Ask Lara is a Slice of Life educational animated series created in 2011 by Catalonian author Mercedes Marro and co-produced by her studio Tomavistas and The BBC.
The series is targeted at preteens ages 9 to 13, and deals with common things that happen to kids of that age, such as crushes, first dates and body changes. The title character is 12-year-old Lara, a girl who along four friends: Akira, Monica, Tony, and Gabriel, go spend a season as exchange students in Spain to learn the language (in the Spanish dubs, this is reversed to them being in an English-speaking country) and about this important stage of their lives.
The series was a Short-Runner, only lasting 26 episodes. All of the series in both English
, Castilian Spanish, and Latin American Spanish (although the last five episodes are missing on the latter), is available on YouTube.
Tropes in this series:
- All Periods Are PMS: This happens to Akira in "Girls' Only Party"; she becomes really irritable and insults Gabriel for his excessive blushing.
- Bad Date: "Gabriel's First Date", as Gabriel tries too hard to impress a girl named Keisha.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Each episode has three intermissions in which Lara (or sometimes one of her friends) asks the viewers a question with three answer options, and at the end of the episode gives an opinion depending on which options the viewers chose.
- Deranged Animation: Its animation style is low-budget yet trippy, especially on some of the characters' faces.
- Embarrassing Damp Sheets: "Sticky Situation" has Gabriel with one of these; however, these are stains from a Nocturnal Emission he had.
- Erotic Dream: Gabriel has one involving his three female friends and his teacher in that same episode.
- First Kiss: Between Lara and Gabriel in "Just Friends".
- First Period Panic: Averted with Lara in the first episode, as she's mainly annoyed her first period just had to happen on the day of an important exam.
- I Don't Want to Ruin Our Friendship: In "Just Friends", Lara and Gabriel kiss and wonder whether they should become a couple, but they ultimately decide against it and remain just friends.
- Incompatible Orientation: In the episode "My Martin", Monica gets a crush on the titular Martin, who turns out to be gay.
- Raging Stiffie: "Gabriel's Ups and Downs" deals with Gabriel having these constantly, though it is never actually shown.
