A mermaid makes a forbidden wish to be loved by a human, dies for it, and wakes up two hundred years later in contemporary Japan. That is the pitch for Goodbye, Lara, and the third trailer just landed with a confirmed premiere date: , on Crunchyroll.
If the premise feels familiar, it is by design. The series does not just borrow from Hans Christian Andersen; it relocates his entire tragedy to the shores of Lake Biwa. This is not a loose adaptation—it is a direct cultural transplant, moving The Little Mermaid from 19th-century Denmark to a modern-day Japanese setting, combining fantasy with slice-of-life moments focused on family and adaptation to a completely new world.
Music That Signals Serious Ambition
The new trailer reveals the season’s ending theme, “Hearts Glow” performed by Hana Hope, while the opening “Sayonara Lara” comes from Ikimono-gakari, one of the most recognized bands in Japanese pop. That is immediate musical weight—a clear signal of considerable production ambition from the very start. A new main visual accompanies the presentation of additional characters that deepen Lara’s story of adaptation to the human world.
The Voice Cast
The narrative hinges on a dead mermaid reborn into an alien human world—a structure designed for emotional resonance, not just fantasy spectacle. The cast reflects that ambition with precision.
- Hana Hishikawa as Lara — previously Tome and Inari in Sparks of Tomorrow and Riirii in Bride of the Barrier Master, suggesting a capacity for nuanced vulnerability.
- Ayumu Murase as Lucas — bringing experience from emotionally complex characters: Kotaro Tatsumi in Kotaro Lives Alone and Akaashi Keiji in Haikyuu!!
- Masaki Terasoma as Rowan — known as Sosuke Aizen in Bleach and the Japanese voice of characters played by Tom Cruise in Hollywood dubs.
- Mitsuaki Madono as Makoto Otsu — Gourry Gabriev in Slayers and Will Smith’s usual Japanese voice in Hollywood dubs.
New Additions
- Minami Tsuda as Laughter — known for Hinata Misogiya in Dara-san of Reiwa and Yui Funami in YuruYuri.
- Kazutomi Yamamoto as Kota.
Behind the Lens
Studio Kinema Citrus is directing under Takushi Koide, with Anna Kawahara supervising the scripts. Character design—a critical component of the visual language—is handled by Shiori Tani. The music is composed by Yuma Yamaguchi at Kadokawa, with sound direction by Haru Yamada. This team’s task is to map a 19th-century European fairy tale onto a modern Japanese setting—a delicate translation of aesthetics and emotion.
Goodbye, Lara is not just retelling a story; it is testing the narrative’s durability. Can Andersen’s themes of sacrifice and otherness survive—and matter—when stripped of their Danish setting and grafted onto a story about modern Japanese family life?
The Core Question
The slice-of-life elements are not secondary; they are the entire point of the conflict. When an adaptation changes the cultural context so fundamentally, does the original story become a mere template, or does it gain new relevance? Does relocating the tragedy to a real, contemporary Japanese location ground the fantasy in a way a generic setting never could? Are you more attracted to the reinterpretation of The Little Mermaid in a contemporary Japanese key, or do you prefer adaptations that are more faithful to the original story?
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