English Dub Review: Goodbye, Lara “The Princess and the Prince”
Overview:
Lara convinces Mari to take her to school and meets Himeka and asks her about her “prince.”
Our Take(Spoilers):
Lara has been trying to get Mari to take her to school for a while now. After spending days and days watching television, Lara starts to get an idea of what a modern-day prince might look like. But the thing that fascinated me was that everyone had a different definition of what a prince was to them. For one person, it was an idol; for another, it was their favorite comedian; and for another, it was a VTuber they liked. I thought it was cool how this put into perspective how things have changed over time. They might not fit the fairytale definition of what we think a prince is, but that’s what it is for that individual.
Finally, Mari relents and lets Lara go to school with her. I always wondered how that works in anime. So often in a show like this, when an alien, or a mermaid, or whatever comes to Japan, they always manage to go to school like it’s not a problem. I’ve never had to enroll a kid in school, but I have to imagine that there’s more to it than simply showing up. Well, in this show it was a little different. Mari brings Lara to her clubroom and asks her to stay there until class is over. Lara still has a school uniform somehow, but maybe it was a spare of Mari’s.
As you might have imagined, Lara doesn’t stay in the clubroom. With the help of Yoshiya, a relative of Mari’s, I believe, Lara goes searching for her prince. Yoshiya doesn’t seem to be as popular as he thinks, but I’ve seen this type of show before, so if I had to guess, if we don’t go the yuri route, then Yoshiya will end up being her “prince”. Before that, though, we are introduced to Himeka, who seems to have found her prince. Lara was surprised when she heard Himeka’s name, I think because “Hime” means princess in Japanese, so she took that to mean that she was a princess.
Himeko has a childhood friend, and Lara manages to convince her that she should confess her feelings to him. I felt bad for Himeko, but it was nice to see that childhood friends don’t always end up together. It seems like we go through phases where the childhood friend always succeeds or never succeeds. In this case, Himeko did not succeed, and I thought that how she handled it was also a breath of fresh air. She was glad that she did it because now she wouldn’t be wandering around with a constant “what-if” hanging over her head.
Lara’s sister reaches out to her through one of her attendants. I felt like I might have missed something when her sister started crying about not being able to see Lara. They spoke through a phone call even though she was nearby. I feel like there is more to this than what we’ve been told so far.
