After A Few Sour Notes, Cowboy Bebop Creator’s Lazarus Finds Its Groove

Shinichirō Watanabe is one of those legendary names in the anime scene, a creator and director whose work combines jazzy flourishes with a whole lot of soul. His work frequently features initially disaffected characters who slowly reveal their true colors, as best represented by his magnum opus, Cowboy Bebop. It’s a mighty legacy that brings high expectations to whatever he works on, and that pressure certainly weighs on his latest, Lazarus. The marketing around this upcoming show certainly hasn’t eased those comparisons either, with promo material that directly references Bebop’s iconic opening, implying this is a spiritual successor.

And while, admittedly, Lazarus can’t reach the heights of Spike and co.’s interstellar adventures, it begins to find its own sound after a rocky first two episodes as its cast comes together and its greater aims come into sight. It may not be on the same level as its predecessor, but at least through the first five episodes we received for review, it’s a very solid riff.

Despite taking a bit to get going, Lazarus’ premise has some oomph. Three years after the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr. Skinner designed a miracle medicine called Hapna that can cure any pain, he makes a shocking announcement: in 30 days, the drug will mutate, killing everyone who has taken it. Considering how ubiquitous the medicine is, the announcement is basically a doomsday sentence. Thankfully, though, there’s a catch. The doctor has an antidote that he will hand over if someone can track him down.

Lazarus is a group that forms to do just that. They’re a ragtag team recruited by a woman named Hersch (Jade Kelly), who promises them a fresh start if they can find Skinner. This ensemble is made up of the level-headed Doug (Jovan Jackson), who acts as their de-facto leader, Christine (Luci Christian), a sharp-eyed markswoman, Eleina (Annie Wild), the hacker, and Leland (Bryson Baugus), a tech expert. Finally, there’s the leading man, Axel (Jack Stansbury), a parkour expert who loves escaping from prisons.

The series begins with one such escape attempt, as Axel spin-kicks, scales walls, and flips like a gymnast. It’s an introduction with a lot of style but admittedly not much substance, and while there are some great snippets of animation, there are also stretches defined by weightlessness as this prison breaker moves in uncanny ways that are paired with some fairly awkward 3DCGI backgrounds. Worse yet, there’s a similar weightlessness to the storytelling early on because despite a few allusions to how society is reacting to the upcoming end of the world, the central characters don’t make us feel an appropriate sense of encroaching doom, each taking a devil may care affectation that makes it hard at first to get emotionally invested in the narrative.

This isn’t helped by some relatively clunky dialogue up front, as characters deliver flat one-liners and awkward turns of phrase. It’s hard to tell if this is due to a stiff English translation from the Japanese language script (the only option is to watch in English for now, as the Japanese dub won’t be available for a month) or if the original writing has some problems. Regardless, the absence of Keiko Nobumoto, who tragically passed away from esophageal cancer in 2021, is certainly felt: she was the lone screenwriter on Cowboy Bebop and co-wrote almost all of Watanabe’s original works.

Thankfully, though, after a discordant first two episodes, things eventually begin to harmonize, starting with the members of Lazarus. For instance, while Axel initially comes across like a lesser spin on Cowboy Bebop’s Spike Spiegel, sharing his outward nonchalance but little of his deeper melancholy, we eventually get hints that there’s more to him and the rest of the crew. They each seem fairly simple on the surface, but moments like their monologues at the start of each episode explain why each took Hopna at one point or another, whether out of pure curiosity, peer pressure, or to escape the struggles of everyday life, showing they’re all grappling with more than they let on.