Lazarus 5d2y29

Lazarus is another helping of westaboo porn by courtesy of Shinichiro Watanabe, his stable of writers, and Kidult Swim. Since this will likely be compared to Cowboy Bebop because of the same director, a similarly gritty visual style, and a cover and OP drawing from the older title, it is worth making a quick comparison. The Cowboy Bebop English dub was legendary in anime circles compared to the average dub of the time, but a lot of the lines in Lazarus are delivered without much conviction and often in monotone. This 13 episode series is a Team Avengers plot and a wacky race to save ... the world rather than being a moodier episodic series consisting of smaller and often better-written stories like in CB. Spike was supposed to be a stoic, cool character, who knew chop socky, and the intent is likewise for Axel, though in a far more heavy-handed fashion.

There are not too many serious issues to note with the script in episode 1 because it was a fast-paced action piece. But the quality of the script is below the standards of what I have seen with most of Watanabe's work. It is a realistic-looking series set in the U.S. and has a trace of that kind of "mature tone" you might get from Cowboy Bebop, but Lazarus is like the little kid who smokes cigarettes, drinks beer, and curses to feel mature rather than anything close to actual maturity. Maybe the worst offender when it comes to dialogue is when we get to our first round of banter (I have rendered the dialogue verbatim) with our five mains: "This team wasn't formed for personal gain or profit." "Okay then, what's it for?" "Well... [dramatic pause] We're here to save the world." "Oh? So basically, we're superheroes." "That's cool. We're like the Avengers or something." This is like a masterclass in terrible referential dialogue! As if the Team Avengers vibe (or Isekai Suicide Squad, which is not any better) were not already obvious from episode 1. It seems like they have a quota to fit at least one cringe reference in per episode, as we get "secret agent" and "License to Kill" from James Bond, and there is also the corny "Uh, layman's , please." The standard "Haha, I was thinking that!" go-to phrase to dumb down technobabble for the audience.

The problems with the writing are multi-faceted and not just the dialogue. One of the silliest things about Axel is that he is a veteran prison breaker who has been sentenced to 888 years and is like a flipping MAPPA monkey who bounces off walls, climbs up buildings, and is too nimble for the donut-sucking pigs to shoot. he should be in solitary or his hands and feet always cuffed and probably even some kind of other body restraint to keep him in check, like Hannibal Lecter with his muzzle, strait jacket, and chains. There are all kinds of odd moments, like when Christine and Leland get access to Skinner's home: Leland's solution to get past the guards by having them foot the cleaning bill is laughable, and you would expect Hersch to pull some strings with her government connections instead, so one has to conclude that the writers were desperately struggling to find some use for Leland, whose main role otherwise is to play with Tonka trucks and RC helicopters. They easily find a clue that the police missed without even trying. A hobo professor known by a member of Team Avengers just happens to have been a past colleague of Skinner and re some useless story about Skinner's grandma that turns out to be a hot lead. Later, Team Avengers are attacked by a vicious gang in Istanbul and one character yelling, "We want to see grandma Skinner and eat baklava" results in a deus ex machina and plot convenience because this gang happens to know her and immediately become tame enough to roll over and have their tummies rubbed. Axel finds a camera that Skinner left inside of grandma Skinner's apartment in about 10 seconds. Every scene is often convenience piled on top of convenience, which should form a mountain by the end.

Since a lot of American political hot topics are incorporated, the script is obviously watered down and cartoonish, with even the original Gundam from 1979 feeling more mature in its politics. Cutting edge social commentary incoming... "Can you help us find this person?" Leading to the non-sequitur of a minor character that does not need a backstory: "Hey, listen, I'm a bankrupt transgender woman who went to prison." Then, of course, the black Pirates of the Caribbean extra, instead of asking what that has to do with anything, has to compete and insert his sob story too: "Oh, yeah? Well, back when I was an academic researcher, a guy said to me, 'There will never be a black Einstein,' and it'd be impossible for people like us to win a Nobel Prize [at least 17 blacks have won the Nobel Prize, by the way]; so, uh, guess who that guy was... he was actually the dean of the university, and I knocked his ass out, LOL." Uh huh... For social commentary to work, it cannot be this fake and lazily written, and the writer is trying to cram in too many half-baked ideas, poorly inserted pandering, and stereotypical characters who are nothing but some boohoo backstory in the waiting. People will celebrate this as "trans and black representation," but this is abysmal writing, and these are presently not even characters: They are, at their essence, walking political talking points. This is Watanabe's fumbling attempt at engaging with social commentary, like Terror in Resonance or Carole & Tuesday all over again, but many times worse and overdosing on Reddit screeching and uptalking TikTok influencers.

The year is 2052, which is most likely a reference to Jorgen Randers' book of the same name, who was a co-author of the well-known The Limits to Growth report that was commissioned by the Club of Rome, which is relevant because of the environmental focus. Our main villain, Dr. Skinner, after a disappearance of three years, delivers a video speech to the masses, which might as well be this: "Although I'm stoked that we finally got a female president--UOOOH #I Stand With Her... Blah, blah, blah, the evil of inequality, war, and cow farts must end, so I will now reveal that the unrealistic panacea drug that I have created was laced with super secret ingredient x [cue a sea of gasping soyjak faces] and has mutated, and you will all die unless you stop me. Let's play a game! Mwahahahaha!" It is hard to endure these preachy humanitarian Einstein activist/Bond villain plots nowadays, as they just keep getting worse.

