LIZ TO AOI TORI

DESCRIPTION

CAST

ANIME DramaHibike! Euphonium 2
MOVIE DramaHibike! Euphonium: Todoketai Melody
MOVIE DramaHibike! Euphonium: Chikai no Finale
OVA DramaTokubetsu-hen Hibike! Euphonium: Ensemble Contest

REVIEWS

• 

  fffillyy

  90/100
  The collaboration of Naoko Yamada as a director and Reiko Yoshida as the screenwriter is a match made in heaven.

  Liz and the Blue Bird is a side story to Sound! Euphonium. This anime also works well as a standalone film so you will still enjoy this anime film even if you haven't watched Sound! Euphonium. The collaboration of Naoko Yamada as a director and Reiko Yoshida as the screenwriter is a match made in heaven. They also worked together on A Silent Voice, another fantastic anime film so it is to no surprise that Liz and the Blue Bird is a great anime film. Yoshida is a fantastic screenwriter and knows how to blend in metaphors and bring the story and animation together to make a cohesive and beautiful anime film. It was nice to see the characters and the setting in Sound! Euphonium brought back into Liz and the Blue Bird. Liz and the Blue Bird is impressively well-written and is also guided with grace with Yamada's direction. It's a familiar yet refreshing take on Sound! Euphonium. Liz and the Blue Bird gives you the illusion of peacefulness while slowly giving you hints of a sad and heartbreaking ending that is inevitable. The film slowly becomes intentionally predictable but slowly makes its way to the ending to torture the audience and to give the audience a taste of the emotions felt by the two main characters. Sound! Euphonium. More like yuri bait! Liz and the Blue Bird does not shy away from the yuri bait and I am easily swayed by the slightest yuri bait. I love it!

  The animation by Kyoto Animation is great as always. Everything from the character designs to the musical instruments looks dazzling. Kyoto Animation is one of the best anime studios out there in terms of animation style and quality. Anime produced by Kyoto Animation just look so gorgeous. I liked how this film has a different animation style when the story swaps over to the actual story of "Liz and the Blue Bird". It is intentionally different to make it obvious to the audience that that part of the film is just a separate story yet it links to the main story in a metaphorical and slight physical way. The use of animation in this film is very creative.

  The sound design and score in this film are absolutely phenomenal! I love the soothing sound of the score. The ending theme is great too! There is a contrast between Liz and the Blue Bird and Sound! Euphonium. The two main characters in Sound! Euphonium are Kumiko Oumae and Reina Kousaka who play the euphonium and trumpet respectively. They are brass instruments which are loud and bright in tone colour giving that obvious happy and energetic tone to the score in Sound! Euphonium. The main characters in Liz and the Blue Bird are Mizore Yoroizuka and Nozomi Kasaki who play the oboe and flute respectively. They are both woodwind instruments which are soft and airy in tone colour giving that peaceful and relaxing tone to the score in Liz and the Blue Bird. Sound! Euphonium focuses more on the euphonium and Oumae’s character. Oumae is an extrovert while Kousaka is an introvert. Liz and the Blue Bird focuses more on the oboe and Yoroizuka’s character. Yoroizuka is an introvert while Kasaki is an extrovert. The contrast between the instruments in the two anime and the differences that the instruments represent with the characters is one of many details in this film which I picked up on and thought it was a nice touch to this music anime film being a side story to Sound! Euphonium. Liz and the Blue Bird has a more laid back feeling compared to Sound! Euphonium and this is represented by the character development, the types of instruments being focussed on, and the score. The voice acting in this anime film is great as expected.

  Liz and the Blue Bird has great character development. Since it is a side story to Sound! Euphonium, Liz and the Blue Bird already has character development backed up from the anime series and just needed to focus on side characters who were not already focussed on in the anime series. I like the contrast between this anime film and the parent anime series. There are similarities between the characters in both anime as well. The “true” main character in these two anime have different personalities but they both have friendships, or more than that, with another girl with a completely opposite personality. These two anime show relationships between two opposing personalities but contrasts with the focused main character. It’s different, yet so similar and familiar. This film has new characters that aren’t in the anime series, that being Liz and the blue bird. Their characters are symbolic of everything from the music to the relationships in this film. I like the intrinsic link between the storytelling and the events that happen in the film. I wish that the film gave more screen time to Ririka Kenzaki as she was another girl in the band that played a reed instrument and that the film would be longer as a result. This film is not very long, with a run time of 90 minutes. I wish this film was longer, but regardless, the screenplay in this film is great.

