Liz and The Blue Bird(2018)
Movie 90 Minutes

Liz and The Blue Bird(2018) movie 90 minutes

Perhaps one of the simplest anime movies in existence. Nothing happens here, there is no action.

Liz and The Blue Bird is the story of two High School girls in the school band (Kasaki Nozomi and Yoroizuka Mizore from HibikeEuphonium) which is preparing to perform the music of Liz and The Blue Bird.

Interspliced with this story of music and two girls, is an alternate story of Liz and The Blue Bird from a fairy tale book which Nozomi lends to Mizore, and this fairy story comes alive and animates a beautiful water color fabric which frames the relationship between Nozomi and Mizore.

We would suggest that you view the youtube reviews posted above by Beyond Ghibli, Mother’s Basement and The Pedantic Romantic for a complete analysis and reaction.

Pywackett Productions cannot add any more than what these two professionals have already said so this will be a rather short statement.

“Liz and the Blue Bird” is a masterpiece. A story of capture, struggle, release, and freedom, not against any antagonists, (evil guys in black hats) because there are none anywhere in the story but all of the “action”, the struggle, the conflict, takes place entirely between Nozomi and Mizore who both switch places back and forth with the Blue Bird.

Romantic love always ends at some point in a love affair, and is replaced by a pair-bond which in modern usage is represented by ships such as (Nozomi x Mizore), and ships must avoid icebergs or they are liable to sink. When the fantasy of Romantic Love gives way to the reality of actual love within the pair-bond, the true struggle of love begins. It is hard, it is difficult, it is work to really love the other of the pair-bond.

Israel literally means “he who struggles, fights with god”. To come to an intimate relationship with another requires this sort of struggle, fight, conflict. It is so very difficult to feel the intimacy of love which can arise within the pair-bond. Some attempt to paper over this conflict to avoid difficult problems, others escape into affairs and cheating because the pair-bond is so very difficult work, and even others relish the conflict for its own sake, the war between lovers for dominance and submission, control vs freedom and never reach a synthesis, a new level of love because they actually enjoy the conflict itself, the fight, the struggle.

Nozomi and Mizore are in a desperate struggle with each other, and within themselves to find and discover that something real which Hachiman seeks.

That is all that this love story is about, but it is everything!

If you like intimate stories of love told in the context of beautiful animated art and music, if you liked “Your lie in April” or “Clannad”, you will fall in love all over again with Liz, and it will pierce your heart because the director, Ms Naoko Yamada, is aiming for your most sensitive spot and she knows how to stab it.