Liz and The Blue Bird Review:
Note: This is my first experience with this series, I have not yet watched any of Euphonium.
Liz and The Blue Bird is a fantastic movie that gets a lot right but is squandered by a lackluster conclusion.
What I think really drew me into the story was the art and animation. Nozomi and Mizore's high school is the setting for the entire movie, and the most important scenes are set in the same classroom. Recognizing this, the artists spent painstaking detail on all backgrounds so that the unchanging setting never bores the audience. This is the only anime I’ve ever seen where I can say that nearly every frame is a masterpiece I could hang on my wall. It's hard to overstate the impact this has on the experience as a whole, the atmosphere and sense of realism elevate the entire movie. The goal of the animators wasn't to blow you away with Sakuga and beauty every five seconds like a Makoto Shinkai film
but to make the animation as consistently fluid as possible. Not to distract from the breathtaking backgrounds but enhance them. To build up the sense of realism even more.
That's not even to mention the storybook scenes with their own captivating art style. Working as foils to one another, each highlights the strengths of its counterpart.

The writing puts in as much legwork as the art to create a realistic depiction of high school life. All the dialogue feels genuine, adding to the atmosphere created by the art, every relationship, major or minor, felt natural. Attention was clearly given to even the most inconsequential lines to establish the relationships between members of the band while also characterizing them.

The fact that I can’t talk too in-depth about things like the dialogue and how that affects the overall plot is because… well, there isn’t much there. Liz doesn't have a poorly written storyline, but it does very little to keep the audience engaged. Much of this story is built up to the inevitable confrontation between Mizore and Nozomi. However this confrontation, while not being poorly written, lacks the impact that a climax should have. it's almost like the writers didn’t want to make any concrete changes in their characters. For all the beautiful buildup Liz and The Blue Bird does, what it leads to doesn’t deliver. It all lacks finality.
This leads to some scenes just not serving all too much of a purpose, having half-baked ideas which weren’t confronted in the end, or was only briefly covered. While Liz and The Blue Bird isn’t that long, I feel like the story could have been sped up, and the climatic scene we have already could have been placed nearer to the middle of the story. This is a critical flaw in the plot because this is all the audience gets, the movie does not do anything notable before the climax outside of building up Nozomi and Mizore's relationship.
One thing I did love about the overall plot is how the writers manage to integrate the story of the fairytale with that of the high school. Having the characters in the fairy tale be representations of the character's genuine emotions was great, and I think they used that to its full potential.

Liz and The Blue Bird sucked me in with breathtaking art and skillfully crafted dialogue but left me wanting more with its conclusion. It's far from a bad movie, but some potential was left unrealized.