English Dub Season Review: Goodbye, Lara Season One
Overview:
Long, long ago, a mermaid princess named Lara lived. Her father, the king of the sea, raised her with love, along with her sisters. One day, Lara fell in love with a human prince who lived on land. It was a forbidden love—one that was not allowed in the world of mermaids. Still, Lara journeyed to the surface. With a potion, given to her by the witch Grace, she became human. But the potion came at a cost—fail to find true love, and she would turn into foam and vanish into the ocean. Though she was a princess of the sea, Lara chose love. Yet, her wish went unfulfilled, and she vanished into the sea. Two hundred years later, Lara awakens once more in Lake Biwa to finally search for her true love.
Our Take (Spoilers):
This is an amazingly gorgeous show. The voice acting is great, and this feels like a show that got a huge budget or something. If it did get a massive budget, though, I don’t think much of it went to the storytelling. What is Goodbye, Lara about? To be honest, I don’t think I can tell you. It felt wishy-washy on most of the things it was trying to say to me, but let’s get into it.
From an animation standpoint, this show was amazingly well done. It looks like a Ghibli film and has an older charm to it. If you like older-looking animation styles that somehow give you a feeling of magic and whimsy, then you’ll like how this show looks.
The voice acting cast does a fantastic job. Brianna Knickerbocker knocks it out of the park as Lara. My friends got me a Cameo from her for my birthday last year, so I might be a little biased, but I usually love her in every role she’s in. Then, of course, we have Anairis Quinones as Mari. Mari, as a character, gets shafted, in my opinion, but Anairis does a fantastic job voicing her. Mari is usually calm and collected, but when her emotions shine through, Anairis brings the heat. Last but not least, I’d like to talk a bit about Tiana Camacho as Grace the Witch. Her character arc also ended on a sour note for me, but when she was on-screen, either as a fish or a mermaid, her voice shone through.
As you might have guessed, the story and ending are pretty subpar. Endings are one of the most important things for me when I review a show. Especially for a show that’s an anime original. Since there is no source material to keep up with or anything, a conclusive ending shouldn’t be asking for much.
Goodbye, Lara feels like a yuri show that is afraid to commit to being a yuri show. While I love romance, I can love a show that doesn’t have it. If the lesson was that Lara needed to find true love in the form of friendship or loving herself, that would be awesome too. But the problem is the show never truly commits to any of these ideas. It felt like Mari loved Lara as more than a friend by the end, but she was left all alone because Grace was gone and Lara had to leave for… some reason.
I’m even okay with a bittersweet ending so long as it makes sense. But by the time Goodbye, Lara was over, I didn’t know how to feel. I think the best way to describe it at the end was that I felt nothing. Feeling nothing at the end of a show that clearly wants us to feel something might be the most daming thing I could say.
