of the land. The sisters are less distraught by this than
one might expect, and hold a game of rock-paper-scissors between each
other to decide who will go. The loser is the youngest of the four,
princess Nike, who while disappointed isn’t exactly displeased to see
the wider world.
This is not, I want to stress,
indicative of the tone of the show in general. The World is Still
Beautiful is, generally, a little on the lighter and softer side, but
it’s not generally silly, so it’s kind of an… interesting choice to
have the inciting incident be so goofy on the Principality of Rain
side.
It’s worth noting that the names of
these kingdoms are not just for show. Supposedly, in the heart of
the Sun Kingdom, no cloud ever darkens the sky and it never rains.
It’s depicted as a land of gorgeous summery fields more than Arrakis,
but we can just sort of let that slide. The Principality of Rain,
however, goes a little farther. Not only is its weather the
opposite, with heavy clouds and frequent precipitation, but the royal
family possesses the ability to control weather and summon rain with
their voices. This control is pretty intense; in addition to
summoning rain, we see Nike call up wind to forcibly push a sailing
ship around like it has a motor on it (quite impressive scale) and,
with a whisper, use blades of air to cut through steel (indicating
fairly amazing force and control on the micro scale as well). If the
show were more concerned with action and conflict, I’d dare say that
Nike would be quite an overpowered lead, especially since her
abilities are basically unique in-setting: we never see any magic
other than the Rain Principality Royal Family’s power… which does
explain why the mighty conquering Sun King is willing to have them as
a vassal with maintained rights to self-rule for the price of one of
their own.
Nike has a rough introduction to the
Sun Kingdom. Arriving ahead of time and unannounced, she goes
incognito… first finding that she’s dirt poor because of the
exchange rates between the Sun Kingdom and Principality of Rain
currencies and then getting robbed of her luggage, before receiving
some pleasant care from a local peasant family, who go a long way
towards proving that it’s not all rotten eggs. After dealing with
the thieves (who upgraded briefly and ineffectually to kidnappers,
snagging the daughter of the peasant family mistaking her for the
wanted Rain princess) via that actually badass wind magic, she
finally makes her way to the capitol to finally meet Livius.
Livius, who took over the world, turns
out to be a kid.
This is an… oddity. Livius is not
one of those anime characters who just looks like he’s in grade
school despite being a thousand years old, he is actually young. How
young is something of a question, and how young you think he is will
probably inform some of how you feel about the series. As far as I
was able to tell, canon is also hazy on the matter. We know he’s
been king for three years but both eleven and fifteen are given for
his age. These are… massively different in terms of the
storytelling, especially considering that Nike is somewhere in the
16-18 range herself. Even the largest of those age gaps (7 years)
wouldn’t be weird for adult nobles, but when the younger would be 11?
Yeah, power dynamics or no that would feel kind of skeevy. At least
the show does do a good job managing emotions so you never feel like
Nike and Livius’s budding relationship is wildly inappropriate while
you’re watching, it’s only ever when you get up and think about it.
They play off each other more like there’s the 1-2 year gap and just
a whole lot of growth spurt between them.
I find him being 15 and a late bloomer
a little more realistic. It’s still hard to see a 12-year-old (at
his ascension) taking over the world, or even being allowed the crown
without a regency, but it’s a little more believable than a third
grader doing it. What’s more, Livius feels a good deal older than he
is (however old he is). He’s bitter and jaded, unable to see much
beauty in the world and seemingly fully aware of adult matters in
every sense, the complexity of state and the interactions between men
and women.
The counterpoint is that Livius looks to be more on the younger end. He’s ruthless, powerful, cunning, aware, and experienced but he’s drawn like Xiaolang Li from Cardcaptor Sakura or other grade school kids in anime, so it also makes sense to see him as 11, with all the troubling implications that come with that. Given that there’s not a good answer given, you’re left with the dissonance between how Livius is written (like an adult) and how he’d drawn (like a child), and while that didn’t end up messing with me too much, it’s easy to see how this could completely tilt any given viewer.
In any case, Nike’s first meeting with
Livius doesn’t end well. He treats her more as a curiosity than a
person, demanding she use her rain-calling for entertainment, which
she won’t do as it’s a sacred performance. They butt heads, and
she’s even briefly jailed (breaking out trivially). While the
tension is reduced a bit over time and talks between the two, with
Nike realizing that Livius has lost the ability to see beauty in the
world, there isn’t a real coming together until Nike interferes in a
couple of assassination attempts aimed at Livius, first taking an
arrow for him (which causes him, in his own way, to show care and
concern for her by trying to send her away) and then using her
rain-calling to put out a fire in the palace set to catch Livius. At
the conclusion of the fire, Livius sees a rainbow in the sky, and
smiles for the first time. After that, he warms up a good deal
towards Nike, not only because she’s saved his bacon, but also
because the beauty of what she’s capable of touched his heart, and
started the process of thawing out his icy status.
