Goodbye, Lara Review: Crunchyroll's Near-Perfect Little Mermaid Reimagining

Crunchyroll's Goodbye, Lara debuted on July 6 as a 12-part fantasy drama that takes Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid and asks what happens two centuries after the fairy tale ends. Director Takushi Koide crashes the globally recognizable myth into Shiga Prefecture and Lake Biwa — the place where he grew up — creating a story about a mermaid resurrected in modern Japan who gets another chance to understand what love actually means. For viewers tired of glossy, weightless digital production, this series delivers something increasingly rare: animation where you can feel the human hand behind every frame.

The series streams weekly on Crunchyroll and represents a distinctive collaboration between publisher Crunchyroll and studio Kinema Citrus. Koide's background under Kunihiko Ikuhara on series like Yuri Kuma Arashi and Revue Starlight prepared him well for the fairy-tale deconstruction at play here. The result feels like Frieren: Beyond Journey's End in its post-fairy-tale curiosity, but rendered with a visual language that deliberately evokes the textured, illustration-like quality of Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust and Witch Hunter Robin — shows where any paused frame could pass as a standalone painting.

About Goodbye, Lara

Goodbye, Lara is a 12-episode fantasy drama series produced by Kinema Citrus and streaming on Crunchyroll. The series premiered on July 6 and continues to air weekly. Set in Japan's Shiga Prefecture around Lake Biwa, the story follows Lara — a mermaid who fell in love with a human prince, failed to secure the "true love" needed to save herself, and dissolved into the sea. Two hundred years later, she is resurrected in Lake Biwa and given another chance to discover what love truly means. The series blends classic fairy-tale structure with intensely local Japanese specificity.

Director Takushi Koide brings a distinctive pedigree to the project. Having worked under Kunihiko Ikuhara on Yuri Kuma Arashi and Revue Starlight, Koide is well-versed in the kind of folklore structuring and fairy-tale deconstruction that Goodbye, Lara demands. In previous interviews, he explained that he "wanted to take the globally recognizable idea of The Little Mermaid and crash it into something intensely local: Shiga Prefecture and Lake Biwa, the place where he grew up." This collision of universal myth and personal geography gives the series its unique emotional texture.

A Tactile Digital Aesthetic

Most of Goodbye, Lara is digitally animated, yet the series achieves a tactile, hand-drawn quality that many contemporary productions lack. Thick outlines define characters against saturated backgrounds, while Lara's bright red hair and clothing pop against the deep blues of the underwater world. When she surfaces at night above Lake Biwa, the yellow moon and dark water create compositions that resemble storybook illustrations given motion. The series doesn't pretend to be traditionally cel-animated — instead, it uses digital tools to recreate the visual personality and texture associated with older anime.

This tactile approach extends to environmental interaction. Underwater, Lara's hair and fins move constantly with currents, while seaweed and debris drift around her. Even minute details — floating shards of a broken mirror, tears moving through water — receive individual animation. The world doesn't simply exist behind the characters; it moves with them. Koide described the production as something the team wanted to create "by hand," emphasizing that they weren't really using 3DCG or AI. The result is animation that feels alive rather than merely technically impressive.

Sinking to New Depths

The series demonstrates its artistic priorities through movement rather than spectacle. In Episode 3, a boxing sequence receives extraordinary attention — animator Hidehiko Sawada handled nearly the entire scene using what Koide called "a ton of drawings" rather than relying on camera tricks or still frames. The sequence feels deliberately raw and physical, allowing viewers to register individual movements rather than simply processing rapid action. This approach recalls the deliberate character animation of classic productions where every frame carried weight.

The opening sequence makes the production philosophy particularly visible. While the series proper is digitally drawn, the opening incorporates actual analog cel animation alongside digital work. These cel-animated moments possess a softer, more tactile texture that briefly shifts the feeling of the image. Rather than reverting entirely to decades-old production methods, the series uses cel animation as another texture in its visual vocabulary. As Yoshitaka Amano recently observed, traditional hand-drawn animation might actually feel new to younger audiences precisely because they have grown up surrounded by digital imagery — the important thing is that the image begins with a human hand rather than being generated by technology itself.

What This Means for Viewers

Goodbye, Lara arrives at a moment when anime production increasingly leans on 3DCG shortcuts and AI-assisted workflows. The series stands as a counter-argument: the magic isn't in the specific technology used, but in the undeniable presence of artistic intention behind every frame. For viewers who miss the illustration-like quality of late-90s and early-2000s anime — where pausing any moment in Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust or Witch Hunter Robin felt like looking at a painting — this series delivers that sensation without nostalgia-baiting. It doesn't recreate the anime of the past; it reminds you why those shows left lasting impressions.

The fairy-tale reimagining itself proves equally thoughtful. By transplanting The Little Mermaid to Lake Biwa and extending the timeline two centuries past the original tragedy, the series explores what happens when a mythological creature confronts modern existence. The Shiga Prefecture setting isn't decorative — it's the director's home ground, rendered with the specificity that only personal history can provide. This collision of global folklore and local geography creates a story that feels both timeless and urgently contemporary.

Goodbye, Lara takes an old myth, draws it with a distinctly contemporary hand, and makes it feel as refreshing and memorable as some of the all-time greats. The series doesn't need to recreate the production process of Bloodlust or Witch Hunter Robin to remind us why we loved those shows — it simply demonstrates what happens when a team genuinely cares about every frame. As the weekly release continues on Crunchyroll, this stands as one of the year's most visually distinctive and narratively ambitious fantasy offerings.