Lazarus

 Lazarus (ラザロ) is a 13 episode original anime by Watanabe Shinichiro in conjunction with Adult Swim.  The series originally aired during the Spring of 2025.

    The year is 2050 and the world has become a better place due to a miracle drug called Hopna by a once in a generation genius named Dr. Skinner.  The drug eliminate all pain for those who take it and it quickly becomes an integral part of society.  Shorty after its release, Dr. Skinner disappears from the world.  When he next surfaces, in the form of a video message broadcast throughout the world, he comes as a portent of doom.  Dr. Skinner feels that the gift he has bestowed upon humanity has been squandered.  No one has decided to change the fate of the species for good, instead continuing business as usual.  Since, as he feels, humans have shown little reason to continue running the planet, he has enacted a kill switch in his medicine...or perhaps it was there the entire time.  He warns the world that soon everyone who has taken hopna will suffer a generically encoded fatality.  He has left it up to humanity to save themselves and find him in 30 days in order to get the antidote.

     Under the direction of the NSA a rag tag team of specialists is put together to form LAZARUS to track down Skinner.  This disparate group offers unconventional talents to the task.  Axel, broke out of prison when offered clemency in exchange for being a part of LAZARUS.  He possesses unnatural balance and aptitude for parkour and has been serving over 800 years for routine prison breaks.  .Doug takes on a lead role within the group and has a cold calculating demeanor and excellent marksmanship.  Chris is a bit of wild card who is running from her past.  Leland is a teenage tech wizard who specializes in drone piloting.  Eleina is one of the best hackers on the planet.   Together they begin to methodically track down any clues as they race against the clock to save humanity.

     Few anime directors carry the respect and gravitas as Watanabe Shinichiro.  His name attached to a project ensures it will get a lot of eyes on it.  Lazarus is no exception and the excitement for a new series by the famed creator of Cowboy Bebop and Space Dandy was well earned.  Unfortunately Lazarus fell short of expectations.  The premise of the story is straightforward and easy, group of misfits are put together as a team to track down a man who is hiding really well but also wants to be found.  They have a limited time to find him and unlimited resources to accomplish their goal.  Where does that leave the narration?  In many heist stories, as this is essentially a heist story, it leaves the meat of the story to build the characters up for the audience.  They may be on the wrong side of the law in many cases but through the course of the story they become lovable and sympathetic characters that the viewer wants to succeed.  In the case of Lazarus and their goal of preventing the extinction of humanity there are really only two outcomes; success or misdirection.  Its implausible that the ending of the story would lead to the death of 99% of humanity.  So their success is guaranteed from the beginning.  What does that leave?  Determining what characters survive until the end?

    Since the success of the venture is encoded into the threat presented to them all that's left is to build compelling characters and/or a compelling environment.  I strongly feel that Lazarus failed to deliver on both.  The course of the story, especially the first half, has the team fruitlessly chasing one dead lead after another, never getting any closer to their goal.  During the course we get some background context about the lives of the team but never enough to be impactful.  Axel, the face of the series, is barely discussed and in the last few episodes, when his past becomes pivotal in a new narration, his role in the events are merely coincidental instead of impactful.  He just happens to be a random survivor of a project that becomes the real plot of the story...too late to make any difference.  This plot diversion even diminishes the climax of the team trying to find Skinner and save the world of Hopna.  Largely the series felt like a critique of modern society by Watanabe.  The early episodes, where the team was spinning its wheels, focused on different problems humanity openly ignores.  Inequity, global warming, tech-bro hubris, etc.  Yet all of that just feels like window dressing for a series that doesn't tell an interesting story in any manner.

The series is available for streaming on HBO.