And now would be as good a time as any
to talk about the rain-calling. When Nike uses her air magic, in any
sense, she has to use her voice. Feats like carving through cell
bars or shattering a thug’s dagger are accomplished with a quick,
echoing whisper that’s well-presented as subtle magic use. The
rain-calling, though, is special, and accomplished through a big
mystic song. These scenes… I’m of two minds as to these scenes.
The first time I watched the show, I was deeply disappointed. The song used for Nike’s rain-calling is… nice, but it’s not what I was expecting out of the weight that was established, it’s very much a pop song in style, even incorporating some (heavily accented) English lyrics. For the big, sacred, magical song that calls forth the rain and touches peoples hearts? I wanted, nay, expected something a little more dramatic, operatic, and timeless. Something like “Monochrome”, or Azura’s song (“Lost in Thoughts All Alone” in the English) from Fire Emblem: Fates. Something that feels big, powerful, even magical. Nike’s song generally threw me out of the moment, leaving me shaking my head at the mismatch when I should have been wrapped up in the emotion.
The second time I watched the show,
though, I noticed something different. Knowing that the song was
coming, and what it was like, and having sat on that information for
some time, it wasn’t as bad as I’d told myself, and the scenes where
it’s used actually really work. They’re well-paced, well-shot, and
come at a time when the emotion is fitting, and the song does go with
the visuals and feel of the moment. It may not be what I expected
the first time through out of a magic song that controls the weather,
but for how it’s used in the show? It really is fine.
After this, step by step, the show
works on building chemistry between Livius and Nike. Their marriage,
as an affair of state, is already a decided thing (though it’s not
without obstacles getting in the way, largely in the form of Livius’s
political opponents). There are a few smaller moments, where they
get to know each other, Nike working to heal Livius’s heart, and also
some larger movements. For one, the church objects to Nike, forcing
her to take a ritualistic trial in underground catacombs. The
challenge issued to her is tough enough, but the priests also
sabotage the trial and, as icing on the cake, send in assassins to
kill Nike while she’s alone and vulnerable.
In this instance, Livius catches wind
of the cheating and decides that he’ll cheat better, sneaking into
the cave and helping her get back to light. Ultimately, Nike uses
her magic to create a ring of light around the sun in lieu of the
ring she was supposed to recover from the cave (which wasn’t even
there), the flair for the dramatic causing one in on the
assassination plot to accidentally incriminate himself. This allows
Livius to force the issue, and have the priesthood approve Nike
(grudging… or less so because she moves Livius to mercy, which he
was not prone to before) and let us move on.
The next major movement sees the
arrival of Bard, Livius’s uncle, who Livius hates. It’s fairly easy
to see why: Bard is a charming womanizer with no respect or
boundaries and Livius is a stick in the mud who probably couldn’t
handle a “fun” person at the best of times. The situations of
their reunion doesn’t help, as Bard immediately starts going after
Nike, trying to seduce her.
Nike isn’t charmed, which comes to a
head when Bard gets… aggressive trying to get her into bed while a
party was ongoing. After she turns him down firmly, he’s actually
pleased, revealing that he was testing her to make sure his little
nephew had ended up with a virtuous woman. Normally you’d think this
would be a particularly lame excuse, but Bard does a very good job of
selling that with his words and emotion. Too bad Livius sees none of
that when he walks in, the two of them still in what visually looks
like a compromising position.
Livius quite naturally sees red, and
has Nike confined to her room (like that’s going to stop her) while
pledging to personally execute Bard for this adultery. Nike takes
most of an episode on it, but does ultimately manage to clear up the
misunderstanding, and force Bard and Livius to talk honestly without
needling each other was well, which sees Bard ultimately restored to
his former administrative post as well as not tortured to death,
which is a plus.
Once that hurdle is cleared, we move
into our last arc: Nike receives word that her grandmother has
collapsed and may be on her deathbed, requesting to see Nike. Nike
bottles it up for a time, given how complicated her current situation
is, but Livius, who has come to know her all too well, notices that
something is off, and receives the truth.
By this point, we believe, and the
characters have come to understand, that honest love has bloomed out
of what was initially an political arrangement. It’s been slow
coming, but it is here, and we’ve seen it more episode by episode as
the two drift closer together. So it’s not really a surprise when
Livius is willing to drop everything (leaving management to Bard for
a time) in order to travel to Nike’s homeland with her. At first,
things seem to be kind of a nice vacation. Nike is at peace seeing
her home again, Livius gets to experience something new (though
Nike’s sisters may fuss excessively), and it turns out Granny just
hurt her back and is completely fine. However, we once again have a
cloak and dagger conspiracy trying to pry Livius and Nike apart, this
time perpetrated by Nike’s grandmother (who was touring the country
when Nike’s marriage was decided without her) and Nike’s
not-previously-introduced cousin, who is kind of scary obsessed with
her.
