Soredemo Sekai Wa Utsukushii Episodes 5 & 6: Cliche

I…I don’t know what to feel about Soresekai anymore. What happened to the refreshing nature of episode 1? It was old-school, but it never felt commonplace in the shoujo genre. Now it’s just a hot mess of shoujo cliches to a point where I felt like I was watching reference material for the creation of Special A and Fushigi Yugi.

Everything in episodes 5 and 6 felt so…cheesy. Not only did they screw up the pacing (both the source material and the adaptation I guess), they screwed up on the content as well. I am pretty damn disappointed that the show would go so far as to have Nike actually perform her rain song every damn week. Heck, they should just change the ED theme to that since they like it that much. It’s a serious problem when such a major plot point (that had so much potential!) is being thrown around so often. What happened to the conditions for the rain song to be fulfilled? Sure, Nike’s ‘love’ for Livius must have made it a lot easier, but now it just seems like every good thing that happened in episode 1 was just a cheap trick and nothing to be in awe about.

And goddamn it is the relationship between Nike and Livius so hard to buy. What happened to their interesting relationship dynamic that I saw in episode 1? We’ve come to a point where it’s basically just like most shoujo series out there, there’s nothing interesting about their relationship anymore. The pacing made the whole extremely quick progression of their romance nigh unbearable to watch for me since it was so unconvincing, and I found everything outside of their relationship to be very shallow and glossed over as well. The whole rite of illumination, Livi and Nike’s ease of getting past it to get their way, it didn’t feel like an achievement for our protagonists. There was simply not much to root for.

But to think Soresekai’d stoop so low as to introduce a ‘rival’ for Livi’s love and affection.

Seriously, I groaned the moment I saw the episode preview for episode 5, and I swear I was tempted to ragequit right there and then. Couldn’t they at least try to create a more unique character? I’ve seen iterations of this girl so many times it’s not even funny, and I’d say that I’d feel sorry for Nike’s position, but I just can’t. She hasn’t been a very compelling protagonist as of late. But yeah, even without a recap, I’m sure you guys know the drill – introduce a rival in love>have her mention her superiority over the protagonist and why she deserves the male’s love instead>have her hate on our protagonist>have a challenge between the two and then the protagonist wins>some bullshit in between>rival admits defeat

Oh geez. I think I could have gone with it if Luna’s case was a bit more than ‘I’ve known him longer than you!!!’ and if she was less…bratty, but I guess that couldn’t happen. The whole horse battle also felt so damned rushed, it didn’t feel like anything was at stake at all! It was obvious who would win, so I was hoping that Soresekai’d try to spice it up a bit more when it came to the race to make it more engaging (eg. Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Stardust Crusaders). I guess not. This entire episode felt completely skippable and didn’t seem to add to the main story in any respect. (I do not count going from a kiss on the cheek to one on the lips as ‘progress’.)

You need to buck up, Soresekai. I’m not running out of things to talk about when it comes to Soresekai, but it’s not a good sign for an entire post to be complaints against the series.