Goodbye, Lara Episode 1 Review

Storyboards and episode direction: Takushi Koide

Animation direction: Shiori Tani

Script: Anna Kawahara

Deep under the sea, in the year 1777, the mermaid princess Lara is born as the youngest of her siblings. As she grows over the years, she develops a fascination with the surface world and its humans, whom the mermaids abhor for apparent purity reasons, and a mysterious quality that catches the eye of her banished aunt, the witch Grace. A quest for interspecies love, which Grace has immense interest in as well, leads Lara to the surface after imbibing a magic potion, only for things to fall apart at the climax. Despite dying from her failure of trying to find true love, Lara returns to life a couple of centuries later and is given another chance to seek it, as well as to save the mermaids who are now in hibernation following a calamity tied to Lara’s initial passing. 

The first episode of The Little Mermaid-inspired Goodbye, Lara serves as a prologue that feels almost entirely like a fairy tale, and is serious and melancholic for the most part. Then, in the episode’s final moments, Lara gets blasted into 2026 Japan via a fantastic, flower-shaped fountain of water, the magical but previously restrained orchestral music suddenly going into overdrive, and on the way down, our mermaid gets socked by human deuteragonist Mari in the latter’s brief appearance. It’s a loud and exceedingly memorable shift to the show’s primary setting and makes me hope that there will be some more of this delightful, outrageous comedy in future episodes (not that I mind the serious bits).

The scenes set in the past have some visual surprises of their own. When Lara turns back into a mermaid, the show briefly indulges in shocking body horror, and later renders Lara’s tail with impressive detail that continues to emphasize her alienness to her current surroundings and makes the shattering of the dream she’d been living in all the more stark. Throughout the episode, there is a curious visual motif, doubling as a recurring gag, of Lara chomping off heads of living things and objects made in their image, leaving behind decapitated figures. Do we take it to mean that Lara is driven by impulse and instinct rather than calculated thought? Is her failed attempt to kiss the human prince an extension of this motif? The plot hasn’t really begun yet, and much is vague (in a good way — the episode is not so secretive that it forgets to provide hooks), but there are already things to ponder about.

As revealed by the trailers, Goodbye, Lara is a very good-looking show. The series features elegant faces, a strong animation floor, an appealing retro-like aesthetic with more noticeable outlines and darker, more saturated colors than most modern shows, plus stylized blue and red hues that overlay some of the underwater scenes for dramatic effect and atmosphere. The underwater kingdom of the mermaids feels like a fairy-tale dream come to life, while modern-day Japan looks colder but still inviting with its painterly look. If the narrative proves to be a capable companion to the visuals, this will be something truly beautiful.

Adaptation or original: Original

Production credits (those with asterisks had the same role on the Goodbye, Lara pilot film)

• *Director: Takushi Koide
• *Character designer: Shiori Tani (Revue Starlight prop designer, Revue Starlight the Movie co-main animator and animation director et al.)
• Series composer: Anna Kawahara (Ashita, Watashi wa Dareka no Kanojo live-actiond rama co-writer)
• *Background art director: studio Pablo’s Mari Fujino (Sonny Boy)
• *Color designer: Miyao Yamashita (Made in Abyss)
• Color designer: Rika Aizawa
• *Compositing director: Kazuto Izumita (Revue Starlight)
• Music composer: yuma yamaguchi (Undead Murder Farce)
• Animation production: Kinema Citrus

Cast

• Hana Hishikawa as Lara
• Nana Kawaishi as Mari Otsu
• Rika Fukami as Grace
• Ayumu Murase as Luca