Livius catches on to the plan before
they make their first attempt (which was to drug and brainwash Livius
into forgetting Nike), having realized that as shrewd a leader as
granny was, she never would have sent such a message for something
ultimately trivial. This leads to Plan B (which starts with locking
the two of them up separately, and Nike in a special tower that seals
her powers so she can’t just wind magic her way out like she did
every time Livius tried to contain her) and what is basically the
emotional climax of the show. After Livius is freed by Nike’s
sisters, who don’t agree with this mess, he confronts granny and she
sets him a nearly impossible task, tossing the key to Nike’s cell
into waters and insisting that Livius recover it if he wants her
acknowledgment… while calling up a storm that will surely drown him
if he takes too long. Nike, meanwhile, pleads with her cousin to be
let out, and when words don’t avail her, even throws herself against
her cell door, hurting herself as she tries to batter it open,
declaring that she loves Livius and won’t be separated from him.
Of course, this ends up working out on
both ends. Livius shakes granny to the core with his dedication, and
at the very end comes up with the key… though only after Nike was
released from prison by her cousin (on the grounds that he couldn’t
bear to see her hurting herself like that) and arrived on seen to
tell her grandmother off.
We do get, through this arc, some
acknowledgment of just how powerful Nike in specific (and the Rain
royal family in general) is, as Granny’s motivation is that their
people once ruled a great empire with an iron fist, using their
powers to cause vast disasters and countless loss of life before they
retreated into isolationism… and that Nike in particular has rare
ability that Granny would not want to see in the hands of a petty
tyrant or cruel conqueror as she saw the Sun King to potentially be.
There’s also a personal stake, which comes out more in the following
episodes
Because there’s a whole episode and a
half after the climax in this one. Granny makes herself scarce, the
sisters arrange an actual celebratory welcome, Livius keeps his
temper in check knowing that pretty much nobody else could defy
granny, and… there’s kind of an awkward rift between Nike and the
rest of her family, particularly her grandmother and cousin who have
to accept that she doesn’t belong to them. Livius has a surprisingly
good conversation with the cousin about how uncontrollable and
beautiful in spirit Nike is, but Granny doesn’t talk to anyone until
essentially the end of the last episode.
At that point, Granny doesn’t see the
happy couple off at the docks, but while they sail away appears on a
cliff overlooking the sea and sings them a fair wind back to the Sun
Kingdom, her feelings of regret and acceptance carrying through to
Nike at the same time in a surprisingly effective moment.
We do get a couple scenes (practically
skits) as the couple returns home, but that’s basically the end. I
do fault the show a little for its pacing here; this is a very long
tail, and while there’s some good and some necessary material, there
wasn’t enough. I don’t think you could cut an entire episode, but
you could cut most of an episode worth of material and have a tighter
wrap-up that goes out more on the high note of Livius finding the
key, Nike reaching him, and Granny having to find it in herself to
deal But… I do only fault it a little for that.
My overall response to The World is Still Beautiful is, I would say, lukewarm. I like it well enough, I guess, but I don’t exactly love it the way I do, say, Toradora! as a fellow romance, or Spice and Wolf as I referenced in the beginning. Even when dramatic things are going on, like the various assassination attempts, it feels very safe, except for the climax in the Principality of Rain which actually manages to get a bit of a bigger response. For all the cloak and dagger politics and heartfelt conversations, it has this sedate and inoffensive character perhaps best represented by the show’s own opening, which is mostly scenes of Nike playing around at the Sun Kingdom palace rather than anything more serious.
I do very much like the characters,
though. Nike and Livius make compelling leads, and to an extent
that’s the one thing the show needed to have a bullseye on, since
it’s the most critical element for a romance. The supporting cast is
small, but at least Bard and the Principality of Rain crew are a
little memorable. On the whole, it’s not the best, but it does have
a notable strength.
And that, I feel, earns the show a B-.
Its worst crime is that it can be rather forgettable, which is pretty
bad in my book, but it claws its way out of the C bracket with a
decent core competence and a real ambition in its setup if not its
execution. I’d recommend watching it once if it sounds like it would
be up your alley, or if you’re in the market for something that’s
generally comforting but still has some teeth rather than being
caught in the slice of life/slice of nothing bubble, but it’s not one
that’s going to top any lists for me any time soon.