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Forum - View topicREVIEW: Liz and the Blue Bird
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Angel M Cazares
 Posts: 5514 Location: Iscandar |
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The story being predictable confirms my apathy towards this movie. I found the arc of Mizore and Nozomi in season 2 of the show dumb. I might eventually check this movie out, but a someone who really likes the 2 tv seasons, I do not look forward to the changes in art style and tone.
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kinghumanity
Posts: 365 |
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Those. Long. Necks.
I've always thought the Mizore and Nozomi story arc to be the weakest in the franchise. If it was up to me, I really want to see a film featuring the old third year girls (Asuka, Haruka, Kaori). Maybe a series prequel? But I'll still check it out and wait for the second film. |
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FireChick
 Subscriber Posts: 2500 Location: United States |
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Huh. I haven't seen Sound Euphonium, but I think I might try this out, since it can be seen on its own without knowledge of the TV series.
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Joshua Zarate
Posts: 2062 |
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Nothing is truly original in this day and age so hearing how well told this movie’s story is has me looking forward to viewing it even more. The Nozomi and Mizore arc was an interesting one from season 2 and it certainly resonated with some people who understood and felt for them with what went on between those two (myself included). However, it could have definitely been expanded upon to make those characters more beckoning than what we got. Thankfully, this movie sounds like a good way to solve that issue and I hope that not too much time passes for there to be a way to stream this legally for a reasonable price.
Also, the art style here is different, but definitely not bad and I can see the appeal of it. |
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Angel M Cazares
Posts: 5514 Location: Iscandar |
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You are asking waaaay to much from Ponycan USA. I rather hope for Euphonium to be liberated from the hands of that incompetent company. |
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vini64
Posts: 12 |
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Oh boy, Naoko Yamada is going to keep her streak of making me cry just because of her beautiful visual compositions. No one succeeds as good as her in conveying emotions and feelings without the need of a single word. With Hibike! Euphonium being my favorite KyoAni anime and one of my favorites of all time, I'm surely going to get moved by this.
The soundtrack is composed by Kensuke Ushio, the same guy who composed the soundtrack for Koe no Katachi, one of the most beautiful OSTs I ever listened in my life. His work coupled with Yamada's direction is the perfect formula to make me cry, be it tears of sadness or happiness (it's mostly hapinness, though).
Seems exactly what I thought about Tamako Love Story. A simple and ordinary love story made beautifully special by Yamada's humane and sensible direction. If that's the case of Liz to Aoi Tori, I'm bound to love it as well. |
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#Verso.Sciolto
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Fairytale and folktale references were also woven into the animated TV series but in Liz and the Blue Bird such "stories within a story" are made a central focus upfront. Perhaps this film and its -even more- explicit symbolism will inspire people to re-watch and re-examine the two seasons of the TV series as well. Sounds like quite a few people are rather dismissive of this element and how it is -visually- presented in Liz and the Blue Bird, too, however.
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joeydoa
Posts: 121 |
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I was surprised by the byline and then did a little checking and yes indeed, it is Mr. Eisenbeis' first article for ANN. I've wondered what you were going to next after Anime-Now . Hopefully you will be adding to the anime preview guide in the future - I'm a little surprised that ANN didn't do a welcome or introduction. Looking forward to the new Naoko Yamada film. A Silent Voice is definitely in my top 5 anime films of all time.
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Sailor Sedna
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Haven't seen the show, but this film sounds like something I'm interested in.
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motormind
 Posts: 91 |
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"Mizore and Nozomi begin to realize that there may be no such thing as being together forever."
