A Brazilian voice for a mermaid: Kinema Citrus marks 15 years
The quietly launched original TV anime Goodbye, Lara (Sayonara Lara) arrived in summer 2026 as the 15th-anniversary project from studio Kinema Citrus. Loosely based on Andersen's “The Little Mermaid,” it follows Lara, a mermaid princess who took human form but never found true love, and who is reborn 200 years later on the shores of Lake Biwa—a story steeped in a certain damp melancholy. Takushi Koide directs, with Anna Kawahara on series composition and Shio Tani on character design. The music was entrusted to yuma yamaguchi, a composer who has moved between commercials and TV drama scores.
The visuals are the first thing that stands out: a cel-look reminiscent of pre-1990s anime. Koide says he wasn't chasing nostalgia so much as reacting against the thin lines and pale colors of contemporary animation. How yamaguchi's music sits against that image is something we could only really test once the soundtrack arrived.
The key is the key: why the director visited the composer's home
What stands out about the scoring is that Koide reportedly went as far as visiting yamaguchi's home to work through the details—and those talks extended to the choice of musical key for individual cues. It's fairly rare for a director to weigh in on tonality itself. That alone suggests how much the “color” of the sound mattered to the humidity and sense of distance in this story.
Indeed, what drifts out of the released tracks is a little different from standard anime scoring. The clearest example is the set of pieces featuring Brazilian vocalist Tatiana Parra. On EP tracks like “LARA” and “Goodbye, Lara,” her voice shimmers like a water surface, lending the mermaid theme a strange floating quality. The way her Brazilian-tinged singing dissolves into the freshwater stage of Lake Biwa feels unique to this work.
The mermaid theme has been set to music countless times. Which is exactly why the decision to enter this lake-bound story from the oblique angle of a Brazilian voice—rather than a sweeping orchestra or a conventionally symphonic anime sound—reveals a clear authorial signature. Freshwater stillness, the ache of a second chance through reincarnation, the 200-year distance of time: yamaguchi seems to render all of it through texture rather than spectacle.
EP first, full edition on September 30: a two-stage release
The rollout comes in two stages. First, the “TV Animation Goodbye, Lara ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK EP” began streaming on July 6, 2026—six tracks, roughly 13 minutes, essentially a trailer-sized taste. The main event, the full soundtrack, follows on September 30, 2026, as a 2-disc CD (plus digital) priced at 3,300 yen including tax. Anyone hooked by the EP finally gets the full picture with this two-disc set.
An original anime's score carries a heavier burden: without an existing fanbase as a foundation, the music itself has to raise the world into being. The sound yamaguchi and Tatiana Parra weave for Goodbye, Lara shoulders that responsibility with a stillness like the surface of a lake. Start with the EP, and lend an ear to this summer's “mermaid's song.”
