Soredemo Sekai wa Utsukushii
Announced in January as coming this spring with Studio Pierrot set to handle the series, SoreSoredemo Sekai wa Utsukushii has a few more details revealed about the production courtesy of the latest issue of Hana to Yume. According to the magazine, the lead cast has been announced with Rena Maeda set to play Nike Remercier while Nobunaga Shimazaki will take on the role of Livius I. Maeda doesn’t have a lot of roles to her name, mostly just in smaller parts across a few shows in the last couple of years, with this one marking her debut as a lead. Shimazaki on the other hand has a range of credits that has him as a lead, including the currently airing Ace of Diamond as well as Buddy complex. He’ll also be a crowd pleaser with his time spent as Haruka Nanase in Free! that’s coming back for another season this summer.
The series will be directed by Hajime Kamegaki who has handled a couple of feature films as well as Fushigi Yugi OVA’s and several TV episodes, a number of Lupin the 3rd specials and served as an episode director for part of Magic Knight Rayearth. Character designer for the series will be Ichiro Uno, whose most reecntly work has been in the new Hajime no Ippo series as doing key animation for the opening and first episode. Largely working in key animation side of many shows for the past decade, this is his first full character design job.
Based on the manga series that began in 2011 after a pair of one-shots by Dai Shiina, it’s been running in Hana to Yume and has five volumes out so far in Japan.
Plot concept: The series revolves around Nike, the determined princess of the Rain Dukedom who has a mysterious power: she can control rainfall. After losing a game of rock, paper, scissors to her older sisters, she is forced to unwillingly marry the king of the Sun Country, Livius I. Livius (or Livi for short) conquered the world in three years, and is known as the “Dreadful King.” However, when Nike meets him for the first time, she finds to her surprise that he is a boy younger than she is. Livius abruptly asks Nike to call forth the rain, and when she refuses, he has her thrown in jail. The story follows the two who, while at first are a married couple only in name, gradually begin to establish an emotional bond with one another
[Source: ANN]