Shinichirō Watanabe is a legend in the anime community, having directed and been involved in some of the most well-known properties in the entire medium. Watanabe pointed out at New York Comi Con 2024 that this year marks the thirtieth anniversary of his directing career. Whenever he announces a new original anime, it feels like an event, which is why there is so much hype for his upcoming original anime called Lazarus. Anime News Network attended a preview for the first episode of this 13-episode action sci-fi series that Watanabe considers his masterpiece and something he hopes will contribute to his legacy.
The first episode starts with an exposition of this sci-fi future. A scientist developed a perfect drug with no side effects that everyone started taking over time. That scientist mysteriously disappeared until a few years later when a video was published of that same scientist, announcing that everyone who took the drug would die in thirty days. There is no way to develop a cure in time unless they find this man. Cut to jail, where we find our protagonist, Axel Gilbert, a young man who makes it a regular habit to break out with his incredibly versatile footwork and parkour skills. He takes advantage of a mysterious woman coming to visit him as another opportunity to escape. Over the entire episode, colorful characters chase him, utilizing different skills to corner Axel. He eventually gets caught and wakes up in a barbershop with the same people who tracked him down, only to realize that they were rallied together by the mysterious woman who visited him in jail and explained that they are part of a group called Lazarus. The episode ends with a timer that notes twenty-nine days left on the clock until humanity starts to die.
I could not shake the vibe that this felt like a spiritual successor to Cowboy Bebop. Even the main character felt like a young and even more untouchable Spike. Watanabe had been asked for years to create another show similar to Cowboy Bebop, but he always resisted the idea. While he was happy that the audience at the panel seemed more than open to the idea of a Cowboy Bebop 3, 4, or even 5, Watanabe was worried that sticking to one genre for too long would make things feel repetitive. He wanted to space things out and wait until he was in a particular mood to return to this genre. It appears his work on Blade Runner: Black Out 2022 got him back into the mood to do sci-fi action.
However, Watanabe didn’t treat this series as a sequel to Cowboy Bebop. He did acknowledge that there might be some similarities because he tried to pay tribute to a Cowboy Bebop showwriter who passed away early in the development. There’s also Bebop‘s DNA throughout the show through the casting. Watanabe explained that the main characters in Cowboy Bebop were at least partially inspired by the Japanese voice actors who portrayed them. Many of those actors play random characters in Lazarus. Watanabe even joked that Spike’s actor, Kōichi Yamadera, wanted to be in the show by any means necessary, even if he just had to play a dog.
This project has an ambition that we don’t often see. There was the sheer fluidity and creativity of the parkour and action choreography. Axel has very long legs and knows how to use them, disarming people creatively and maneuvering around the terrain like he’s trying to go viral on TikTok. This could be credited to John Wick’s Chad Stahleski, credited as action supervisor for the series.
Stahleski did not work on all the action in Lazarus but was heavily involved in the creative action sequences. The episodes that don’t feature that Stahleski will instead feature top-notch action animators Watanabe wanted to work with.
Watanabe highlighted who he wanted to work with on the series, including the music. The soundtrack featured different styles of music, from atmospheric to jazz. Watanabe also reached out to people who worked on the sound for major blockbusters like Dune and Game of Thrones. There was a worry about the show’s budget, but it turns out that many of these people wanted to work on this series because they grew up on Watanabe’s works. They saw this as a way to thank him for his creative influence.
People who grew up with these shows don’t always get the opportunity to give back to the creators who made them, so that sounded like a very nice gesture. Based on its first episode, there is so much to love about this series, and according to Watanabe, this will be a complete story in thirteen episodes. I am more than excited to see what Watanabe considers to be his next masterpiece.
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