Bonus: Spoiler Space - Goodbye, Lara
"And it is of course ironic that fans of a show about a main character learning to embrace her free will and reject social expectations are furious that said character did not do exactly what they wanted her to do."
(Hello. This is a piece about the ending of an anime TV show. In order to avoid spoiling the surprise for any potential viewers who might have come across this piece by accident, or perhaps clicked when knew they shouldn’t have, I will make a little small talk before we get down to business.)
One of the standout titles of this TV anime season was Goodbye, Lara, a loose take on The Little Mermaid (by way of Andersen, it specifies, not Disney) that takes Lara the mermaid princess out to the remote town of Otsu, Shiga in modern-day Japan. As in the fairy tale, Lara’s expected to find true love on the surface— and she does encounter candidates— but this take on the story frames the fairy tale conceit with a wider world and much more difficult circumstances.
It is a beautiful series which I wholeheartedly recommend. And on social media, at least, its finish was divisive. But to talk about why that is would begin to spoil things, and I have already written enough of a text buffer that you can’t complain about getting spoiled anymore.