Hapna, the super drug Skinner pumped onto the market, is basically like Brave New World's cure-all Soma but with a deadly twist (unless Hapna being a death drug is a 5D chess ruse to unify the population and have the UN enforce the Worldwide Butt Plug Filtration Act to reduce emissions). Watanabe's influence was the opioid epidemic, in large part spearheaded by the underhanded Sackler family, who went so far as to pay off medical journals and shill doctors to line their pockets. Instead of this potentially more interesting and complex story of pharmaceutical corruption, we have an evil genius and an incompetent FDA (and every other drug istration in the world) that failed to do due diligence with proper testing and rolled these drugs out immediately. You have to suspend disbelief for an oversight of this scale in what is effectively a global idiot plot. ittedly, while it might seem ridiculous for so many people to be using Hapna, if you compare it to aspirin usage instead of opioids, it becomes a lot more reasonable, as daily aspirin usage is quite high, the average person probably takes at least one aspirin a year for minor things, and Hapna appears to be at least as potent as opioids but without the side effects or a need for a prescription. It is also cheap. At the very least, a massive amount of the population will die and send the world into further chaos, should Skinner be telling the truth. Even though there are some ridiculous things about Hapna, there are not as many holes in this piece of cheese as quite a few other parts of the plot.

It does not help that I predicted cow farts would be a motivating issue by the first episode, and it turns out the reason Skinner embarks on his dastardly scheme is because "The ice in the north pole will melt and be lost forever!" Skinner then whines and goes into hiding once everyone laughs him out of the UN and he readies his plan. That is right, he has a butthurt hissy fit because the unwashed plebs are not doing anything in response to his soundbite, so his solution is global pharmaceutical genocide in hopes of getting his way. There is also the edgy opinion floating around that Skinner is a good boy, representing the change that humanity needs, but he is effectively punishing the powerless masses of the world, many of whom are too busy trying to make ends meet to worry about such bourgeois concerns. Of course, blame everyone who has no say in the matter instead of governments and corporations.

Regardless of what one thinks about this controversial topic, scientists have been casually throwing catastrophic predictions out for years, going back well before the 1960s (global cooling becomes global warming becomes climate change becomes WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE NEXT YEAR!), and the topic is more complex than the propagandistic way this is being depicted. The writer is taking a climate change idea commonly parroted in the present and applying it 27 years into the future. Problems arise from this, however, because the future the writers present is far more advanced than our time, the population is likely larger (we are at around 8 billion people right now), and the carbon and other emissions must be even greater. Well, the cited ice still has not melted and humanity has yet to die in the hypothetical future 27 years from now. Lazarus is just poorly written fiction, and we should not draw any conclusions from it concerning real world issues, but this plot point not only seems to downplay the speculative "problem" in the present that the writer presumably cares about, but it is so ill-conceived that it would probably be more likely to make one question whether or not the whole thing is baloney rather than persuade. We got 27 years into the future after all this doom and gloom, and we are still fine, so how seriously can you take Skinner's bellyaching? It feels like the author has no self-awareness.

We are immediately given dialogue to indicate how you are supposed to feel about the perspective of Skinner on climate change and whatever was presented on his Wikipedia page in this instance: "Sounds like a pretty decent guy." "Sounds too good to be true [Botox bimbo face]. Maybe he was doing some really evil stuff." As if his Hapna scheme were not enough, they have to find some other dastardly deeds in his early life. Oh, he won three Nobel Prizes and donated all of his money to charity. Whoop-de-doo and cue the Community "Ha Gay!" meme. "He was seen giving his seat to an elderly woman on the train... and helping out a homeless person... And there was this time that he tried to eat a sandwich, but then a stray dog took it away from him." "He seems like an all around good person." "The guy's practically a saint." Can I get a barf bag, please? There is example after example of this, and it becomes repetitive fast.

I would think this were satire of the left-right divide in the U.S. if not for script cues looking to enshrine Skinner as a saint and ascended master. However, what the script is doing is saying that everything about Skinner, on the surface, is "good," but that this veneer conceals the evilest of evil bastard geniuses, which is made obvious when you realize Skinner is supposed to be an Anti-Christ figure. The comparison is not altogether different from the sympathetic portrayal of Lucifer/Satan in Paradise Lost, where Milton must have realized the best way to depict a convincing villain is to make him relatable so that you could imagine yourself becoming him, were your circumstances similar. Hapna is seen as a godsend, an "opium of the masses," yet this wonder-drug harbors the doom of humanity. Skinner is seen by Lazarus as being good and like a saint, yet the description of the Anti-Christ in the bible is that he will appear to be good as a means of deception; Skinner is also from Turkey and appears to be half-Turkish, as his first name is the Turkish Deniz and his surname is the English Skinner. The reason that he is from Turkey is because this is one of the theorized locations for the appearance of the Anti-Christ. Gog and Magog are associated with end times prophecy, and Turkey is sometimes interpreted to be Magog. Skinner is probably a reference to the traditional meaning of the name. One who skins an animal, and it is a name pertaining to the surface and what is underneath, much like how Skinner appears a certain way but hides a darker nature.

Aside from Team Avengers being called Lazarus, the character Christ brought back to life after 4 days, there are other references to Christianity. Axel is supposed to be a Christ figure, which might not appear obvious at first, but he frolics with the "sinners" and dregs of society, much like Christ; Axel is also (involuntarily) doing a good deed for humanity, much like how Christ, um, washed dirty feet, I guess? A minor point is that Axel's good luck charm is a wing, like that of an angel's, supposedly protecting him from harm; he wears a red shirt, and red is associated with him on the cover art and OP: The color is evocative of Christ's sacrifice on the cross and the symbolic significance of blood in religious practices. More serious points include the name Axel being derived from the Danish Absalon, which is thought to be a corruption of Absalom, a Hebrew name. One of the sons of King David is named Absalom, and the name means "Father of Peace." Christ is supposed to be descended from King David as well, even if this makes no sense in respect to the supposed "virgin birth"; speaking of which, even the desaturated ED is "pregnant with meaning," as the camera tracks through a highway of seemingly dead bodies, only for Axel to "resurrect" and stand up at the end of the road. The other hint is the symbolic 888-year prison sentence that Axel received. In certain Christian numerological or gematria circles, Christ is associated with this number, just as 666 is usually said to be the number of the beast and associated with the Anti-Christ.

