Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Goodbye, Lara
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Oggers
 Posts: 470 Location: Ontario, Canada |
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I've really enjoyed Goodbye, Lara so far. It's definitely an interesting take on The Little Mermaid, and I remember being struck by the promo material's very 90s/early 2000s character designs (and apparently some cuts of the OP even use cel animation), which are animated very well. I get strong Princess Tutu and Utena vibes from it in terms of anime that are inspired by fairy tales/use fairy tale motifs, though time will tell it this series can stand alongside those ones.
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whiskeyii
 Posts: 2485 |
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There’s already some really interesting imagery from Andersen’s story being used (I think) that I can’t wait to see be expounded upon, namely the incorporation of Lara’s elder sister and the dagger motif, both of which played a pivotal role in providing the original Little Mermaid with a possible out in the original tale.
(As an aside, I know he’s dead, but I don’t think I’ll ever forgive Andersen for The Little Matchstick Girl. That one just always struck me as especially cruel, for whatever reason.) |
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Dumas1
Posts: 121 |
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Back in the 90s, I had a copy of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid on VHS and the first episode reminded me a lot of that old movie. I'm not sure how much of that comes from adapting the same source material, but I'm wondering what kind of fairly large aquatic creature Lara could befriend in Lake Biwa.
Since someone mentioned Utena, I keep thinking that Lara's father looks an awful lot like Touga. |
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BeanBeanKingdom
Posts: 54 |
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Odd premise for a yuri boxing anime but I'll take it.
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gorilla491
Posts: 103 |
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Ha! That's interesting. I still have a vhs of that |
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Princess_Irene
ANN Associate Editor
 Posts: 2819 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
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That one and "The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf" are vicious. There's a reason A.S. Byatt called him a "literary terrorist." |
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Kaylee Smerbeck
Posts: 165 |
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Well we had Yuri Tempest might as well have Yuri Little Mermaid
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meiam
Posts: 3708 |
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While I'm enjoying this a lot, I really wish the show would integrate the mermaid aspect more with the rest of the story. At this point, it feel like they've found a rom-com script from the 90, gender switched Mari, stapled the little mermaid story as the first page and proceed to do a masterful work of animating it all.
Plenty of aspects of the original tale are seemingly forgotten, Lara regain her voice, and yet never mention it and nothing is done to lampshade this. Even after retaking the potion, she still keep her voice, I guess the heroine in the 90 script wasn't mute. From Lara point of view, its only been a day or two since she lost the prince, but she seem to already have completely forgotten about him, I guess it really wasn't true love, a far cry from her refusing to kill him even after he betrays her. The original tale also had an interesting inversion on the old mermaid tale (sea creature who lure sailor, with their voice, to their death), with the human instead luring the mermaid, who then lose her voice and eventually die. But this doesn't really push this in anyway. There's also a loose theme of communication, the mermaid lose her voice and also never reveal that she is the one who save the prince, causing her to lose her love in the end. I was hoping this would be carried forward in this version, since in the first episode she also suffer due to lack of communication (never telling the prince she's a mermaid before turning to foam, which could have saved her). But Mari know Lara is a mermaid from the beginning, so that doesn't really seem to have anything to do with it. About the only aspect that seem to remain is that the mermaid fall in love with the very first human she ran across, but that seems unintentional. So I can't really see why having the sequel aspect was important, they could have easily just made it so this was just a retelling of the story, with Lara meeting (possibly saving from drowning) Mari. Another angle could have been to adapt the story, but instead of using a western mermaid, adapt the story using a Japanese folk creature similar to a mermaid, that could have led to some fun variation (plus would have helped explain why when Lara first head to the surface she met an English ship, but now the underwater kingdom apparently teleported next to japan). The show is juggling a lot of stuff already even before accounting the mermaid story, boxing, christian motif, homosexuality (possibly). The mermaid sequel aspect doesn't really feed into any of them (or at least, no more than any other classic tale would). Hopefully they're trying to be more about Anderson himself, so that could feed into the homosexuality and christian aspect, but that kinda leave Lara as a weird stand in. |
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Piglet the Grate
 Posts: 1459 Location: North America |
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Sanitized in Episode 13 of Ugoku! Neko Mukashi Banashi (Cat Tales) (3 minute short). |
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SinisterOracle
 SubscriberPosts: 910 |
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The first anime movie I ever saw was Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid and I absolutely fell in love with it. I remember watching Disney’s The Little Mermaid later and falling in love with merfolk all over again. Goodbye, Lara has been such a joy and comfort to watch. I too am looking forward to Lara finding out what true love means to her. I absolutely love that the show visually shows her love with the crystalline light it shows and I adore the clam constantly shown above her head! Just little details that really set this apart from other shows.
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Eilavel
Posts: 556 |
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I'm enjoying the show. Any 5 minutes of the show you take, are superbly animated and fun to watch.
But the show just isn't adding up to more than that so far. Ep 3 is a great example. I know a lot about how Mari feels about boxing, and some of her background. I have no idea why or how she is keeping a random girl in her house, or why she doesn't seem to think twice about her talking goldfish. This is a really strange order of events! Lara is fun to watch, but her antics in episodes 2 and 3 don't really amount to anything. Grace, the cuts to the kingdom and a couple of other moments all seem to point to big arcs, but a lot of what we've got so far has seemed to be meandering to nowhere. I hope it all starts to come together a bit more soon. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 19175 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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I had never heard of this one before, so I looked it up. Wow. 
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PumpkinMouse
Subscriber Posts: 114 |
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This was my thinking too until I saw the third episode. 
Between Mari telling Lara to watch her while she boxed her captain—something that felt a lot like the kind of veiled declaration a shojo male love interest would make—and the giant geyser that formed after Mari said she (platonically) liked Lara, my money’s on yuri saving the day. If it does, I don’t expect Mari to catch feelings until super late, though I’m still holding out for a Snow Queen/Frozen-style “platonic love saves the day” twist like Rebecca mentioned. But really, the show’s been so fun and intriguing that I think I’ll be happy with pretty much any ending! |
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