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Back in September of last year, after a five year wait, Uzumaki premiered and despite a highly positive first episode, the rest of the show failed to capture what made that premiere so excellent. While I enjoyed it for what it was, it didn’t live up to the hype of its original announcement nor the impossibly high bar that episode one had, which is a real shame because I was hopeful that Toonami was more than capable of making great originals. When FLCL Progressive and FLCL Alternative were announced, Toonami was making a statement, telling their fans that the block was staying and wouldn’t be going anywhere. I remember being very excited about the prospect of these originals since IGPX was their first and is rather well regarded today. However, after almost ten years since that announcement, it feels like it may have been the ultimate monkey’s paw. I have not been impressed with the fruits of their labor and while I will not sit here and say all of them are trash, but a range of “mediocre to bad” is the range I put most of them in. They aren’t that bad, and I have seen far worse pieces of television and anime, but I expect a minimum bar of quality, and they have yet to reach that bar. For the most part, these originals had talent, money, and time, and yet in almost every single instance, they didn’t land. There are still a few bright spots, which for me are Uzumaki, FLCL Shoegaze, and FLCL Alternative. Despite its issues, Uzumaki is good at what it sets out to do and I like the characters and themes of FLCL Alternative/Shoegaze. But I get the impression most of the audience haven’t liked these or feel the same things I think of with these originals. And so, it seems that everything is now riding on Lazarus to be great. Especially with how Uzumaki turned out, it feels like an enormous amount of pressure has been placed on Watanabe to deliver a fantastic show and if it’s anything less than perfect, it might as well not be worth it. This situation was only compounded by the block’s failure to acquire anything new in the past few months to whet our appetite and at least let fans know that even though they are waiting for this new original, the block still wants to deliver content to viewers anyway they can. Unfortunately, Toonami has been on autopilot for a few months with the only “new” addition being reruns of the new Adult Swim animated thriller drama series Common Side Effects, which was only added as a last-minute schedule update because fans weren’t happy with nothing replacing Mashle. But after months of waiting, was it worth it?
Lazarus was first unveiled in a press release to Variety two days before the Toonami on The Green event at San Diego Comic Con 2023. It was a big get for Adult Swim to not only grab a new Watanabe series but produce it as a Toonami original. Shinichiro Watanabe shows have been a part of Adult Swim since its inception, with Cowboy Bebop airing when Adult Swim was a mere late-night Cartoon Network block long before it became its own network. From there, they grabbed every major Watanabe show they thought would fit not only for Adult Swim but for Toonami as well. Their funding of the show and airing a new anime from Watanabe was massive news since this would be the first new show from him to air on Toonami since the world premiere of Space Dandy in 2014. Lazarus follows a group of misfits, each with troubled pasts in one way or another. But after a doctor by the name of Skinner creates an all-curing drug called Hapuna, the drug is suddenly set to kill all who consumed it within thirty days if no one finds him. It’s up to the band of misfits to find Skinner and save humanity.
The first thing that struck me with Lazarus is that it is a sort of return to form for Watanabe with him going back to sci-fi. However, what many should take away from Lazarus is that this isn’t Cowboy Bebop 2 and instead, in many ways, this feels more like a spiritual sequel to Terror in Resonance. What I mean by that is that this show is a serialized narrative rather than an episodic series, meaning these episodes are meant to be watched from episode one to the very last episode in order. I’ve mentioned it in the last few Toonami Throwback articles, but Watanabe seems like one who doesn’t want to be tied down to a single thing, and despite this being a return to sci-fi, don’t expect to see the cast traveling through space or dealing with space colonies of that sort. Instead, the sci-fi theme comes mainly from the actual science angle itself and the fact that it is set in the distant future. Watanabe carefully crafted a world and characters that aren’t just doing more of the same, and much like the evolution of moving from Bebop to Samurai Champloo, this feels like that next logical step for him, and one that makes a lot of sense.
Speaking of the characters, the main cast of characters include Axel Gilberto, a prisoner who has escaped from jail multiple times which extended his sentence to multiple life terms, Doug, a well-educated black man, Chris, a blonde bombshell whose past is rather mysterious, Leland, a young man whose acts as the group’s “tech guy” by using machines and drones to help out in missions, and Eleina, the hacker of the group. Despite being a ragtag team, all of them work well together. Axel is a standout for me, as he’s in it against his will, but he’s a thrill seeker who doesn’t care about saving humanity or himself. Yet despite that, he enjoys being in danger and fighting his way out of precarious situations. I do hope that future episodes beyond the early ones provided to me will focus more on the other characters to flesh them out, but from what I’ve seen so far, they are all good and well written.
To bring up the English dub, the dub was produced by Sentai Filmworks. Past English dub efforts by Sentai for Warner Brothers haven’t been great to say the least. Lazarus is fine, and I think the cast and overall voice direction is good, but I do have grievances with certain line delivery. One such example would be from episode two, which can be heard in the trailer. “We’re superheroes.” The way that line was delivered was so ham-fisted that it made me cringe. Despite those shortcomings it’s a fine option for those who cannot read subs or who enjoy English language dubs.
It’s hard not to compare Lazarus with another currently running Adult Swim original, Common Side Effects, considering the two have similarities between them. Both deal with an all-curing drug that has some side effects to them and they both deal with big pharmaceutical corporations and how corrupt both they and the government are. However, both shows are going for completely different things. Common Side Effects is, above all else, a thriller drama with some light action but focuses on the thriller angle, choosing to keep you at the edge of your seat rather than bring big action set pieces. Lazarus, meanwhile, is going for just that. It is certainly still a drama, but it places its focus on the action set pieces, making sure that they’re set up in a way to make them feel huge. One such example would be in episode four, which follows the Lazarus team in their search for a rich man who is used to manipulating the stock market for profitable gain, along with someone by the name of “Dr. 909.” Without giving anything away, the final set piece of the episode is jaw-droppingly beautiful. The sweeping vistas of the sky where the action takes place while bringing the episode to its conclusion was a rush to behold. Lazarus is a beautiful series, a nice evolution of what came before in previous Watanabe shows, but with its own style and beautifully animated. The animation production was handled by MAPPA (Attack on Titan, Jujutsu Kaisen, Ranma ½) this wouldn’t be the first collaboration between Watanabe and MAPPA. As the studio had worked on previous Watanabe directed series such as Kids on the Slope and Terror in Resonance.
The original soundtrack was handled by Bonobo, a Jazz/Electronic musician, whose fusion of such sounds is wonderful. Full disclaimer: I have been a fan of Bonobo ever since I heard We Could Forever used in an old Space Dandy bump on Toonami. His album Black Sands is one of the best albums I have ever listened to, along with Migration, another wonderful album I also love. Hearing he was going to be composing most of the soundtrack along with Floating Points, I knew it would be fire. One of the standout tracks was in episode two, where we get a calm mellow tune played on a saxophone with an electronic beat behind it. It’s fantastic. The ending song by The Boo Radleys is also a bop that’ll be stuck in your head after listening to it.
If you couldn’t tell from this review, Lazarus is a great show and while it has room for improvement, for the five episodes that were provided in advance, I think it does a wonderful job at what it sets out to do. I can understand the trepidation fans have coming into this but unless it falls apart in its back half, I think we’re looking at another classic from a legendary anime creator.
Final Verdict
8/10