There is also plenty of Judaic and Christian imagery as well, such as flocks of doves; the seven angels sounding the seven trumpets of Revelations, each resulting in a cascade of cataclysmic events, until the seventh ushers in the kingdom of Christ; the ugly post-post-modern crucified figure on a building that looks like the cat coughed up the Tower of Babel; and the dreidel in the introduction, with the letters on the four sides often thought to be associated with enemies of the Jews, such as Babylon, Rome, etc. Christine could be viewed as having a meaning like "follower of Christ," and the name is close to the word Christian. Another notable name is Hersch, the old hag leading the Avengers: Hersch/Hirsch has German, Hebrew, and Yiddish associations and means "deer." Quoting Psalms 42 might be the best conclusion here: "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God." And Psalms 18: "He makes my feet like the feet of a deer; he causes me to stand on the heights."

Ultimately, this is a hokey Abrahamic-filtered eschatological (scatological is easier to say and just as accurate) thriller in the vein of the Left Behind novel series, only it is a mixture of seinentard realism and clownish political dystopia rather than a fantastical exploration of the Revelation prophecy, the Anti-Christ's plans, and the rapture; the Anti-Christ in LB similarly gives a speech before the UN, but he is a smoother operator than the crybaby Skinner, and the "Tribulation Force," sounding quite similar to a Team Avengers-like entity, is organized to stop him. Other than that, Lazarus has the John Wick guy choreographing fight scenes that look like Jackie Chan flipping around on a spaceship with zero gravity and toppling baddies far bigger than him, along with some zany hijinks along the way that resemble the scattered neo-noir subplots of CB, yet the action is the only compelling aspect of the series and this new "current thing" kind of political angle is unlikely to age well.

(To be clear, none of this review is to say you can’t like or enjoy Lazarus, I genuinely think it’s great if you can find enjoyment from it. This review is talking about how I feel towards its actual quality. If you like the show, fucking have a great time and like it.)
I like Watanabe.
I've always been a fan of his style, the way he blended interesting art direction, smooth action and jazzy music. He was never that good at anything besides that, but he had never made something remotely bad or amateurish, just things lacking, so it was never an issue for me ... or anyone else. I enjoyed Cowboy Bebop and I especially liked Samurai Champloo and Space Dandy. But Lazarus is different.
For the first time, a Watanabe work has actually bad writing. Not only is the plot and set up generic, it's not even presented well. All the information is just told in static dialogue scenes that are uninteresting and unengaging, and because the show lacks an original premise, that really hurts the set up. I mean you have a random dude going on television and telling the entire world this wonder drug he made is poisonous and that they need to come find him. It sounds like a ridiculous plot that you'd find in a random superhero comic from the 50s, probably because it is (I swear up and down that I read a batman comic just like it, I don't know if I'm crazy). And because the premise is presented through a narrator and a random character you don't know at all in a very expository and matter of fact way, it is a bad set up that instantly soured my taste (not to say I stopped paying attention or became of the mindset that it is just bad and therefore cannot do anything correctly).
The rest of the plot is focused around hunting down this dude via another generic secret organisation plot that gets its hands on the rogueish mc. Again, it is very generic. None of the plot is interesting or engaging, it's not like Death Note where you have some crazy mind games going on to keep the viewer invested or like Naoki Urasawa's works which are full of plot twists and gripping intrigue. The plot of Lazarus is barely a plot, it feels like how a video game would treat a story; a backdrop meant to carry the viewer/player from set piece to set piece, moment to moment. The audience is told a piece of information which could be a lead, the characters go to a location that corresponds to that, get in a fight or two and maybe find something that leads them to the next place. It does the bare minimum to be called a "plot". There are no moving pieces, no information to keep track of in the back of your mind, you are just moving from place to place and seeing what happens. If I or anyone else didn't pay attention for any scenes except for the fight sequences, they would get most of what is happening.
The dialogue is expressly poor, it's all flat exposition with no flair. Characters are boring, either you have the main character who feels like a middle schooler copied Watanabe's previous works without understanding the first thing about them, with the guy having no defining personality and just doing and saying stuff that you can point at and say "oh, that's cool"; or you have the rest of the characters, which I don't even have anything to say about because they're all uninteresting and 1 dimensional (I assume they will get fleshed out more later on but I doubt it'll be by much, and considering the quality of the show I imagine the execution on it will be subpar). So you have boring and poorly written characters, really bad expository dialogue and a poorly constructed plot.
Maybe Watanabe can salvage this. Maybe he can use his signature style to pull through. Nope. Lazarus' style is so flat and boring I didn't realise it was a Watanabe work until his name appeared on screen in big bold text. The art style is ok, it's not bad to look at, but calling it 'unique' would be stretching the definition a little. The colour palette is just like any other show out there, nothing much to say there. The direction is mediocre, nothing bad, nothing eye-catching or particularly well done. The animation and choreography is of course good but that only helps a show so much. The music is great, but I often felt like it didn't fit the scenes it was used in, unlike Watanabe's previous works (though I'm not much of a music guy so it's possible I'm wrong and really stupid).
The style of Lazarus is a dime a dozen, it is anime through and through. There is no unique identity to be found in it, no soul, no giddy desire to tell a cool story with cool character and a cool vibe bleeding through the screen unlike his previous series. It lacks all of what makes Watanabe's works so special. Lazarus is not unique, and rather than being heartful, it feels rather soulless. This show feels like some random amateur replicating Watanabe's works because they are successful, not like the man himself making a spiritual successor.
I can already tell this is going to be the biggest disappointment of the season, maybe even the year. I can feel it coming from a mile away, that everyone will glaze it until the last few episodes where it has a messy ending (if I had to guess, something to do with Dr. Skinner's motives) and then everyone will call it mid and say it was so good up until that point. To be clear, I don't have a hate boner for this show. Some people like to openly rip into series just because it's doing well and they personally didn't like it; this review is not that. This is a bad show, with bad writing and a neutered style.
I still like Watanabe though. He's cool.

Lazarus is the living proof you can't catch lightning in a bottle twice.

