Liz to Aoi Tori

Liz's days of solitude come to an end when she meets a blue bird in the form of a young girl. Although their relationship blossoms, Liz must make a heart-wrenching decision in order to truly realize her love for Blue Bird.

High school seniors and close friends Mizore Yoroizuka and Nozomi Kasaki are tasked to play the lead instruments in the third movement of Liz and the Blue Bird, a concert band piece inspired by this fairy tale. The introverted and reserved Mizore plays the oboe, representing the kind and gentle Liz. Meanwhile, the radiant and popular Nozomi plays the flute, portraying the cheerful and energetic Blue Bird.

However, as they rehearse, the distance between Mizore and Nozomi seems to grow. Their disjointed duet disappoints the band, and with graduation on the horizon, uncertainty about the future spurs complicated emotions. With little time to improve as their performance draws near, they desperately attempt to connect with their respective characters. But when Mizore and Nozomi consider the story from a brand-new perspective, will the girls find the strength to face harsh realities?

A spin-off film adaptation of the Hibike Euphonium! series, Liz to Aoi Tori dances between the parallels of a charming fairy tale, a moving musical piece, and a delicate high school friendship.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Yoroizuka, Mizore Main

Tanezaki, Atsumi Japanese

Kasaki, Nozomi Main

Touyama, Nao Japanese

Oumae, Kumiko Supporting

Kurosawa, Tomoyo Japanese

Kousaka, Reina Supporting

Anzai, Chika Japanese

Nakagawa, Natsuki Supporting

Fujimura, Konomi Japanese

Katou, Hazuki Supporting

Asai, Ayaka Japanese

Yoshikawa, Yuuko Supporting

Yamaoka, Yuri Japanese

Taki, Noboru Supporting

Sakurai, Takahiro Japanese

Kawashima, Sapphire Supporting

Toyota, Moe Japanese

Kenzaki, Ririka Supporting

Sugiura, Shiori Japanese

Nakamura, Shinichi Producer

Saitou, Shigeru Producer

Senami, Riri Producer

Yarimizu, Yoshifumi Producer

Reviews

Dec 22, 2024

griddyweeb

Recommended

It's so much different from what I expected, but not in a bad way. Yamada Naoko had a lot of freedom with this movie and it turned out well. Also really nice visual/sound as expected from KyoAni.

It's an interesting side story about 2 close friends going through an emotional rollercoaster, but in the already established universe of Hibike Euphonium. However it's nothing like the series, in many ways they're polar opposites, for example the story is hyperfocused on Mizore and Nozomi, nobody else gets any screentime, it's almost exclusively set inside the school too and also the emotions are a lot less spoonfed to the ... viewers.

It's one of those movies that you might wanna watch more than once to fully understand every aspect of it, there's a lot of symbolism and metaphors throughout the entire movie and it's easy to miss a few due to the volume.

Usually movies suffer from the fact that they're somewhat limited due to screentime, Liz and the Blue Bird though overstays its welcome. Since the characters and their relationship are already established in the series they saved like half hour on introductions for starters. Then also it's a bit slow, most of the progression happens in the last 30 minutes, the first 1 hour just presents the conflict and ignores it while showcasing the duo's dynamic. And I hate to say it but there was no need for that taking up about an hour, it's hard to point out which scenes should've been cut since all of them hold a bit of significance to their relationship through metaphors, but it just feels a bit too much.

With that being said there's no other issue I find about this movie, it's unique and achieves what it wants while being a great experience.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Jun 2, 2024

jus7aguy

Mixed Feelings

Okay this is a different pace to the series it's spinning off from. The pace is slowing and it has a more washed out water pallet like colour. This is not a detraction, just a note. There is a lot of subtle character development and it's a notably slow paced story. Honestly it's a fantastic art piece, with great score and fantastic art, interesting character design, and intellectually I can see it's honestly a great movie.

That aside, I hated it.

Okay hate is probably a bit strong. I was bored out of my skull. It was an adult interpretation of juvenile ... waffling on a topic. If I was a mid-teen I'd probably think this was deep and resonated well. As a late 40s adult this bored me to tears.

It's one of those shows that I can intellectually see was a good movie, but it just 100% failed to resonate with me in any way shape or form. I am giving it an 8/10 not because I enjoyed it, but because I can see the quality of the work, and why others WOULD enjoy it. It loses points for difference in style from the source material it springs from, where most of the audience that would be directed towards it would come from.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Jul 31, 2023

JuiceyMello

Not Recommended

Spoiler

To begin, I just wanted to add this here to explain why I rated this film so low. As you can see from my profile, I'm very generous with my reviews and if I personally don't like a film or series I typically rate it as Average or Fine due to other factors like it having good character growth, nice backgrounds, decent animation, or just a decent basic story. However, this one was just SO DRY. The film is pretty enough, the story is too simple to say anything about the animation. The story was basically not there, like nothing happened the whole film. I ... watched this with a bunch of strangers in a stream and we were all discussing just how dry the whole film was and whether it was going to go anywhere (it didn't).

There was definitely OPPORTUNITY for the story to go somewhere, to have climax, to have meaning, but that opportunity was not taken. What you see when you watch this film is a very weird amount of feet shots and walking shots (we were literally counting how many times feet showed up and it was a lot) and then some very plain flute playing. It seems to be set up like its about to be a slow burn yuri? Except, the relationship between the two MCs doesn't really go anywhere.

The only thing I could give this film (being the only reason I rated it as high as a 4), is that at least one of the MCs, Reina Kousaka, had some personality development. I think the biggest thing which made this film difficult to watch was the lack of climax and the fact that both MCs were very quiet, lacking energy or personality. To put it bluntly, they were beyond average, every-day ordinary girls.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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	Poll: Liz to Aoi Tori Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) Ame_Sama - Apr 21, 2018	140 replies	by NeonRumi »» Oct 8, 12:27 AM
	Can I skip this? shiro-seishun - Jul 8, 2022	23 replies	by mysticflute »» Jun 29, 10:06 PM
	does anyone actually care about these 2 characters? GangsterCat - Jun 21, 2017	34 replies	by mitchisindo »» Jun 27, 5:28 AM
	This is a masterpiece of arthouse cinema. Greyleaf - Apr 27, 2020	24 replies	by Roqueiro »» Jun 1, 8:03 PM
	It is girls love? DarKViVi66 - May 21, 2023	15 replies	by Radnitzky1890 »» Feb 16, 12:16 AM