A Look at "Lazarus"

I admit that I was only interested in watching the newest anime from Shinichiro Watanabe, "Lazarus," because it's so obviously trying to evoke the look and feel of "Cowboy Bebop," one of the best animated series ever made.  The opening sequence in particular uses the same visual style and a similarly bombastic opening instrumental.  Several of the primary "Bebop"  voice actors also pop up here and there in smaller roles.  Another selling point is the participation of Chad Stahelski, best known as one of the directors behind "John Wick," as a consultant for the show's fight choreography.  The "Lazarus" premiere features a jaw-dropping prison escape sequence that is tremendously fun.

"Lazarus" was a joint production with Adult Swim, and it's clear they wanted another "Cowboy Bebop."  In fact, it often feels like Watanabe had an entirely different show in mind and just grafted all the "Bebop" aesthetics on it in order to get the thing made, down to every episode taking its title from a song or album, and ending with a white text fragment on a black background.  "Lazarus" takes place in the near-future, where a wonder drug called Hapuna has been created by Dr. Deniz Skinner (Koichi Yamadera).  Hapuna eradicates pain and quickly becomes popular recreationally.  However, it turns out to be a Trojan Horse, and everyone who took Hapuna will die three years later unless Skinner and his antidote can be found.  Who can get the job done?  If you guessed a ragtag group of criminals coerced into becoming a superteam team by a shady governmental figure with access to way too many resources, you're right.

So meet Axel Gilberto (Mamoru Miyano), a petty criminal and escape artist, Chris Blake (Maaya Uchida) a sexy mercenary, Leland Astor (Yuma Uchida) a teenage drone pilot, Elena (Manaka Iwami) a hacker prodigy, Doug Hadine (Makoto Furukawa), the guy in charge of keeping them all on track, and finally Hersch Lindemann (Megumi Hayashibara), the aforementioned shady governmental figure.  One of them is a former Russian spy, one of them is a former secret test subject, one is a former cult member, one is a double agent, and one is secretly filthy rich.  They have thirty days to find Skinner before people start dying, and somehow every place they look results in the team getting involved in gunfights, chases, and improbable action sequences.  Axel, a parkour expert, is positioned as our lead character and gets all the showiest scenes.  

For the most part, "Lazarus" looks pretty good.  There's a predictable drop in the animation quality after the first episode, and the character designs are incredibly derivative, but if all you're after is a slick piece of entertainment, "Lazarus" fits the bill just fine.  After the introductory episodes lay out the science-fiction premise, the show mostly falls into the pattern of a mission-of-the-week action show.  I kept wanting to compare it to "The A-team" or "Mission: Impossible" television programs, where the gang ends up in all sorts of improbable situations.  This is the kind of show where an insecure male character ends up in drag trying to suss out a drug dealer's potential connection to Skinner.  Axel eventually gains an evil psychopathic stalker, because we have to have an evil psychopathic stalker, don't we?   

The premise is a good one, but largely goes to waste.  I assumed that "Lazarus" was going to lean into its dystopian vibes, showing how the world would react to an apocalypse on the horizon.  They could have targeted the pharma industry like "Common Side Effects" or the culture of distraction, like "Paranoia Agent."  Instead, anything too serious is only addressed obliquely.  A handful of episodes have one of the main characters explain why they took Hapuna via somber opening narration, but this has little to do with the plot itself.  There's almost no attempt to have the main characters grapple with the morality of any of their actions, and the mood is always very light.  There's some material showing how Skinner gradually lost faith in humanity, but it's always kept peripheral.   

What's more disappointing is that Axel and the rest of his team stay pretty flat characters.  We eventually learn more about everyone's backgrounds, and there are a few tragic backstories, but there's never a sense of much character growth.  The characters bond as a team, but they never feel like they form individual relationships with each other.  For instance, when Elena makes a friend it's with a fellow hacker.  And when Chris gets into trouble with ex-employers, the rest of the team decide to use up precious time to rescue her, but there's next to no discussion of why.   

As a result, "Lazarus" ends up feeling generic and disposable.  There were clearly a lot of resources poured into this project, but I don't think I can recommend more than the first episode or two, and really that's just for the fancy animation.  Everything else here has been done better by other series, including the "Cowboy Bebop" homages.  

---