Plot - Dull and uninspired, trying to emulate past successes in vain. Lazarus is devoid of style and energy. The world feels so hollow and lifeless. Regardless of if that's intentional or not, I don't think it works at all.

Character Designs - Boring and forgettable. They feel like cheap knock-off's of better designs.

Art/Animation - It has good choreography, but that's all it has. The parkour sequences feel especially self-indulgent and long in the tooth.

Dialogue - Atrocious, clunky and clichéd. The Dub is not even worth it.

Music - Serviceable, but lacking the impact that ... would make it truly stand out.


Lazarus isn't awful it's just mediocre and derivative, much like how Great Pretender was,
your time would be better spent watching something like Akudama Drive.

You ever feel like you're watching an Action flick film from years ago when you watch this, instead of an episodic anime. That's Lazarus for ya.

Art and Sound: 9
This deserves it's a highlight for sure, the way it's stylized can really showcase how good an anime can be. You can have some of the best stories, but if they look like crap, not many are gonna take it seriously. But here with Lazarus, it really shines in so many ways. Which is why I opened with my line of it feeling like a movie then an episodic series. Not saying it's quality is breathtaking movie ... sense. But more that with how it's paced, shot, shown. It feels like we're watching more than 20mins week to week kind of vibe. Which I am all for. If anything this anime will be ed for, it'll be the Art and Sound side for sure. Really making out for a standout, which can look like of old in parts, but modern in same breath. Great stuff all round.

Story and characters: 8
Which brings me to here, cause the decently strong cast of characters is enough to carry the show and it's story forward. Which with the story it presents, can really blend together to make for an entertaining watch from start to finish. That's where I feel like Lazarus's writing can stand out. While having a diverse cast of characters, but them blending together to make an entertaining product from start to finish. That's the true beauty about it, and it's story. Leaving you glued to your seat from start to finish. The characters aren't generic, they aren't boring, they fit the show well, and will only add to the show and it's quality.

The story itself is indeed tense in the right areas, while maintain that nicely paced action and fun about it, that makes it a good watch from start to finish. You'll find yourself wanting more as you go on, which is more reason to why I feel this could've been a 2hr movie, and I'd love it. You should give it a watch for sure.

"Despite its namesake, there is nothing that can resurrect Lazarus from the graveyard of mediocrity. Between the premise, the studio, and the names behind it, anyone would think this show would be a high-standard production, a front liner meant to take advantage of an underwhelming Spring 2025 season and make waves. However, after only a few episodes, this hope is quickly dashed, and the reality of what Lazarus is becomes apparent: a half-baked schedule filler.

Let's begin with the most striking issue: the setting and its interaction with the plot. The first episode quickly establishes that Hapna, a miracle drug that nullifies pain and has ... been consumed by more than 99% of people, will kill everyone who's ever taken it within 30 days. You'd think the world would descend into anarchy, right? That there'd be chaos in the streets, mass suicides, rampant crime and the breakdown of order as people either claw desperately against their fates or give up on their futures, right? Well, no! Instead, seemingly no one cares. Save for a few second-long glimpses of mildly busy hospitals and organized protests, it's like the world doesn't care. The show even makes a point about this, showing an interview where people are apathetic to their own demises. When the entire show is based around stopping certain doom, this lack of reaction makes the whole plot seem empty. I've heard some argue that this is supposed to be an analogy for climate change. While I can see where they're coming from, the show does NOTHING to suggest this at all. There's a lot more issues with this that could easily fill a book's worth of pages, but I need to move on.

Moving onto the characters, they're all stale cliches at best. They have no depth beyond their specific role on the team, and their backstories are barely hinted at. I get there's always room for this later on, but to not even explore the backstories of any of the main characters halfway through the season is absurd. Douglas seemed like he'd be cool, but he's literally just there for aura, as he's otherwise been useless, and the little hint of his backstory has had literally zero impact on the team's mission. Axel, the effective MC, is a clear ripoff of Watanabe's previous MCs, but at least he seems a tad bit interesting.

On the topic of characters, the technobabble spewed by the hacker girl is infuriating. She constantly sits in an orb chair with like a bazillion screens that she throws around as if she's processing everything at Flash-speed pace. Then, she'll blurt out a bunch of tech that, on the surface, sound good, but fall apart the moment you think about them even a little. One or two moments like this are par for the course in anime sci-fi, but it's like the core identity of her character. Even this wouldn't be a problem, but because the actual investigative elements of this show are non-existent, the main cast needs to rely on her hacking powers just to know where to run off to next, so you have to endure the senseless technobabble every episode. It's a shame too because like Douglas, she's a cool-looking character, but sadly she's merely waifu bait at this point.

In of the episode plot progression, the show has already become repetitive in only five episodes. The main Lazarus cast will have a clue, they'll go to investigate it, seemingly close to finding Skinner, and then botch it terribly, either by their own incompetence or bc of bad luck. But then, when it seems like they're back to square one, some deus ex machina bullshit will come about as a result of the investigation, thus stringing them further along the path towards Skinner. In other words, basically every episode is a red herring connected by plot convenient revelations that the cast DO NOT deserve for their efforts.

I don't want to get into the politics behind this show, but even as an apolitical person, they are pretty apparent. I'd compare Lazarus more to a Western animated show than an anime in that instead of actually trying to breathe fresh air into a medium and explore politically charged topics, they instead ham-fist shallow diversity quotas in some half-baked attempt at seeming modern and self-aware. In reality, it comes across as the producers playing a game of Mad Libs.

I haven't seen much talk about it, but to be honest, the art quality itself is also subpar. I've always been a bit more critical of MAPPA than most for their standard,d muted and ugly art style, but Lazarus is particularly brutal in its genericness. At least when they adapted shows like CSM and AOT, they had some basis to work from, and their muted tones actually contrasted well with the story. Here though, they just come across as lazy.

