Congrats to Sayonara Lara, winner of the Summer 2026 patron vote (one of the closest in recent seasons). On balance I feel good about your choice here. I’m not in love with this show but it’s weird enough and amiable enough that I suspect it’s unlikely to ever really sour for me. There haven’t been many cases where I’ve really struggled to get through a season with a Patron Pick, but spring was one of them. I don’t think we’re likely to see a repeat of that here.
It’s certainly a right of passage for teens to be sent out to find a part-time job. Some embrace it, equating it with independence. Some bemoan the intrusion on their time (like Mari). It’s Ema-san (she’s Mari’s Grandma you know) who tells Lara she needs to get a job and pay her back ¥100,000 for breaking the window. And it’s Makoto (he’s Mari’s dad you know) who sells her on the idea. He tells Mari that he met his wife (mysterioso) on the job, which is enough to spark her interest.
The whole job sequence is indicative of the odd tenor and pacing of Goodbye, Lara. Makoto (played by one of the real old-school guys, Madono Mitsuaki) delivers his lines in distinctively conversational manner to the tones of Yamaguchi Yuma’s jazzy soundtrack. So does the manager at Andeken, the only place that will hire the girls after 20 failed interviews (which Makoto patiently drives them to). Lara has zero experience – with anything – and gives weird answers. And Mari makes it clear from the start that she doesn’t want to work in the first place.
Andeken is based on a real place as it happens. It’s a pastry shop in Omihachiman, though the castle appearance was embellished a fair bit by Kinema Citrus and Studio Pablo. It’s nice to see Shiga get some love from anime, though rather ironic that after never seeing it (that I can remember) it features in two shows airing on the same day. Mari is as part-timer as it gets, one day a week – she gets stuck on the register immediately. For Lara it’s kitchen duty, and as the noob that means dishwashing. But she nags the manager – also the pastry chef – until he relents and allows her to assist him. She’d die for cake, after all.
I quite enjoyed seeing Lara learn a bit about human daily life from the Andeken experience. Manager is tough but direct and pretty passionate about his art. Lara keeps trying to do too much and eventually screws up, ruining a batch of muffins. She initially wants to quit over this, though she says it’s because it’s not getting her closer to her true love goal. But the manager and her co-workers are decent folks, and even Mari admits that Lara was doing better than she expected. Over the objections of Auntie Witch she powers through it, which is what working life is really all about.
This idyll has to come to an end, though. Lisa finally reveals herself to Lara (shredding a popular fan theory in the process), heels on her very human feet. She expresses horror that Lara drank the potion again, and declares that she “sent” Kouta (who drives, despite his apparent age) – presumably to do something to the Otsu clan to rid Lara of her human connections. But on the way that weird dagger in the sky reveals itself to be a giant fish – it’s got a mouth, anyway – and crunches Kouta’s car and the bridge he was driving on. That whole part of the story has yet to start making sense, but that’s fine – this is a fantasy after all.
