The Summer 2026 Anime Preview Guide

Goodbye, Lara

A mermaid makes a forbidden wish to be loved by a human. Following her death, she is reborn 200 years later into modern-day Japan in Lake Biwa, where she learns to adjust to the human world.

Goodbye, Lara is loosely based on the classic Hans Christian Andersen story The Little Mermaid. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Sundays.

In her introduction to The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen, author A. S. Byatt called him a “literary terrorist.” The reasoning for this was the alarming regularity with which he hurt little girls – from Karen stepping on a loaf of bread and being dragged to hell to Karin and her ever-dancing red shoes that caused her feet to be cut off to the poor Match Girl freezing to death, Andersen's track record isn't great. And among those abused girls is The Little Mermaid, perhaps his most famous tortured dead girl – and unlike her sisters', her story is often held up as romantic.

Goodbye, Lara's first episode proves that it understands the Andersenian style of literary fairy tale and how he treated his heroines. This little mermaid is a near-perfect combination of Andersen's and Disney's: she doesn't seem to be in pain when she walks (Andersen's felt she was stepping on knives), and she collects human detritus, but she looks like she has shells attached to her fins in close-up and turns to sea foam in the end. And perhaps cruelest of all, her death doesn't free her – instead, it merely pushes her forward to a time when the merfolk kingdom has fallen, placing its revival squarely on her shoulders alongside the blame for its demise in the first place. Throw in some magic mirrors and a quest narrative in a nod to Andersen's The Snow Queen, and you have a show worthy of its end card honoring the memory of Denmark's most famous storyteller.

While it's difficult to remove this episode from its literary heritage (which may be a me problem), it does stand on its own remarkably well. I don't love the pointy-faced character designs, but setting it in the late 18th century at first is a good move, and they absolutely commit to that in terms of historical costuming. Grace, the sea witch, is appropriately scary – she's not the kind of evil you recoil from, but the kind who draws you in before biting down, an interesting thought when Lara herself tends to chomp fish in half without any conscious thought. Yes, she needs to eat, but this action seems intended to draw a parallel between her and her wicked aunt, who, at one point, is shown sucking down a jellyfish. Given that the architecture and daily objects we're shown all make natural use of sea creatures, their consumption of them is striking, and it ties in nicely with ideas from The Snow Queen, where shards of magic mirror become embedded in people's eyes and hearts. But even if you don't know all of this, the backgrounds are breathtaking, the scene of Lara turning back into a mermaid is astonishing (and appropriately gross, given the prince's reaction), and Lara's awakening in a ruined palace populated by skeletons is chilling. It's all incredibly well thought out and put together.

Fairy tale fans should not sleep on this. Whether or not Lara is able to overcome her fate as predetermined by Andersen remains to be seen, and I do like the possibility that this time her prince will be a boxing princess named Mari, who may or may not talk to her pet fish. This is bubbling over with potential, and I cannot wait to see more.

I've been looking forward to Goodbye, Lara ever since Kinema Citrus announced it as their anniversary project back in 2024. That studio has earned my undying loyalty thanks to their standard-setting work on shows like Made in Abyss and Revue Starlight, and I was immediately excited by the throwback aesthetic that they are going with for Goodbye, Lara. As someone who is on the record for thinking Ponyo is a bit too silly and juvenile to be a proper Miyazaki masterpiece, Goodbye, Lara seemed to be incorporating a slightly more melancholy and nuanced tone, which absolutely fits with a new take on the famously depressing story of The Little Mermaid. For anyone only familiar with the fable through the Disney adaptation, be warned: Hans Christian Andersen was going through some stuff when he wrote his most famous work, and most takes on the material incorporate those less sanitized elements.

What makes Goodbye, Lara interesting is how it incorporates some of those famously tragic elements right from the get-go. The Mermaid usually doesn't lose her love and dissolve into sea foam until the very end of her story, but our Lara here seems to be getting a second chance at getting her happy ending. Now, I'm not going to get my hopes too high, just yet. The word Goodbye is right there in the title, after all. Anyone who's ever watched an anime before ought to know the score. Still, the way that Goodbye, Lara is leveraging the imagery and tropes of classic Little Mermaid adaptation while forging its own path is very promising indeed.