If there's a singular strength to this show, it's the choreography. The movement is amazing. The fight scenes are fluid, have weight, explore unique and interesting camera angles, etc. Sadly, there aren't as many fight scenes as you'd expect, and not all fight scenes are equally awesome in their execution. However, as a whole, they're so markedly better than the rest of this production that I honestly believe MAPPA only made Lazarus in order to experiment with movement. Only such a rationale could explain the utter lack of quality across the board. This show single-handedly made me doubt MAPPA, and from now on, I am not going to take any of their shows for granted, regardless of the potential behind them. "

lazarus reveals the rot: western ideology grafted onto japanese form. what was once escape becomes sermon. art collapses under the weight of imported moralism.

visually strong, but narrative integrity is sacrificed to deliver surface-level political commentary. characters are thin, often reduced to identity tropes. dialogue leans on cliché and forced relevance. plot moves by convenience, not consequence. western influence overrides japanese storytelling, resulting in a confused, hollow product.

summary: lazarus is a technically competent but narratively compromised work, emblematic of what happens when external agendas override artistic integrity. not recommended for those seeking serious or original science fiction storytelling.

as for the generalities required by the site:

the story ... lacks originality, relying on well-worn dystopian tropes with heavy-handed political commentary. while the art style is polished and fitting for a sci-fi series, it doesn’t compensate for the lack of depth in the writing. characters are shallow, defined by their political roles rather than any meaningful development, and their actions often feel forced to serve the narrative’s agenda rather than react naturally to events. i suspect viewers looking for meaningful storytelling or nuanced characters will find this series lacking, but those who enjoy action-heavy, surface-level plots might still engage with it.

I'll keep it short.

A crazy doctor creates some cheap and good painkillers that everyone likes but turns out it's actually going to kill everyone who took it in a month!! That's great so what do we do? We find him and somehow he will cure everyone in the world.

Only good thing about this show is the visuals and the animation which is the sole reason i'll keep on watching this but i definitely don't recommend this if you're here for some good story.

4 episodes in the only interesting one was the first episode cuz it introduces us to the world and the story of ... this show and i thought it was going be a banger, which is not the case as u can see.

3 missions done and all of them were for nothing, no progress at all. And i'm sure the next episode is gonna be the same thing.

And here we go again—another MAPPA original that feels like a rehash of everything we’ve seen before, produced seemingly for the sake of content rather than creativity.

It’s becoming clearer with each season that as anime becomes more mainstream, studios—especially MAPPA—are taking a page out of Disney. Shows like Bucchigir, Zenshu, and others are starting to feel less like ion projects and more like soulless products churned out for streaming deals. With American companies willing to pay three to five times more than they used to, thanks to abandoning their own cartoon industry, anime is becoming just another content machine for platforms desperate to cash in ... on the hype.

This current season is proof. Not a single anime this season seems to have made any real noise this season. We’re getting stories that rehash older stories, old tropes, and recycled ideas—with just new faces slapped on. It's painfully easy to spot which titles from 10 or 20 years ago these shows are copying.

And why? Because anime is no longer being made with care for storytelling or originality. It’s being built for licensing fees, for the quick payoff since U.S. companies are betting blind on anime now, riding a fad without fully understanding it. Executives and insiders might say "anime will pop soon"—but honestly, I think it already has. We’re in the post-hype phase, have you seen these stories make noise like MHA or JJK? NO? me either..... because flashy animation is now prioritized over substance.

Honestly, If you've felt that anime's storytelling quality has declined, you're not alone. It's not you—it's the industry. Stories are no longer king. Streaming deals are. T hat's why you're seeing shonen jump push stories to the west more than just in Japan. And MAPPA seems increasingly comfortable with producing these hollow, formulaic shows designed to look good, grab a few views, and disappear into the streaming abyss.

Sadly, that’s where anime seems to be heading. And it's hard not to be disappointed.

In 2015, JAM Project made the Opening theme for the anime "One Punch Man", "THE HERO !!". They probably received a list of specifications and made that Opening. In 2019, the same JAM Project made the similar, but worse "Seijaku no Apostle" for it's second season. That second Opening feels less of an original idea and more of trying to re-hash it's first opening.
That's Lazarus from it, Adult Swim trying to re-hash Watanabe Shinichirou's works without knowing why they worked, and ending up with something that borders self-parody made by ChatGPT.

Lazarus works on the structure that, at any point, they can finish the story in ... just two episodes, making the remaining episodes feel somewhat pointless and disconnected from one another, mostly existing to have some action scenes with no personal stakes that aren't even that interesting to begin with. It's structure feels less of an anime and more of a game of the Hitman franchise, with in most of it's episodes you learning almost nothing about it's plot, setting or characters.

It's setting, also, feels a bit weak, as it fails a lot at "show don't tell": Yes, we know that humanity may be doomed in one month because it's explicitly told to us... but if it wasn't, could you conclude that from what the anime shows us? Not a single character seemed to have change their lifestyle one single bit, save for one scene where a live-journal tells us that there are being riots somewhere and that the stock exchange crashed (Not that those things ever end up mattering, anyway). You could've changed the premise that the whole thing about Hapna being lethal was unknown to the general public and the plot would stay the same. One could think that such seeming discrepancy is intentional and is the show trying to tell some message via it but... I don't really think it is.

It feels like an inferior version of the Suicide Squad because, at the end of the day, what our characters are doing has no personal connection to them, it's not something that will make them have to come to with their past, the types of person they are nor something like that: They just got to do their job... and so they go there and do their job.

Cyberpunk and similar "dystopic sci-fi future" setting might be set in the future, but they're about talking about the present: Take an exaggerated problem in the future and use it to talk about a similar problem happening in the present, take a problem in the future and talk about it being a logical conclusion or extrapolation of a problem happening now or in the past, talk about the technology could be used to, instead of solving our problems, creating new ones or making the ones we have worse.
Lazarus does none of that, and it's social commentary is so bad that it feels it doesn't want to be there: When we learn about Doug being a victim of racism, it's the most generic type of racism possible, and one that essentially says nothing about the subject. It's like it's there only to fill a checkbox, and not because the person writing it cares about the subject. That same case of racism could've been in a story set in the present or in the 90's and it would need no changes to it. Same goes for the anime talking about homelessness or trans people, it's just saying "Oh yeah, homeless and trans people exist" without exploring nothing more of the subject or how the material conditions of it's society relate to it.

