On July 6, I watched the first episode of Goodbye Lara, which seemed to me like a tired retread of The Little Mermaid. Three days later, I changed my mind after I watched Moana.
Goodbye Lara
The first five episodes are now streaming on Crunchyroll. Subsequent episodes will debut every Monday. I've seen the first five episodes.
First published in 1837, Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tale for children is translated faithfully in the first episode of Goodbye Lara. The titular character is well-motivated to save her underwater kingdom by finding true love with a human prince.
Because the first episode was animated in a retro-style that reminded me of other recent retro-style animated series -- X-Men '97 (Disney Plus), The Ghost in the Shell (Prime Video), and Thunder 3 (Netflix) -- I was not initially inclined to watch and/or write about a romantic show with a familiar premise.
In subsequent days, however, I watched Disney's Moana (2026), which did nothing new or unexpected while telling the same story as Disney's Moana (2016), as well-described by our own Mel Valentin in his review. After that, I decided to give Goodbye Lara another look, and a curious thing happened: Before my eyes, it gets better, deeper, and more emotionally persuasive in Episodes 2-5.
As with other narrative shows, it's not unusual for anime series to change for the better (or the worse) within a few episodes: The characters become stale, the action gets repetitive, the jokes become grating. Thus, though I've sampled 41 shows this summer, my watchlist has steadily dwindled over the past few weeks: I'm now down to 15-18 that I'm still consistently watching. That number will likely dwindle in the weeks ahead.
Alas, Goodbye Lara has not suddenly jumped into action mode and inserted fight scenes or any other type of action that normally catches our site's attention. So what interests me most is that the show has refreshed IP, something that Moana, for one example out of many, has utterly failed to do.
The same could be said for X-Men '97, which relies heavily upon the nostalgic appeal to now-adult viewers who fell in love with the original series in the 90s, or to The Ghost in the Shell, which shares with X-Men '97 a clear delight in jamming their episodes with thick clusters of jargon and references that mystify anyone who was not a devoted fan of their forebearers.
Goodbye Lara puts its plucky yet entirely naive mermaid on land with legs. In Episode 2, high school girl Mari takes pity on Lara and brings her home. (See clip below.)
Mari is an intensely-focused young woman who is overwhelmed with the anxieties of modern life. She is motherless and tends to take out her frustrations with competitive boxing. (See clip below.)
The sea witch who cursed Lara is now a fish who lives in an aquarium tank in Mari's room, and keeps trying to give Lara counsel for living, reminding her that if she doesn't find romance, her world is doomed.
Lara is completely ignorant about humans, and so is ill-equipped to understand anything about the modern world above sea. She must make a prince fall in love with her, but she has no idea how to do that, and she worries that no princes remain in her new surroundings. (See clip below.) Her plaintive eyes often fill with tears, an anime trope, but in this case it's easier to be empathetic with her because she is not seeking romance for herself, but for the salvation of others.
In Episode 5, the owner of the house where they live demands for the first time that Mari needs to pay her rent. She also demands payment from Lara for a window that she smashed in an earlier episode. Mari and Lara seek employment -- Lara's resume is entirely blank as to her suitability -- until a cake shop owner gives them a try after Lara declares: "I'm willing to die for cake!!"
Lara is clumsy and unsuited even for washing dishes, but she perseveres. (See clip below.)
When she is finally allowed to assist in the kitchen, she creates one disaster after another. Resolving to quit and accept her fate -- remember, she will literally die if she doesn't find a prince to fall in love with her -- she is shocked the next morning when her co-workers put her failures of the previous day into perspective.
That's when I was sold on the show. To confirm my feelings, sometime in the episode, Lara has an entirely unexpected encounter with her older sister, Lisa, who has an evil glint in her eye, which is never a good sign for the characters, yet always a good sign for viewers.
An evil-eyed glint, sibling plotting, and an explosion on a bridge point to more trouble ahead. So the show remains on my watchlist.
Official synopsis: "Once upon a time, a mermaid princess named Lara fell in love with a human prince. To be with him, she used a witch's potion to become human--but the magic came at a cost: If she failed to find true love, she would vanish into sea foam forever. Now, 200 years later, Lara awakens in Lake Biwa with one final chance at life and love."
Photos credit: Copyright KinemaCitrus/Goodbye Lara PARTNERS
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