Originally released over three volumes in 2006, This Ugly Yet Beautiful World has been repackaged and re-released in compact thinpack boxed set.  When it was first put out, there wasn't a huge fan reaction to the show and DVDTalk reviewer Todd Douglass Jr. looked at the first volume and was under-whelmed.  (Read his review here.)  After seeing the whole series, I can understand why.  This show is something that we've all seen before.  With flat characters, a predictable story, and very slow pace, this 12 episode series won't be winning any awards.

One evening two teenage boys, Takeru and Ryo, are biking through the mountains when they see a mysterious light fall from the sky, split in two, and then come crashing to the ground.  The go investigate and discover a girl; a beautiful young lady who looks exactly like the dream-girl Takeru described to Ryo.  Takeru comes up to her first and, when he discovers she doesn't have a name, christens her Hikari (Light).

No sooner does that happen then the trio is attacked by a monster.  Takeru promises to protect the hapless girl and tries to get away from the beast, but it's too fast.  Suddenly and rather unexpectedly Takeru transforms into a super-powered being and defeats the monster in a rather vicious fashion.

Things are calm after that.  Hikari has amnesia so she moves in with Takaru and his uncle and instantly falls in love with Takeru.  Soon enough Ryo finds a cute girl living in the forest who also doesn't know who she is or how she got there.  He names her Akari and takes her to live with him and his sister.

The four main characters and their assorted friends have a lot of fun, going to the beach, going to school, and basically doing what teenagers do.  They don't really worry about who or what Hikari and Akari are and only get attacked by a monster once more.  They should worry about it though because there's a reason the two girls are on Earth, a reason that could spell death and destruction for Takeru and his friends.

For a show that only lasts 12 episodes, there's a lot of padding in this tale.  After discovering the girls, nothing really happens until the end of the 8th episode.  You'd think that they'd spend all those episodes growing and developing the characters, but no, they don't.  Everyone has one personality trait that is revealed at the beginning and they don't change after that.

The show starts getting a bit interesting when it is revealed just why the two girls have shown up, but by that time it's too little too late.  There just isn't enough there to really keep viewers interested.  On top of that, the ultimate plot that is eventually revealed is something that anime fans have seen time and time again.  After the big revelation, everyone will be able to see exactly what is going to happen.  The only surprising thing is that they include yet another filler episode in the last four.

Audio:

This set comes with the original Japanese audio track as well as an English dub, both in stereo.  I alternated tracks with every episode during the first disc and settled for the Japanese audio for the rest of the series.  Both tracks were very good, and the dub wasn't bad at all.  The English voice actors did a good job of bringing their characters to life, though some of the young girl's voices were a bit too high pitched for my tastes.  There wasn't much use made of the front soundstage, but since this was mainly dialog driven that's to be expected.

Video:

The 1.78:1 widescreen image was anamorphically enhanced and looked very good.  The lies were tight and the colors were solid and strong.  There was a bit of aliasing in a few spots, most notably in the background when the camera panned across fine lines, but it was never distracting.   Overall a very nice looking set.

Extras:

Unfortunately there are no extras at all.

Final Thoughts:

While it wasn't painful to watch, at the end of this series I pretty much thought "Okay, that was a waste of time."  While there are only 12 episodes the plot moves along at a glacial pace and the show has a lot of filler.  They could have whittled this series down to just 4 episodes and very little of substance would have been left out.  While the animation is very good, that's not enough to save the show.  If you're curious, rent it.