It ends up feeling that their view of Cyberpunk is "Woah, cool technology, and also humanity bad" rather than a study and reflection about society, it's systems and structures.
In the end, Lazarus just ends up being a pretentious "all style, no substance".

Absolutely boring series where nothing happens, nothing matters and every episode wastes 23 minutes of your limited time on Earth.

Hapna, the magical painkiller, is going to kill the ultimate pain: Humanity. Anyone who took the drug is going to die in one month. The show tells you this multiple times, with a countdown timer after every episode and the characters constantly restating the premise. You would never be able to tell this is the case. Everyone in the show carries on like it's business as usual. No riots, no looting, no desperate mass-suicides.

The show never tells you how many people took the drug, or ... what percentage or portion of the world's population took it, but they imply it was the vast majority of them. 90% of the population, more or less. You're telling me that almost everyone on Earth is going to die in 30 days and they still feel like going to work? Going to their museum job open, airlines still flying? It doesn't feel like anything is at stake.

This lack of stakes or any real sense of urgency is carried over into the episodes themselves. Each episode is a slow, plodding, meandering waste of 20 minutes. Each episode starts with the characters discussing their next move to find Skinner. Then the episode trudges on with a lot of "vibey" scenic shots with subpar jazz music. Nothing happens, then at the end they find that the thing they were chasing was a red herring. Repeat for 6 episodes.

The characters are blank slates. Axel is an unstoppable god who can get out of any situation. He's never in anything resembling danger. You could throw him into an active volcano and he'd parkour his way out and not even break a sweat. His superhuman abilities make the action in the show feel even less consequential. There's a hacker girl who just hacks and does magic with computers finding things that don't matter, there's a boy whose entire character is that he is boy. There's a woman, who is trying to be Faye Valentine but failing miserably. She has no personality other than mildly snarky at times and she does the Watanabe face. There's black man, whose entire character is staring at nothing. He has the only bit of backstory so far, in which he beat up a professor. He's probably the only one with any real motivation, his whole reason for finding Skinner is probably because he's a professor he hasn't punched yet.

The visuals are mediocre. Everything is brown, gray and beige with that overly clean digital look a lot of modern anime have. There's no real soul or direction here, other than generic future and CGI. Tons of CGI. A ridiculous amount of it.

The animation is made to be ired by people who know nothing about animation or people 16 and under. The action is rotoscoped, with no real sense of weight or timing. It's like they traced over footage of poorly coreographed fights, paying no real attention to how the movements would look when drawn. There is very little in the way of anticipation, exaggeration or follow-through. It's very stiff and lifeless, with every punch and kick having most of their frames evenly spaced, making them look slow and floaty. Most of the actions lack good, clear posing. They just slap a few floaty 2D characters and put the camera on a tilt-a-whirl, spinning around them as they slide all over poorly composited 3D backgrounds like the jittery special effects in the Nostalgia Critic's intro.

I can say all I want about it, but the worst thing about this show is that it's boring. I was hate-watching it with a few friends, laughing at it, but the laughable moments are too few and far between. For each elevator fight scene, where the characters are morphing all over the screen and ending up in inhuman poses, we have hours worth of boring, static shots where characters openly state the most boring doomsday theories ever. The polar ice caps are melting! Oh no! Who cares? They don't even get into the fun theories. No one is getting mind-controlled by 5G or getting turned into grey goo by a swarm of microbots.

Maybe Skinner was right, we ought to call it a day.

THIS IS A PRELIMINARY REVIEW.

Style, absolutely. Substance, we'll have to see.

Story: 5/10 - It's servicable. The protagonists have to hunt down a scientist to save the world. The concept of a drug that virtually erases pain and misfortune is neat. I hope they actually get into the finer details of the drug, seeing as the primary objective is to obtain the cure from the aforementioned scientist.

Animation: 8/10 - The animation and music are easily the best parts of the show.
The animation is definitely MAPPA-quality; the environments and fight scenes are the best examples of this. Each environment feels lived-in and realistic. The choreography of the ... fights and parkour stands out by far. You can feel the weight of every hit, which is complemented by our main guys hopping and bouncing off of their surroundings.

Music: 8.5/10 - The soundtrack is a mix of electronic, ambient tracks and jazz. Think Mirror's Edge meets Persona meets Cuphead, with a hint of Dying Light. I occasionally found myself not even paying attention to what was happening on screen because I was too busy enjoying the music. Music is something I personally pay a lot of attention to in the shows I watch, and this soundtrack does not disappoint at all. My favourite track is Relativity.

Characters: 3/10 - The characters are bland. I have yet to feel anything about any of our main characters. And you know what? I could overlook this if the story were better. If a story and its events are engaging enough, you don't necessarily need intriguing, exceptional characters to have a fun time. With regards to the story, nothing substantial has happened. Just a slow chase punctuated by cool, one-off fights. The story has room to grow, though. What I'm having a much harder time overlooking is the script and voice acting.

Both are pretty rough, but the voice acting is worse. To clarify, I'm talking about the English dub, as the odd decision was made to come out of the gates with an English dub on Adult Swim instead of a Japanese sub. If the dub were good, this wouldn't bother me; I primarily watch dubbed anime anyway. The dub is not good. None of the voice actors sound like they want to be there. Most of the line deliveries are flat and monotonous. Eleina especially sounds like a robot whenever she speaks. This is not at all helped with the script.
"Hey. Put some music on for me."
"What kind of music would you like?"
"How about something with the vibe of a man who sold his soul to the devil. Along those lines. That's what I wanna hear."