Then again, there still could be. Mizore and Nozomi could simply decide to do what they seem to be longing for this whole time: enter a serious romantic relationship, and be lovers for the rest of their lives if they so wish. In anime this happens constantly between guys and girls who meet in high school or even before, and Kyoto Animation even made a movie where exactly that happens: Tamako Love Story. So why couldn't this happen between two girls? Of course, Kyoto Animation might prefer to have their headquarters get swallowed up by a hole in the ground before they start depicting an actual, serious same-sex relationship. I, for one, start to get really tired of that "girls loving other girls is nothing but a phase" crap that permeates manga and anime. Show some guts, Yamada! I still have high hopes for you! |
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#HayamiLover
 Posts: 800 Location: Eastern Europe |
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You say as if that love relationships are the only possible relationships and female friends don't become lesbian lovers just because KyoAni is "afraid of lesbian representation". If the authors had a goal to show lesbian relationships, then I don’t think that Yamada and KyoAni would be afraid of this, and Kobayashi's maid is a great example of that. |
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leetailor
 Posts: 23 |
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It looks like this reviewer either missed the fact that Mizore is in love with Nozomi (which should be obvious to anyone after the first ten minutes of the film), or he neglected to mention it on purpose. Which is a major oversight either way, since not counting this film, how many theatrical anime films can any of you recall that center sapphic themes? (Utena Adolescence, Harmony, ???) Considering that, Mizore's attraction is just a little bit too important not to talk about, isn't it? But no, this guy decided that Mizore is just "dangerously dependent", nothing more.
But at least he spent an entire paragraph jerking off about A Silent Voice. Lovely. >Kobayashi's maid is a great example of [KyoAni being comfortable with lesbian representation] That's pretty naive. The "lesbian representation" in Kobayashi's Maid Dragon is perfectly inoffensive because it's unrequited (spoiler[within the scope of the anime]) and the lesbian is literally a dragon. Still maintains plausible deniability. Not saying that Kobayashi is a bad show, but let's not pretend Kyoto Animation have been good with this stuff at all. They made bank with Hibike, appropriating the aesthetic of sapphic romance and still only acknowledging the heterosexual feelings. They knew they could get away with it, so they did it. That's how this industry works. Even Liz and the Blue Bird, as much as I love it, is still a very safe and convenient depiction of gay girls, because at the end of the day, idiots can still claim that "that spoiler[confession] just means Mizore really loves Nozomi as a friend", and other idiots can be like "well yeah I guess it's up to interpretation". It doesn't detract from the film's value to me personally, but I still can't give Kyoto Animation props for being "brave" or "okay with lesbians", because it's pretty clear that they want to be able to disavow the gays if people confront them about this. |
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#HayamiLover
Posts: 800 Location: Eastern Europe |
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@leetailor No matter how much you repeat “this is obvious” and did not attack the author, demanding from him excuses for “ignoring the truth” instead of arguing own position, your interpretation will not become a the only possible. This is especially true of your emotional manipulation, where you mean that any rejection of romantic interpretation is homophobic.
“Confessions” like questions to two friends “what you like in each other” are quite commonplace in Japanese culture. In addition, the show does not use the “aesthetics of a sapphic romance”, it uses the classic homoerotic metaphors that were laid down by the Class S genre as early as the 1920s. Genre, one of the authors of which was an open lesbian, Nobuhiko Yoshiya, by the way. The image of relationship between girls in Japanese culture is literally imbued with this symbolism, regardless of whether it is romantic or not. Translations of Yamada’s interview are widely available on the Internet, where she says that the film was made thin, because she respects the dignity of the viewer and has her pride as a director, so she didn’t want the film to be banal and too bluntly saying that “these two are close friends". This interpretation from one of the authors seems to me more truthful than conspiracy belief that in spin-off of franchises with such a huge yuri fandom, someone might be afraid to portray lesbians. In any case, you can always interpret this film as you want and freely discuss it, but as I said above, such emotional manipulations and attacks on those who disagree with you will not bring you any benefit. |
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leetailor
Posts: 23 |
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Make no mistake, I'm not hating on Liz and the Blue Bird. It's a great film, as I've already said, in fact I might prefer it over the parent TV series. (The creators even managed to miraculously avoid trolling us with any het nonsense this time, unlike in the rest of Hibike. Really, I'm down with subtext, as long as there's no trolling. I don't think Liz in particular is subtext, I mean I've already said it couldn't be more obvious that Mizore is in love, but clearly a lot of people think it's up to interpretation, so... I'm not the one who downplays this element of the film.)
