Goodbye, Lara

Episodes 1-3

“I suffer with my characters,” Hans Christian Andersen used to tell his friends, according to Maria Tatar's introduction to The Little Mermaid in The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen. Since most of Andersen's heroines suffered greatly – Mary Poppins author P. L. Travers remarked that she “would [rather] see wicked stepmothers boiled in oil…than bear the protracted agony of the Little Mermaid or the girl who wore the Red Shoes” – that perhaps says more about Andersen than most people would expect. But as one of his best known literary fairy tales, The Little Mermaid has a special place in the cultural landscape, with myriad retellings from a variety of cultures, although most have taken a backseat to Disney's 1989 film. Goodbye, Lara absolutely knows this. All it takes is a glance at the heroine's hair color to know that it plans to acknowledge the pop culture heritage of Andersen's 1837 story, but even with that, it's also planning to make its own mark on the Little Mermaid's heritage.

One of those ways is that Andersen's original tale is dispensed with in the first episode. A beautiful, moody retelling remarkably close to the original, although it thankfully leaves out bits like the pain the mermaid felt walking on her new feet and the fact that the prince had her sleep on a cushion outside his bedroom. Lara, like her 19th century counterpart, ends the story by turning into seafoam, but unlike Andersen's mermaid, she doesn't become a spirit of the air with the possibility for achieving a Christian soul in three hundred years. Instead, she is returned to light and her seashell womb, and in two hundred years, she reemerges, a whole mermaid once more. And rather than gaining a “Christian soul,” she has the possibility of reviving her family and their underwater kingdom once more.

It's not only a rather more satisfying ending to the story, it's a perfect set up for a beginning. It also doesn't fully blame Lara for her decision to give in to Grace the Sea Witch's blandishments all those years ago – instead it suggests that she was not at fault and gives her a second chance while suggesting that Grace may have sent Lara to the human world on purpose, not because she's a wicked witch, but because she knew that something was coming for the merfolk, and Lara's fascination with the surface could be the one thing that could save them.

Grace is one of the most interesting characters in these early episodes. Most retellings frame the Sea Witch as evil, or at the very least selfish, but this witch seems more prescient and painted in shades of grey. She doesn't seem to want to punish Lara, and in fact when she revives, the stated price for her legs – her voice – has been done away with; Lara has a very visible scar on her tongue to show that she's already paid. Grace may now be “Gon,” Mari's pet fish, but this, too, could be part of her plan; she may have known that Mari was the human Lara would find her way to upon reawakening so she's already in place to guide her. Grace has a vested interest in Lara's success, not her failure, reminding us that “witch” is often used as a way to cast aspersions on powerful, intelligent women.

The way that Lara can save everyone is by finding “true love.” Right now, she's thinking that that love must be romantic, like her relationship with the prince back in the 18th century. But Goodbye, Lara also has some references to another Andersen story, 1845's The Snow Queen. That story opens with a mirror shattering, and shards of it become embedded in people's eyes and hearts. The prevalence of mirrors in the undersea kingdom – and the fact that they break frequently – seems to be in reference to that, but more importantly for right now, The Snow Queen's message of true love isn't about romance. Gerda goes on a quest to save Kai because she loves him as a friend or a brother. The final paragraphs of the story frame them as childlike in their love for one another, stating that that is the most important form of love. (Well, there's some religious stuff in there, too, because Andersen did that a lot.) That, and the fact that Disney animated The Snow Queen as Frozen, serves as a pointed reminder that “true love” can be friendship or a sibling bond. Romance is great, but it's not the only way Lara can save her family.

I've already written a lot, and there's still more to talk about – the wonderful, lived-in quality of all of the backgrounds, the way Mari's cross is a reference to the overt Christian-centric flavor of Andersen's work, the fact that Lara's sister Lisa is still around, playing the part of the original Little Mermaid's brave third sister, how the death of Mari's mother plays into many a fairy tale trope…I could keep you here all day. But instead, I'll stop, having given you the framework for a folkloric reading of Goodbye, Lara. Let's see what version of the tale this series will give us and what “true love” will set the merfolk free.

Rating:

Recommended Reading: The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen by Maria Tatar. A comprehensive look at some of Andersen's best-known literary fairy tales annotated by Harvard professor Maria Tatar.

Goodbye, Lara is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.