Mizore Yoroizuka (鎧塚 みぞれ Yoroizuka Mizore) is a supporting character of Sound! Euphonium series, and one of the protagonists of Liz and the Blue Bird film. She was a student at Kitauji High School one year above Kumiko Oumae who played oboe in the school's concert band.
Appearance[]
Mizore is a fair-skinned girl with straight medium-length blue hair that has strands framing her face, with bangs cut evenly. She has cherry-red eyes.
She is usually seen with a standard Kitauji High School uniform for girls.
Personality[]
Mizore is initially portrayed as a very quiet, introverted, and reserved individual. She tends to keep to herself and is often seen practicing alone. This shyness can sometimes be mistaken for aloofness, but it stems from her deep sensitivity and introspective nature.
She has a close and somewhat complicated friendship with Nozomi Kasaki, another band member. Mizore's attachment to Nozomi is a significant part of her character development. The history of their relationship and the emotions tied to it reveal Mizore's vulnerability and her struggles with feelings of abandonment and loneliness.
Despite her reserved demeanor, Mizore is incredibly dedicated to her music. She is passionate about playing the oboe and strives for perfection in her performance. Her commitment to music serves as both a refuge and a means of expression for her deeply felt emotions.
As the series progresses, Mizore gradually opens up more to her peers, especially with the support of her friends and the encouragement of her bandmates.
Chronology[]
As a minor character in season one of the anime, Mizore had a very small role with no speaking lines. She was present as a cameo in several episodes, occasionally seen quietly playing her oboe.
In the theater version, there is an additional scene where Mizore speaks with Yuuko, which takes place before Yuuko asks Reina to purposely lose in the audition.
In season two, Mizore is revealed to have had a fallen friendship with former band member Nozomi Kasaki after the schism of the previous year. Nozomi now wishes to rejoin the band because of the new attitude of the ensemble under Noboru Taki's direction. Because of Mizore's extremely high value to the ensemble, due to her soloistic playing being a huge contributor to the band's overall success, Asuka Tanaka refuses to allow Nozomi to rejoin the band out of concern that Mizore will be emotionally compromised. However, due to an unexpected move by Nozomi to talk to Mizore causing her to run off, the latter managed to talk things out with Nozomi and restore their friendship. It is also revealed that Mizore played the oboe for the sole reason that it was the only thing that connected her with Nozomi.
During their third year, Mizore and Nozomi's friendship develop further, this being the main plot of Liz and the Blue Bird. Mizore and Nozomi are often together, Mizore eagerly waiting for Nozomi everyday so they can practice together before school. Mizore also follows Nozomi to walk with her in and after school, constantly looking up to her. Being in their third year, the two need to decide on their career plan, which will highlight discrepancies between the two, asymmetrical relations. As Mizore is asked by Satomi Niiyama to consider joining a music university and not Nozomi, Nozomi realize how she does not have the musical abilities of Mizore. That year, the band choses to play a piece, Liz and the Blue Bird (piece), that features an important flute and oboe duo. What everyone will come to discover is that Mizore lowers her abilities to match Nozomi's. As they journey their feelings together, Mizore will eventually free Nozomi and build a more harmonious relationship.
After getting to fully understand and accept each other, Mizore becomes less dependent on Nozomi and decides to go to a music school after graduating, while Nozomi decides to go to a regular university. She performs well at university, being already a soloist on her first year, during the concert given by her university seen in Season 3. She maintains relations with Nozomi and the others at university.
Relationships[]
Nozomi Kasaki[]
Due to her introverted personality, Mizore had no friends in middle school, so Nozomi reached out to her and invited her to join the band. Since then, Mizore admired Nozomi and treated her as a best friend. However, early in high school, the two had a falling out, involving Nozomi's quitting of the Kitauji Concert Band. In Episode 4 of Season 2, Mizore was finally able to muster up the courage to talk to Nozomi and restore their friendship.
