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The story
Episode 16 (the finale) of the anime “Goodbye Lara,” which portrays the relationship between mermaid princess Lara and human girl Mari, has aired, sparking a flood of reactions on 5ch’s live-commentary threads. Opinions split over Lara’s line “I don’t need true love” and over how to take the ending, in which she becomes independent and parts ways with Mari. Some also pointed out shortcomings in the animation quality and loose ends left by underdeveloped foreshadowing. Lara’s more mature look and demeanor in the finale drew attention as well.
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Lara was a mermaid princess who longed for love with a human.
But——that wish went unfulfilled, and she dissolved into sea foam, vanishing into the ocean.
Source: goodbyelara.com / Original article here
What people said
The art couldn't keep up with the voice actors' performances at all, it's honestly sad.
Whatever's up with the cel work aside, there are other important things too.
True that.
The angles, the atmosphere effects, the BGM too —
if they'd put more effort into the eye animation (even under the mask), it might have hit a lot harder.
Feels like some weird stubborn priorities ended up sacrificing a lot of good expression.
Would those guys (the overseas extremists) even accept a "We'll always be friends, let's meet again someday" ending?
Not the #994 guy, but the overseas crowd doesn't recognize yuri unless it's explicit romance — they'll scream "queerbaiting!" and lose it, so this show's probably in for it too.
Well, at this pace it'll fill up within 2-3 days at the latest anyway, so it's fine.
In this day and age, someone's gonna report her sooner or later lol
She's not even human to begin with.
Yeah, I saw posts on X (Twitter) that were fully convinced that's where it was headed.
Did the director or writer actually say they came up with the title first and built the story to fit it?
The part where he was furious about Lara being forcibly resurrected was great though lol
Honestly, with this ending and conclusion, you start wondering "was Gon-chan even part of the main plot…?"
Gon-chan's probably fine with it.
He just never got to see it play out.
like the fact that a drug for turning into a human already existed on the seafloor before Grace ever used one,
or the logic behind why the molecule-like thing the professor was studying under the microscope (the one Lisa used to make her generic version of the drug) resembled the Princess's light.
Goes without saying — the Princess's light is the drug's raw ingredient, right?
Lara: "I haven't found true love, and I don't need it."
Grace said to live for love, not for the law — but she never actually said "true love."
Seems like something brought some kind of light and fixed that.
I guess Mari technically counts as her "true love," and that's what made it okay —
Lara herself just hasn't realized it yet.
— that was the answer.
Honestly, that's more satisfying than just handing "true love" over to romance or yuri.
Glad the creators didn't forget that "true love" is really just something imposed from above.
Now I'm getting confused —
if there's no such thing as true love, then why did Mari come to mind as the one she truly loves?
As long as they're both somewhere in that same world, that's enough, so her going independent isn't really a problem.
That's a letdown for yuri fans.
If it's yuri, you'd want them wanting to stay together forever, wouldn't you?
The movers are coming between 3-4 PM.
Assuming Lara arrived at her new place an hour before that,
and figuring 3 hours of travel by train only from Seta Station toward Ishiyama:
No shinkansen → 【Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, Himeji】
With shinkansen → 【Okayama, Hiroshima, Yamaguchi】
Seems like that's about the limit.
If she took a plane or something, all bets are off,
but I wonder where she was actually headed.
Knew a train-timetable nerd would show up eventually.
She loses a housemate who'd basically been family since childhood, has her late mother's keepsake pendant broken, and then loses the friend-slash-family figure she thought she'd finally connected with.
And they wrapped all that up with just "I'm lonely"?
Mari really got the short end of the stick.
Come back to life already, Gon-chan.
And nothing ever happened with her brother either.
Guess her whole life from here on is just devoting everything to boxing…
Meanwhile none of the other characters changed at all.
Yeah, going from a dress to a T-shirt and jeans really shifted the vibe.
It visually spells out her growth from a naive, sheltered princess into an independent, strong woman — the whole look turned more mature overall.
Her clothes also went from fluffy and cute to a simpler, more grown-up style.
Back when she was a mermaid she wore skirts because she was worried about turning back into a fish at any moment — no need to worry about that anymore.
Lara was wearing pants in that one though…
That was in the OP too.
Also, where's funny big-sis Lisa biting down on a HOP card…?
Finding matching angles/expressions was a pain so this is just from a random spot, but:
Background and Key Points of the Debate
“Goodbye Lara” is an anime centered on the relationship between mermaid princess Lara and human girl Mari, and its finale hinged on how it would portray — and resolve — the idea of “true love.” On the thread, reactions split between those who had hoped the two would stay together and those who welcomed Lara’s independence as a positive resolution. Overseas, when an intimate relationship between two women ends without being depicted as explicitly romantic, it sometimes draws criticism as “queerbaiting,” and commenters noted this show’s ending could face similar debate in that context. In addition, some of the foreshadowing set up earlier in the series — such as the origin of the humanizing drug Lisa used — was left without a clear resolution, leaving parts of the setup hard to follow from the main story alone.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Anime) thread “Goodbye Lara #16.”
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