What is even more exciting, at least for someone like me, is that Goodbye, Lara is knocking it out of the park so far as its animation and direction are concerned. Its expressive but relatively simple artwork, combined with the gorgeous and lush background art that Lara swims through, makes the whole show look and feel like some lost anime fable rescued from a time capsule that got buried back in 1997. This would make a perfect double-feature with some key episodes from Nadia and the Secret of Blue Water, and any anime that gets me to evoke Nadia is clearly doing something very right.

I basically loved everything about the premiere of Goodbye, Lara, to the point where I immediately began rewatching entire scenes the minute it ended. This is a beautifully crafted homage to the classic anime of the 80s and 90s that manages to still feel vital in its own right, rather than a mere pastiche. I will be eagerly awaiting the next episode of this lovely little fairy tale, and I encourage anyone who appreciates quality fantasy in their animation to do the same.

Even though it's coming out later, this is the first entry I'm writing for this season's preview guide. For the last few years, I've felt cursed; the first show I get to is always dogwater. But now, I feel like the curse has lifted. Goodbye, Lara is good. Not only that, it may even be great.

Considering the first episode is more or less yet another retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid, that's really saying something. In fact, it's one of the more straightforward adaptations of the original story, albeit with some of the darker bits cut out, like the mermaid being in constant pain. Lara is a feisty young mermaid who, fascinated by the human world, saves a drowning prince and falls in love with him. A sea witch turns her human, giving her legs in exchange for her voice. She and the prince fall in love, but in the end, she dissolves into sea foam. This is all portrayed with a fantastic degree of confidence, knowing just how much of the story to show so viewers can suss out the specifics of this version while also being aware that we've all seen some version or other of the story. While there is some foreshadowing, things only really change in the last few minutes of the episode.

But the thing that stands out most about Goodbye, Lara isn't the story; at least, not yet. No, the biggest draw for it right now is its visual design. It's been decades since there's been an anime that truly, truly captured the look and feel of 90's shoujo anime at its best. Instead of aiming for washed-out colors, it goes bold and bright and vivid, eschewing the aggressive usage of bloom, filters, and gradients that mark most anime productions for the last decade. Backgrounds look hand-painted, and Lara's brilliant red hair stands out against the blues of her oceanic home. At the same time, modern animation techniques and tools make it possible for the visuals to be on par with the most sumptuous films of the era it takes its inspiration from.

I've been following the release of Goodbye, Lara ever since it was first announced. Something about that teaser trailer grabbed me and wouldn't let me go. Going by the first episode, my instincts were right. Don't miss out on Goodbye, Lara. This is going to be great.

This was probably one of the most economical adaptations of the original grim Little Mermaid. At first, I was wondering if the whole show was just going to be a loose adaptation of that with its own creative liberties, but considering this first episode uses the original grim tale as an inciting incident for what I assume is going to be the real story moving forward, now I don't know what to expect. Obviously, this first episode skips over a lot of the finer details, but that just made me all the more curious regarding what direction this premiere was going to go in. I especially like the fact that the original Little Mermaid retelling was being used almost like a historical period piece, which contrasted with the end of the episode taking place in modern day, all the more significant. That plot point adds a lot of weight to the consequence of Lara's actions, because her family has apparently been asleep for hundreds of years.

However, I am worried that bringing the story to modern day will end up being a bit more of a typical type of anime scenario. This episode even ends with the typical fated encounter between a mysterious woman and what I assume is a quirky school student. I mean, considering that this student's first instinct was to punch a girl flying through the air straight towards her, already says a lot. But that's what makes judging this premiere a little bit difficult because this episode does such a good job of telling its own story that, honestly, it almost functions as its own small short film. The fact that all of this was set up for a different type of story that I won't get to see until episode two makes me curious but also very trepidatious about what's to come.

At the very least, I hope the rest of the series maintains the style and pacing of this first episode. The anime is definitely going for a bit of a retro aesthetic, utilizing bright, contrasting colors in order to generate emotional weight and significance. I especially love how red plays such a prominent role in the anime's color palette and it's incredibly well animated during choice significant sequences. There are a lot of seeds being planted with regard to what exactly Lara is, her role in all of this, and what exactly she needs to do with this trial in order to save her people. Of all the previews I've watched so far, this definitely has me the most curious, which is ironic because of all the things I've watched, it arguably plays with one of the oldest and most familiar stories in fiction.