In Liz and the Blue Bird, Mizore realises the full extent of their friendship, ultimately confessing and calling Nozomi her "everything". Mizore also becomes less dependent on Nozomi, but their relationship deepens into an unbreakable friendship.
Although the relationship between the two girls is formally described as friendship in most official sources, in interviews dedicated to the film, Naoko Yamada repeatedly noted that the filmmakers did not intend to simply portray Mizore and Nozomi’s bond as either “very good friends” or a “love story”, instead preferring to represent the complex teenage experience, which the viewer can evaluate for themself by observing the “sincere behavior” of the characters.[1]
Yuuko Yoshikawa[]
After Nozomi left the band, Yuuko began spending time with Mizore in the hopes that she would not feel so lonely. Yuuko has expressed a genuine desire to see Mizore cheerful and happy.
Kumiko Oumae[]
Mizore has a good relationship with Kumiko as friends. She helped look for Mizore when she panicked and ran off.
Ririka Kenzaki[]
In the standalone film Liz and the Blue Bird, Ririka approaches Mizore multiple times, in the hopes of bringing her senior closer to the underclassmen 'double-reed' players. While Mizore initially acts distant and turns her down, the two grow closer, developing a senior-junior relationship. Ririka greatly admires Mizore's oboe skills and wants to play alongside her, and Mizore teaches her to fashion her own reeds, comforting her when she fails the audition. When Nozomi invites Mizore to the pool, Mizore invites Ririka to go as well.
Etymology[]
- The name Mizore is written in hiragana (みぞれ), which has no special meaning. However, when written in kanji (霙), it could possibly mean "sleet".
- "Mizore" may be a partial anagram of Nozomi Kasaki's name, with two of the three kana syllables matching: "Mi-zo-" — "-zo-mi".
- Mizore's surname Yoroizuka means "armor" (鎧) (yoroi) and "mound, hill/hillock, heap, knoll, pile, drift, stack, bank" (塚) (tsuka/zuka).
Voice Actresses[]
| Language | TV anime | Chikai | Liz | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Japanese | Atsumi Tanezaki [name 1] | |||
| English | Laurie Hymes | |||
| Cantonese | Sharon Leung Siu Ha [name 2] | |||
| Korean | Yoon Eun-seo [name 3] | |||
| German | Katharina Stark | |||
| Italian | Agnese Marteddu | |||
| French | Pauline Ziadé | |||
Trivia[]
- According to the official Sound! Euphonium novel website:
- Her favorite colors are blue, navy blue, and ash.
- Her hobby is hanging out with her cat at home.
- Her special skill is playing rhythm games, and she is strong at playing strategy games.
- Mizore marched with pom-poms during SunFes, as oboes are not marching instruments.
- Mizore doesn't speak at all in the first season of the anime.
- According to the interview in the theater pamphlet, they said they didn't want to make her speak because the second season wasn't confirmed at that time.
- Despite Mizore's lack of meaningful role in the first season, she appears in many official artworks and brief movie frames as some sort of hint for season 2.
- Mizore, Nozomi Kasaki, Natsuki Nakagawa and Yuuko Yoshikawa graduated from Minami Junior High School.
- There is an additional scene in the theater version where Mizore talks with Yuuko, but her VA is uncredited (which is now revealed to be Atsumi Tanezaki).
- Based on the scrape patterns on her reed in the first episode of the second season, it can be seen that Mizore plays on the short-scrape style reeds common to European players.
- Mizore's oboe playing has been praised by Noboru Taki as always being perfectly in tune, but Masahiro Hashimoto has commented that it lacks emotion, yet he notices how her musical expression changes when Nozomi returns.
- Additionally, Mizore can play a little bit of piano as shown in Liz and the Blue Bird.
- According to the second light novel, she had to learn how to play the piano for her exam.
- Mizore likes soda-flavored sweets and carbonated juice, while she dislikes places with poor radio signals.
- Mizore is one of the few characters who do not speak with the kansai dialect. She says in the novel and the manga that it might be because her cousins are from Saitama.
Gallery[]
Notes[]
- Native names
References[]
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