I haven’t seen so much symbolic bird flight since Oniisama E. ^_^

Liz and the Blue Bird is a complicated and fascinating look at the habit of loneliness, obsession, affection and human relationships. If you were paying attention last summer to Japanese theatrical releases for animation, along with Asagao to Kase-san, you’d have come across Rizu to Aoi Tori (リズと青い鳥 ), which often shared a theater with Kase-san. Liz and the Blue Bird is the official release of this movie from Eleven Arts.

The movie follows two young women who play woodwind in their concert band as the band competition nears. Nozomi is popular, easy-going and wears her position as sempai to the flute section comfortably. On oboe, Mizore is a loner who avoids any connection with the other double-reed players, leaving the undergrads wondering what they are doing wrong. They are doing nothing wrong, Mizore simply has no room in her existence for anyone but Nozomi. As pressure is put upon them to play the key movement in a competition piece called “Liz and the Blue Bird,” based on a children’s book of the same name, Nozomi’s and Mizore’s relationship starts to buckle.

The movie’s structure is complex, with two stories-within-a-story, three separate animation styles and acting parts for the voice actors, the foley and the music.

I said in yesterday’s news report that you could, if you were so inclined, see Mizore’s relationship with Nozomi as Yuri. In fact, its hard not to, as Mizore declares that Nozomi is everything to her. That said, this is not a romance and this obsession Mizore has with Nozomi is not the end goal, but an obstacle that must be set aside for them both to thrive. To do so, Mizore is required to break out of the habit of loneliness that she has developed for herself as an identity.

The characters outside Nozomi and Mizore are excellent. We don’t spend much time with them, but we get to know a fair number in that short time. I liked them all, from Yuuko, the band leader and Natsuki, another third year, to the first-years, especially Kenzaki Ririka, the only other oboe in the band, and the amusingly bad-tempered library club member.

Nothing in this movie is simplistic. The children’s story of “Liz and the Blue Bird”, it’s relationship to Mizore and Nozomi, their relationship to one another and to the people around them are all fully developed and realistically complex. In fact, after watching this movie through once, I went back and watched it again to pay attention to details I knew I had missed the first time, especially in the animation and soundtrack.

I had gone into this movie cold, with absolutely no knowledge that it was part of the Sound! Euphonium franchise. Once I did, my sole complaint about the movie was instantly given context. So many people I know and trust have told me I would enjoy Sound! Euphonium, but I was unable to get through the first episode, as we spent almost the entire time watching the girls’ legs. In Liz and the Blue Bird, the one thing I found distracting and, ultimately exhausting, was the way the camera dissected the characters, separating out body parts endlessly, so we watched legs, then arms, then an eyeball so close we could see the curve of it, then feet, a lap, rinse, repeat almost as a non-stop compulsion, which if we weren’t also moving back and forth through the fairy tale would have been as intolerable as I found the Sound! Euphonium anime. It was so much of a problem that the few times the “camera” backed up in order to show us a whole person, it was a physical relief. This is not an animation style I enjoy and I will be very glad when it falls out of favor.

The three animation styles are, as I mentioned, wholly unique. The main story is the kind of thing Kyoto Animation is best known for, with higher production values than a TV series, and faces and bodies that are mostly similar, with realistic backgrounds (although thankfully not hyper-realistic which would be out of sync with the character designs.) “Liz and the Blue Bird” is told in an animation style that is strongly reflective of a children’s picture book come to life. Any frame of that animation could have been used as is in a picture book. It was very fitting to the tale and fun to watch. The third animation style comes in later in the narrative and is abstract, colorful and modern, and wholly suited to the scenes in which it is used.

The soundtrack was my favorite part of the movie. As a former woodwind, it’s nice to hear them get some love in the music. ^_^ But more importantly, the climax of the movie is not only centered around the music , it is a moment in which this viewer suddenly realized that the best acting of the movie had come from the musicians playing the piece, as they had throughout the movie played it wrong every time. Not, badly, not broken, they’d hit all the notes…it was just wrong. It was a masterful performance and one that I hope you will appreciate when you watch it.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 10
Characters – 9
Yuri – 3
Service – 6 That whole bodypart-staring is a form of service which I do not care for. It feels dehumanizing to me.

Overall – 9

In the end, I think the thing that best captures my feelings about this movie is that it was worth watching a second time and that second time made me appreciate it more.