I do want to chalk it up to a majority of the cast being relatively new or inexperienced, with the only clearly experienced voice actress being Julia Kaye as Christine. Maybe they've been given poor direction. Maybe we'll get some silly in-universe explanation that hapna has dulled the senses of most so much that they can't be bothered to not sound like they're giving course material to a class on a Friday afternoon.

Overall: 6/10 - I'll likely finish this season at the very least. It's generally mediocre, but I can see potential. If you just want a show to the time, there are much worse options than Lazarus.

Lazarus, the most OVERHATED anime of recent times

This anime has a solid foundation of story, the core idea is actually interesting enough to make you keep watching this, sure it's not the best story or world-building out there, after all it's an original anime, but for being an original title it has all the good things you could expect.

The characters are interesting and have a good chemistry between them. Unlike most modern Anime titles, when it comes to a fight scene, it doesn't throw some huge dust to cover up the fight between the characters (a lazy attempt to show a fight scene), the fight ... and chasing scenes in this Anime are actually well-detailed and with the good music combined to it, really excite you. The art-style is also really neat and nice to watch.

In the end, if you're a strict person that only wants to watch the masterpieces and mainstream titles, this is probably not good for you.
But if you're someone who likes to enjoy the newer titles with some unique ideas and characters, then go for it. Like I said the story in itself has a solid foundation, and the characters make the narration much more enjoyable to follow.

If you're coming home tired from work or school and just want to watch something that doesn't demand much attention, Lazarus might be the right pick for you. The art style is visually appealing, with sleek animation and an intriguing futuristic aesthetic, but the storytelling leaves much to be desired.

Even after seven episodes, the plot remains vague. We still know very little about the main characters or the larger conflict unfolding in the world. While the setting looks impressive, it feels underdeveloped and hollow.

Overall, it's the kind of show that's fine to have on in the background during dinner, but if you're looking for something ... with depth or strong narrative hooks, you might walk away disappointed

60-SECOND REVIEWS

Lazarus is a very flawed show, but what it does well, it does very well--and it's one of the more unique shows to release in the past year.

PLOT: A scientist who developed a wonder drug reveals it will kill all of humanity in 30 days, and our band of criminals, hackers, and what-have-you are in a race with the rest of the world to find the scientist before everyone is dead. The premise is intriguing, leaving the lingering question why such a seemingly nice man would kill the world. The episodes so far have been largely episodic, our cast following up on the next ... lead while exploring a mostly unique and creative world.

CHARACTER: This is the major drawback of the series. They're not particularly interesting or expressive--the facial animation and VAs (particularly the English dub) doing nothing to enhance the mostly bland character work. They could improve, and they're not a bad cast, just pretty forgettable.

ANIMATION: This series has three things it does exceptionally well. The first is in the fight scenes and chase scenes, choreographed by Chad Stahelski (director of the John Wick franchise, former stuntman on tons of movies like The Matrix). Creative, expressive, impressive, and, in the case of the chase scenes, a pulse-pounding rush through a jungle-gym world. The second thing the show does exceptionally well is in its background art, each new location giving us so much new, intriguing information about this world. Where the animation falters, however, is in character expressions, everyone stuck in a neutral expression.

SOUND: And the third thing. If you love music, the show is worth watching just for that. Watanabe imbues every scene with original music that absolutely slaps at all the right times. Seriously, this soundtrack is a banger and another classic, even if the overall show doesn't end up being a new Watanabe classic. We'll see. As for the voices, there's been a lot of attention on the English dub, but I found it pretty unremarkable and will be sticking with Japanese.

There's been a lot of hype surrounding the show and how it harkens back to Cowboy Bebop. Don't compare it to Bebop. Nothing deserves to have to live up to those expectations. But even at Watanabe's weakest--which this may end up being one of his weakest series--it is still filled with ion and music and an attempt to do something new. If you're looking for something unique this season, you should be watching Lazarus.

Cowboy Bebop meets Black Lagoon meets Cyberpunk 2077.

Lazarus takes the best of these titles and breathes new life into the uninspired and stagnating action-drama genre. Set in America, Lazarus finds much inspiration from the real-world - the likes of an apathetic self-interested government and eco-terrorism - then dials it up to 11 (well, at least the latter). Briefly imagine how humanity would be with a panacea? This show will almost certainly go down in history as one of the greats of its time.

The series has great exposition, complemented by an incredibly talented VA cast - the likes of Steins;gate's Okabe, Chuunibyou's Rikku, Fruits Basket's couple ... and OPM's Saitama) - giving each character a personality unique to only themselves. Though, until the story concludes, I couldn't tell you how much depth there is to each character. And lastly, Lazarus uses a wide variety of music genres, from bebop jazz to 90s techno-trance, and they pull it off flawlessly each time.

The only flaw right now is through no fault of its own, but Lazarus has opted to do an ensemble-cast style exposition with the constraints of a weekly 13-episode series. I can imagine this show being an incredible series to binge at its conclusion, but to chase it weekly, I'll leave it as 'recommended' cause it has the capacity to be THAT good but I wouldn't recommend watching it at this moment - because as some aptly put it, "It's like waiting a whole week for nothing to happen".

I will continue to update this review as episodes come by.

Lazarus is by far my favorite new show this season. The direction, style and overall vibes are just immaculate.

Story and Characters: The story takes place in 2052. Everyone in the world is at peace, and this is due to sickness being eradicated. The reason for this is due to a new drug called "Hapuna" being developed. The drug has zero drawbacks and only provides bliss and happiness. However, the doctor who developed this drug ends up vanishing without a trace. A few years later, the doctor comes back and announces to everyone that everyone who has taken the drug will die 3 years later. Due ... to this, a task force called "Lazarus" gets assembled and they are tasked with the mission to find the doctor and develop a vaccine before they run out of time. The premise is very interesting here, and the sci-fi elements make it appealing and enjoyable to watch. Additionally, the characters are very likeable. Although we don't know much about the ing cast, they are pleasant to watch and add flavor to the show. The MC in particular, Axel Gilberto is very charismatic and is quite reminiscent of Spike Spiegel from Cowboy Bebop. There are also quite a few other similarities to Cowboy Bebop, which I will mention later on.