  Overall, Liz and the Blue Bird is a well-written anime film that has great direction, great animation, great voice acting, a great score, and great character development. It was enjoyable to watch and it’s nice to see Yamada and Yoshida collaborating together on another anime film. Kyoto Animation has been pumping out great anime. It was nice to see the universe in Sound! Euphonium once again in a reimagined story with a different feel. Check this one out, especially if you have watched Sound! Euphonium.

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• 

  MaiTan

  100/100
  [FR] C'est un film très important

  [FR] Ce film est très très doux et très important.

  Au début nous pouvons être un peu perturbés par les graphismes qui sont très différents de la série Sound! Euphonium et de sa deuxième saison mais on s'y fait très vite. Cela ne dérange pas vraiment car ils restent magnifiques, cette beauté n'est pas étonnante venant du studio d'animation Kyoto Animation. Il ne cesse de nous épater.

  Il y a deux histoires dans ce film, celle avec Liz et l'Oiseau bleu et celle avec Nozomi Kasaki et Mizore Yoroizuka. Nous pouvons voir leur relation évoluer dans la saison deux de Hibike! Euphonium et cette relation est détaillée et est expliquée d'une manière différente dans Liz and the Blue Bird. Dans l'anime, c'était plus du dégoût mais ici nous pouvons parfaitement voir l'admiration qu'a Mizore pour Nozomi, le hautbois qui aime la flûte.
  Malgré la timidité de Mizore et le fait qu'elle soit introvertie, ce qui peut agacer certaine personne, elle reste adorable et fait de son possible pour que ce duo d'instrument à vent marche correctement et devienne parfait. Nozomi est très populaire, surtout avec les étudiantes de première année et est très occupée, elle ne reste donc pas souvent avec Mizore et nous pouvons avoir de l'empathie pour elle.

  Les graphismes sont apaisants et très doux, c'est comme si nous regardions une oeuvre d'art pendant 1h30. Le contraste entre les dessins modernes de l'histoire avec Nozomi et Mizore et les fonds à l'aquarelle avec Liz et l'Oiseau bleu est surprenant. Mais nous plonge entièrement dans le comte.

  

  Avec ces screens nous pouvons voir la différence. Surprenante mais très agréable.
  Les transitions entre l'histoire réelle et inventée sont liées. Un événement est expliqué par un passage du livre comme si Nozomi et Mizore étaient les protagonistes de leur propre histoire, ce qui est le cas.

  Les OST sont sublimes, il faut donc tendre l'oreille pour ne louper aucune note. Le troisième mouvement est mis en avant de nombreuses fois et va parfaitement avec la thématique du film.
  Voici la scène du film où nous pouvons l'entendre entièrement:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUMlCKRUqcw

  Je vous conseil à 100% de regarder ce film et si possible avec la meilleure qualité qu'il soit ! Laissez vous hypnotiser par les graphismes et endormir par les magnifiques musiques.
  (Ceci est ma première review, merci d'être indulgent !)

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• 

  ABPAEAE

  90/100
  Another fantastic film by Kyoto Animation.

  Liz to Aoi Tori is a masterpiece of filmwork with an immense amount of effort dedicated to its creation and refinery.

  The story is much deeper than what it appears as on the surface. I'm not one for "whoa dude this is soooo deep" sorts of media, but it doesn't feel anything like the creators of Liz to Aoi Tori were stretching themselves beyond their realistic capabilities as writers to seem "deep". I think watching this halfheartedly out of mere boredom lends oneself to really not appreciating what Liz to Aoi Tori has to offer in its entirety. The storyline is not captivating or entertaining in a traditional sense, instead, it is very human and emotional. Due to this, I really don't think a solid storyline is possible to attribute to this film. The focus for the entire film is the relationship between two friends that feels as fragile and unpredictable as a feather in a hurricane. Liz to Aoi Tori is an unrelenting torrent of many grittily realistic emotions that easily ensnares its viewers into feeling. The writers saw an untapped reserve of potential between two supporting characters in the Hibike! Euphonium series, and they squeezed every last drop out of that potential. The story of Liz to Aoi Tori and the overall relationship of Mizore and Nozomi transcends traditional storytelling to flourish as an admirable masterpiece of anime and film.