The main thing that annoyed me here was crediting the creators with any sort of risktaking, because none of that happened, at least in the gay department. (Making Liz as "slow" and quiet as it is, relative to competitors like Your Name, yes that was a risky move. They definitely deserve praise for that, no question.) It's not a conspiracy theory. True, they're not "afraid" to acknowledge lesbians, at least not in a superstitious way. They just. Don't. Want to. Because they have learned that they can make more money this way. (Anime is financed by corporations, just like all mass media, and you know what corporations are for.) Look at e.g. the BluRay sales numbers that the Bloom into You anime manages to scramble together. It's not truly terrible, but it's not even in the same ballpark as the average KyoAni affair, or Symphogear, Love Live etc., even though it's one of the most robust and accessible yuri anime that has come out in the past two decades. Its only problem is that it's openly gay. If you put lesbians in the center of your anime, you will simply make more money if you leave the nature of their relationship(s) up to interpretation. (Or if you overload it with ass and tiddy. That's actually less likely to work though.) That's how this system works right now. That's how money can be made with minimum risk. I counter with this: if they reeeally wanted to acknowledge the lesbian relationships in their shows, they would have done it by now. What do you think could be possibly stopping them? That it would be too "banal" and "blunt" to make things clear, just once in a while? Why is this never a problem with heterosexual romance? They never seem to have a problem with shoving that down our throats (Hibike, Haruhi, KnK, Chuunibyou, Violet etc.). Is sapphic love somehow just more dirty? Is it only acceptable if it's ambiguous; never confirmed in clear ways? Are we only good enough for teasing, but not good enough to be acknowledged? You know, Yoshiya Nobuko is that, and Kyoto Animation is this. The former was writing a century ago; in her time and even long after that, it's understandable, if still tragic that these themes had to be censored. I'm familiar with the history of yuri, I know the drill. But remember Sailor Moon, and how it put lesbians in its main cast on TV? That was 20 years ago. And yet today, one of the most prestigious anime production house still can't seem to commit to gay or lesbian themes, despite relying on them almost constantly in the way of teasing, while never having a problem with putting het on screen. Doesn't it seem like they just don't want to? Especially when the other studios make this risk occasionally, they don't see much success (except maybe once in a blue moon like with Yuri on Ice). And it's not like I think Kyoto Animation is satan incarnate or something. In fact, they are probably the most humane studio when it comes to treating their employees with some dignity, and their works have stellar quality reliably. Also, it's not like the other studios are much better with any of this stuff. So I'm not saying that any one studio is responsible for this. Rather, it's that the whole system is broken in many, many ways. But you know, I don't want to convince you of anything. Or rather, I know I probably can't, and that's fine. But maybe now you understand my frustration a bit more. Or not. I wouldn't blame you if you quit reading this halfway through. |
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#HayamiLover
Posts: 800 Location: Eastern Europe |
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@leetailor You have to memorize one simple thing - not all relationships with homoerotic subtext are real hints that the heroines are lesbians. You write a lot about the fact that they cannot “confirm in order not to lose money", but at the same time, you do not even think that everything can be the other way around and this logic works just the same with “cannot deny in order not to lose money".
Therefore, I ask you to take into account the cultural context and not to try to follow the extremely silly thesis "romance is a universal reason for everything". Obviously, KyoAni is still deliberately hoping for ship bait to promote Eupho, but one should not think that if such a goal were set, they would not have made them a canon. In fact, Yamada avoided romance even in pure heterosexual Koe no Katachi, despite the fact that people tried to use her interview about working on this film as evidence that Liz is romance. |
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