Goodbye, Lara Review: The Little Mermaid Sequel Nobody Asked For Just Topped the Season

Every season has a show that starts as a curiosity and ends as the thing everyone is actually talking about. For Summer 2026, that show is Goodbye, Lara, and it just did something that should embarrass every big-budget sequel airing alongside it: it took the number one spot in Anime News Network's weekly viewer rankings, after quietly climbing there all season.

The premise is smarter than it sounds

You know the Hans Christian Andersen story. Mermaid princess falls for a human prince, trades her voice for legs, gets betrayed, dissolves into sea foam rather than kill him to save herself. It is one of the bleaker fairy tales that gets sanded down into something family-friendly more often than it gets told straight.

Goodbye, Lara tells it straight, and then keeps going. The original tragedy is compressed into the first episode as backstory, not softened, not rewritten with a happy ending grafted on. Lara sacrifices everything, gets tricked, and dissolves exactly the way Andersen wrote it. Then two hundred years pass, and she is reborn into modern-day Japan, specifically into Lake Biwa, where she has to figure out how to exist as a person in a world that has no idea who she used to be.

That structure is the smartest thing about the show. It is not a retelling that hedges on the sad ending, and it is not a completely disconnected reincarnation story that happens to reference the fairy tale. It is a direct sequel to a 19th-century tragedy, built as a modern coming-of-age drama about a girl who already died once and has to decide what her second life is worth.

Kinema Citrus made this for their own anniversary, and it shows

This is Kinema Citrus's 15th anniversary project, and studios tend to use anniversary slots on passion projects rather than safe adaptations. It is an original work, not sourced from an existing manga or light novel, which is increasingly rare for a series with this much production care put into it.

Director Takushi Koide grew up near Lake Biwa, and that biographical detail matters more than it usually would for a setting choice. The lake is not a generic anime-Japan backdrop, it reads as a place someone actually knows, with the kind of small geographic specificity that makes a modern-day setting feel lived in rather than assembled from stock backgrounds. Character designs come from Shiori Tani, whose work on Revue Starlight should tell you what to expect stylistically: expressive, a little theatrical, unafraid of big emotional close-ups. Hana Hishikawa voices Lara in Japanese, and by most accounts the English dub cast is carrying the material just as well.

The yuri question everyone is arguing about

I would be underselling the discourse around this show if I did not mention it directly. A significant chunk of the online conversation about Goodbye, Lara is about whether it is building toward an explicit romantic relationship between Lara and Marie, a human girl she grows close to in her second life, or whether it is going to stay in the deliberately ambiguous space so many anime use to gesture at queer romance without committing to it.

The show has planted real evidence for the hopeful reading. Lara's thoughts return to Marie more than once in ways the narration frames as significant, and a recurring dagger motif tied to the original fairy tale's mythology reportedly reacts specifically around her. Whether that pays off as text or stays subtext is still an open question with episodes left to air, and it is exactly the kind of ambiguity that keeps a fanbase engaged on a weekly basis instead of just watching and moving on.

Why it earned the top ranking

Ranking first in ANN's reader poll during a season that also includes Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War's final arc is not a small thing. Bleach has twenty-two years of built-in audience. Goodbye, Lara has none of that, no franchise recognition, no manga fanbase walking in the door already invested.

What it does have is a premise that respects its source material's darkness instead of flattening it, a director who brought a genuine sense of place to the setting, and a slow-burn emotional arc that has clearly rewarded people for sticking with it week to week. Original anime rarely get the chance to build this kind of momentum organically, because they are competing against sequels with a decade of preexisting hype. Goodbye, Lara did it anyway.

The verdict

Goodbye, Lara is the best kind of surprise: a fairy tale sequel that trusts its audience with a genuinely sad premise, then earns a hopeful arc instead of forcing one. If you skipped it at the start of the season because a Little Mermaid continuation sounded like a gimmick, the viewer rankings are telling you it is not. Catch up before the season wraps.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Goodbye, Lara connected to The Little Mermaid?

Yes, directly. It functions as a sequel to Hans Christian Andersen's original fairy tale rather than a retelling, with Lara's death from the source story shown as backstory in episode one before she reincarnates 200 years later.

What studio makes Goodbye, Lara?

Kinema Citrus, as an original production marking the studio's 15th anniversary. It is directed by Takushi Koide with character designs by Shiori Tani.

Is Goodbye, Lara a yuri anime?

That is genuinely contested. The show builds a close, emotionally charged relationship between Lara and Marie with hints that could point toward a romantic arc, but as of mid-September 2026 it has not explicitly confirmed the relationship as romantic.

Are you Team "let it be canon" or Team "leave it ambiguous"? Argue it out in the chat.