Yamada Naoko Capsule Reviews
K-On! The Movie (2011) – August 13, 2019
Basically just a long couple of episodes of the show, but since the show is one of the greatest things ever, that’s perfectly swell.
Was a bit unsure when I started this series. Coming off of Sound! Euphonium, this is much sillier, much more cute cartoony. But the relentless goofiness of it, its willingness to be absolutely about nothing, won me over pretty quickly. Euphonium is probably better, but K-On is probably more rewatchable.
A Silent Voice (2016) – November 9, 2019
"It's difficult enough to be a human being, let's try not to be monsters."
Am prepared at this point to declare Naoko Yamada one of the five best filmmakers working anywhere in the world right now.
Liz and the Blue Bird (2018) – August 1, 2019
Rewatched this after watching the two seasons of Sound! Euphonium, the TV series of which it is a kind of sequel. It isn't necessary of course, and I don't know that the added context makes the movie better, largely because I don't know that the movie can really be improved upon: it's pretty much perfect the way it is. But it is interesting knowing who all the side characters are. The movie now feels like a small part of a much larger world, rather than the story of two specific people.
Its differences from the series are also important. Most obviously in the character design: the kids are stretched out, more angular, and less, well, anime-like (eyes are more naturalistic, skirts are longer). But also in the plotting. The series is built around Kumiko, a first-year euphonium player who observes all the kids around her, trying to figure them out and becoming involved in their personal crises, along the way learning about herself as she sees elements of who she is and who she wants to be in other people. The driven trumpet player Reina and the supremely confident third-year euphonist Asuka are her main two objects of obsession. And while neither relationship is explicitly romantic, the undercurrents are there.
Mizore and Nozomi feature in the first half of season 2, in events that are obliquely referenced in Liz and the Blue Bird (which takes place just after the end of that season). Nozomi had quit the band the year before, along with a number of other first-year students who wanted to take music more seriously, while the third-years simply wanted to goof around. Now that the band has a new teacher and is dedicated to hard work, she tries to rejoin, but is repeatedly rebuffed by Asuka, the vice-president of the band and its spiritual leader. It eventually comes out that Asuka is trying to keep Nozomi away from Mizore, because she believes that Mizore is so upset by Nozomi having left that seeing her will affect her performance, and they need her to be great in order to make it to the national competition. But no one really understands the depths of the supremely affectless Mizore's true feelings. Kumiko comes the closest (it's her the other girls all eventually open up to), finding parallels with her own feelings for Reina and Asuka. Eventually, the girls are reunited, and dedicating her performance to Nozomi, Mizore nails the oboe solo in the competition.
Liz and the Blue Bird then poses somewhat the opposite challenge for Mizore. Rather than reconciling with Nozomi and thus improving her music by being able to play once again with the person she so loves, she must take the next step and get even better by letting that person go. This is also a matter of learning to see herself in another way, not as the lonely girl everyone pities, but as unique and valuable person in her own right. The unrequited nature of her crush reinforces her own lack of confidence, her own worst feelings about herself. The point of view is almost entirely Mizore's: the other girls who were so central to the series recede into the background (Kumiko has almost no lines (maybe none at all) and Reina only shows up to admonish her fellow prodigy for not playing to her true abilities). Rather than have the various emotional struggles of high school filtered through a surrogate sensibility, Liz forces us to occupy the headspace of a single girl, a seriously introverted one who sees the world only in fragments of sound and image (the clopping of shoes, the swish of a pony-tail), and one who, as an artist, is uniquely capable of translating those impressions into musical form. It's a terrifyingly constricted place to be. But we also feel it all so much more when she finally figures herself out: the relief of her confession and the joy and wonder and freedom of her performance.