So today's the day Kadokawa decided to twist the knife a little. The third promo for Goodbye, Lara just landed, and it's not playing around, we finally get "Hearts Glow," the ending theme from Hana Hope, plus a brand new main visual and two more cast adds: Minami Tsuda as Risa (Lara's fourth older sister, because apparently this girl has a whole sorority down there) and Kazutomi Yamamoto as Kōta. With premiere night locked for July 5 at 24:30 on Tokyo MX, basically a midnight July 6 drop, this is officially the last big reveal before the thing actually airs.
For anyone just catching up: this is Kinema Citrus flexing for their own 15th birthday, and instead of a victory lap they went and made a Little Mermaid retelling set around Lake Biwa in Shiga Prefecture. Lara's a mermaid who made a forbidden wish two centuries ago to be loved by a human prince. Fast forward to now, and there's a boy named Luca running around who looks suspiciously like that same prince. Director Takushi Koide and writer Anna Kawahara aren't hiding the ball here, this is reincarnation-coded yearning dressed up as a modern slice-of-life. Hana Hishikawa voices Lara, and after the pilot screened at Anime Central back in May, it walked away with an 8.1, which is no joke for a first look.
And yeah, the timeline lining this up right before Anime Expo isn't an accident. Kadokawa's running a whole booth presence at AX 2026 the same week this thing drops, so the marketing machine is fully revved.
Online, the discourse is split into two camps, honestly. Camp one is fully shipping Luca and Lara and posting edits set to whatever snippet of "Hearts Glow" leaked out today. Camp two is the doom-and-gloom crowd pointing at the literal word "Goodbye" sitting right in the title and going, "yeah, somebody's not making it out of this one." X threads are already comparing it to Andersen's original fairy tale, the one where the mermaid doesn't get the cartoon ending, and that's stirring up genuine anxiety in the replies. There's also a smaller but loud contingent obsessing over the new sister character, wondering if the whole Otsu family is secretly tied to Lara's past life somehow. Nothing confirmed, all vibes, but that's anime Twitter for you.
Realistically? Expect this to land as one of Summer 2026's quieter emotional sleepers, not a loud action hit, but the kind of show that wrecks people episode by episode and trends every Sunday night it airs. The ending theme reveal alone suggests they're leaning into the bittersweet original fairy tale tone rather than a tidy happy resolution. Don't go in expecting a clean romance. Go in expecting tissues.