  Of course, such a beautiful story could not go unsupported by equally beautiful art and sound design. Artistically, there's so much to be said about Liz to Aoi Tori that I'm simply just not qualified to talk about. Symbolism and artstyle were focused on to a pinpoint by the absolute masters working at Kyoto Animation. Certain aspects were modified from Hibike! Euphonium such as the linework to fit in line with the more mature and emotionally weighted themes of Liz to Aoi Tori. After recently viewing some very poorly animated anime, I truly appreciate the effort put into seemingly simple scenes on paper such as walking animations and the immense amount of effort and soul poured into animating realistic and emotional facial expressions, especially when the majority of the film relies solely on emotional expression. The setting for the film is split only between the Kitauji high school and the world within a watercolor storybook. The contrast in artstyle and setting between these two worlds is very deliberate and impactful to the mood of the film. One would think that such a limited setting for media of this length would be boring to a viewer, but the overall design, mood, and constant movement throughout the film always kept the scenery from appearing stale. Beyond these few topics I've covered, there is much more symbolism and impressive feats of artwork to be appreciated by those with more understanding of artwork and how much effort goes into the production of such a film.

  Sound design is equally as lovingly crafted as the story itself and the impressive artwork that made the wonderful writing of Liz to Aoi Tori a reality. One thing that particularly stood out to me, and is present in both Liz to Aoi Tori and Hibike! Euphonium, is that most every sound and line of dialogue does not feel like it was recorded in a soundproof recording studio centimeters away from a ridiculously expensive ASMR microphone. If someone is talking on the opposite end of a large room, their voice echoes in such a manner that you would expect in real life from a similar room. The reason this is so, is because the absolutely dedicated individuals at Kyoto Animation often use 1:1 replicas of actual buildings in their work. This was the case with K-On!, as it is with Hibike! Euphonium. Many sounds ranging from footsteps, to dialogue, to orchestral music is all recorded in the actual real counterpart to the building in the animation. It adds so much depth and life to an otherwise unrealistic genre of media, and this amount of dedication to the product is truly impressive. Beyond that, all of the music is recorded with a live orchestra, resulting in every breath, every mechanical sound of a room full of instruments, and every minute flaw coming through into the final production. On top of the extremely detailed closeup animations of musical instruments being played, this amount of attention to detail truly makes the sound design of Liz to Aoi Tori and the Hibike! Euphonium series in general a masterpiece to be remembered. I highly recommend viewing some of the "making of" videos for Liz to Aoi Tori and Hibike! Euphonium. Seeing the painstakingly detailed recording and the unique production of original background music is very interesting and made me appreciate the effort so much more.

  Character building is rather restricted when a film is only focusing on two characters and their relationship between one another, but Kyoto Animation uses this restriction to really focus themselves on making very emotionally interesting characters that constantly keeps viewers captivated for the entire duration of the film. The character development in Liz to Aoi Tori is quite satisfying, and significant progression is made by the end of the film for two characters that were otherwise lacking characters in the main series of Hibike! Euphonium that constantly felt like they could be so much more. This satisfying and plentiful character progression makes Liz to Aoi Tori a refreshing take on side stories, something that is so easily spoiled that many studios will just never attempt to make anything of the sort, outside of hollow, unsubstantial, and easy-to-make OVAs for their anime.

  Liz to Aoi Tori, while not being the absolute most enjoying film or anime I've ever watched, has so much effort poured into its production that I would consider it an insult to the creators to NOT to call this film a masterpiece. The writing is certainly not half-assed, and yet so much precision and creativity was put into its creation, Liz to Aoi Tori still very much feels human and manages to closely touch our emotions.

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