Score: 7.5/10

Animation: Studio MAPPA have a grand portfolio of great looking shows, and Lazarus is no exception. Add to that Shinichiro Watanabe directing and the action director of John Wick, and you're gonna get peak choreography and fighting sequences. Even the non fight scenes such as the parkour and running scenes looking very stylish and clean. Overall the show looks amazing and is very easy on the eyes.

Score: 9/10

OST: My personal favorite part of this show. The OST is jazz, and I'm a sucker for that stuff. You can tell that they were heavily inspired from Cowboy Bebop, which has one of my favorite OSTs in all of anime.

Score: 9.5/10

OP and ED: The OP is peak, come on its more jazz. The visuals are also incredible and really stand out. ED is good.
OP score: 9.5/10
ED score: 8/10
Mean Score: 8.75/10

Voice Acting: The voice acting in this show is good, but its not going to blow you away. There are some big names such as Miyano Mamoru, Maaya Uchida, Yuuma Uchida, and Makoto Furukawa but its definitely not their best performances.

Score: 7/10

Overall, Lazarus is a very enjoyable and interesting action and sci-fi show. It keeps you on the edge of your seat and makes you want to know what will happen next. Highly recommend it.

Overall score: 8.35/10

Lazarus unfolds in dystopian 2055, where a miracle drug becomes a lethal fate, but over these three episodes from MAPPA and Shinichirō Watanabe, it flickers like a dying ember. Following a mismatched task force trying to hunt down an unstable mad scientist, the series wants to feel more cynical or epic, but it struggles with slow pacing, uninteresting heroes, and has a pose rather than a vibe.

What Works: The premise is a gut-punch situation; a miracle cure-all substance that becomes lethal and threatens humanity’s survival crackles with apocalyptic dread and moral heft. The angle of pain being a necessity in human life and a ... society’s addiction to quick fixes stings with relevance and suggests a bead on the darkest human flaws. The task force’s misfit energy—a provocatively cocky loner and a steely governmental operative—hints at danger and gritty camaraderie. The action bursts with acrobatic choreography—sharp angles, and fluid chaos—and the animation shines at moments in combat, as it conveys a neon-lit future, dark and gritty and full of pulse. The score is hypnotic, a pace of jazz, and elevates our mood—quite by a wide shot to Cowboy Bebop’s cosmos.

What Tanks It: The story plods along like a rusty machine, entrapped in set-up exposition...with detours that gut urgency. It gesture toward big ideas of pain, morality, and sacrifice, but it barely explores or scratches the surface of those ideas; the stakes feel oddly weightless. The lead character is emotionless—the personification of charisma void; every clever, smug quip left no trace of soul. There is also little implication of motive for any of the task force . Secondary characters float in, float out; barely ing. The animation—at scenes—lack speed and intensity in any realm outside combat. Environments were sterile in design choices and CG and low frame rate made it look unpolished, jarring our experience going from aesthetic to clunky in some of the sets. The score's brilliance totally fails in any moment of quiet, and the sound design was missing any grit to give us some drawing-insight and depth to the scene or any perceived chaos. It is a shadow of Bebop without any heart that may cleverly chase style over substance.

I was looking for the next sci-fi knockout—a premise and a score that screamed of potential—but we received not a show but the feel of a slick demo of a show in progress. Action and ideas spark, but the limp plot and faceless cast dull the sparks. Anime fans may consume any level of mood, but we expected a flame, not these flashes.

More western BS masquerading as anime, and normally it wouldn't bother me but it's so damned hamfisted that I really cannot tolerate it. Like someone came up with an idea and thought, "how can we shove as MANY cliches and political check boxes as possible?" Also, the whole premise is kind of idiotic, and even if that is okay (I like to give the benefit of the doubt), it still suffers from uninteresting characters who are like cardboard cutouts of more interesting characters from more interesting anime, as well as the incredulity of most of society just like "oh well we are all going to ... die", seemingly uninterested in their demise.

You would think that people would be tearing crap down and fighting tooth and nail to find this guy, not sitting on their asses making jokes. Mass suicides, riots, robberies, etc. I just don't feel it and the cast just doesn't sell what the story is supposed to feel. It's emotionless and without any depth. Perhaps cut out the PC bullcrap and write a script and characters that actually make me feel something. Too bad...I had high hopes for this but the campy dialogue, robotic characters, and "world building" are totally awful. One of the worst yet.

Overall the animation is great but it's a bit like a nothing burger story wise, except for episode 4. The first three episodes I'd rate probably closer to a high 6, the characters are boring and don't really have any good chemistry with each other. The story also in my opinion does not look enough into the psychological and social effects of the world ending in a month, which is really sad cause I think the premise is really good. I actually would prefer the anime if their were lower stakes, because then it would make sense that everyone is just going on with ... their lives and not changing at all. (This would also be fine if it was explained as some profound thing like even when the end of our lives is so soon we still choose to act the same or something, but it doesn't feel like that and more just lazy writing.) While saying all this I would actually rate episode 4 closer to a 9, It's a complete switch. I love this episode, the characters just have crazy team chemistry, the premise is great. The world building I would say is still not incredible but so much better and at least gives us an idea of how different this future is to our current timeline. The action is fantastic and the choreography as well. The characters also all at least fill a different niche in the story and in the team so yeah if it keeps going like this I would recommend this to anyone.

Lazarus has a good story, and I really liked it. The plot is engaging and fits well within the genre I enjoy. The art style is also very fitting for the story, enhancing the overall experience.

Most of the characters have well-defined personalities and are really cool. They show both strengths and flaws, which makes them more interesting. Their reactions to events are realistic and believable.

I loved this anime because it has a style very similar to Cowboy Bebop, and I’m a big fan of that kind of show—no superpowers, but lots of action. I think others who enjoy this type of anime will definitely like ... Lazarus too.