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GKIDS Acquires N. American Rights to Naoko Yamada's A Silent Voice, Liz and the Blue Bird Anime Films
posted on by Alex Mateo
GKIDS announced on Thursday that it has acquired the North American rights to director Naoko Yamada's A Silent Voice and Liz and the Blue Bird anime films. The company will screen the former in theaters from December 15-16. GKIDS streamed English-dubbed and subtitled trailers for A Silent Voice:
The film earned 2.3 billion yen in Japan, and was the 19th highest-grossing film released in Japan in 2016.
Kodansha USA Publishing released the manga in English, and describes the manga:
Shoya is a bully. When Shoko, a girl who can't hear, enters his elementary school class, she becomes their favorite target, and Shoya and his friends goad each other into devising new tortures for her. But the children's cruelty goes too far. Shoko is forced to leave the school, and Shoya ends up shouldering all the blame. Six years later, the two meet again. Can Shoya make up for his past mistakes, or is it too late?
The manga began as a one-shot that Ōima published in Kodansha's Bessatsu Shonen Magazine in 2011. She then turned it into a full story with the launch of a serialization in Kodansha's Weekly Shonen Magazine in 2013. The series ended in November 2014. Kodansha published seven compiled book volumes for the manga.
Liz and the Blue Bird is an anime film in the Sound! Euphonium franchise, based on Ayano Takeda's Sound! Euphonium novel series. The film is based on the Sound! Euphonium ーKitauji Kōkō Suisōgakubu, Hanran no Dai Ni Gakushō: Kōhen (Sound! Euphonium - The Kitauji High School Concert Band's Turbulent Second Movement: Part 2) novel.
The film focuses on flutist Nozomi Kasaki and oboist Mizore Yoroizuka, the characters who were also the focus of the Sound! Euphonium 2 anime's first half. In the film, both Nozomi and Mizore are in their final year of high school, and Nozomi has rejoined the band. The band's new competition piece, "Liz and the Blue Bird," has a flute and oboe duet, which requires both Nozomi and Mizore to be coordinated. But while both have been together since middle school, Mizore is uneasy at the thought of being separated from Nozomi once more at the end of the year, which begins to affect not just their music, but also their relationship.
Crunchyroll and Tubi TV are streaming the film.
GKIDS previously licensed Yamada's Garden of Remembrance original anime short film and Yamada and Science SARU's The Colors Within feature film.
Source: Press release
