Ever since I started watching anime, especially the slice-of-life variant, I have felt a disconnect between what I was seeing and how I imagined the characters to be feeling. Why aren’t they acting the way I know people would? Why do they seem like husks? Obviously, the budget is the culprit here; however, there are certain scenes, especially those conveying deep emotional messages, that require micro-expressions to fully feel what our characters are experiencing. This would make the emotions they feel all the more real. Liz is a movie that has mastered that intimacy. The entire film is shot extremely tightly, almost claustrophobically, which opens up a whole new world of character expressions. The sounds of everyday life added to the whole experience.
I’ll be honest; I hated Hibike Euphonium. I was neither interested in orchestral music nor the relationships between the characters. It felt out of touch and… boring. However, Liz, though part of the same franchise, was not part of the same tree. It was entirely something else. After the whole buildup, when Mizore left the comforts of her cage, there was no dialogue to tell me what was going on, but the music itself made me shed a tear. The music conveyed the story, as beautiful as it was.
To me, this is the kind of production I’ve always wanted to see from an anime—portraying a perspective that feels more human and connected than anything I’ve ever seen before it. This is a visual, auditory and storytelling masterpiece.