Clearpost.online It's your post, so post it!

If you ask someone to reco*mend some anime—or, bless you, you’re doing the reco*mending—chances are that Cowboy Bebop will be mentioned. The beloved 1998 series, helmed  by Shinichirō Watanabe and from the studio Sunrise, will also likely be on the minds of those who watch that director’s latest creation, Lazarus. Animated by artists at MAPPA studio (known for Chainsaw Man and Jujutsu Kaisen), it cultivates a similar vibe from its very opening sequence, which was directed by Watanabe himself. The jazzy score from Kamasi Washington, choices of color, and the silhouetted images of one of its lead characters doing some roundhouse kicks feels very deliberately designed to make you think of the chaos and cool of Bebop.

But if anyone has earned the right to play the hits, it’s Watanabe. To this point the director has never really rested on his creative laurels, following up Bebop with different but equally stylish works like Samurai Champloo, a samurai series soundtracked by hip-hop. Then came shows such as Space Dandy  (co-directed with Shingo Watanabe) and Kids On The Slope, Terror In Resonance, and Carole & Tuesday (co-directed with Motonobu Hori). Even as these shows contained references to past work, they always felt like they were looking forward. And that extends to Lazarus, which has many more things to say beyond “remember how cool ‘‘Tank!‘ was?”

The show concerns a race against the clock, with the first episode noting that there are “29 days left.” It’s set in 2055, a future which feels just slightly out of reach but close enough. An enigmatic scientist named Dr. Skinner created a miracle drug named Hapna, which both dulled pain and cured a range of illnesses and even acted as a bit of a high. It makes everyone happy, and there’s relative peace and stability. Skinner vanishes for three years before re-emerging and announcing to the world that the drug will kill everyone who has taken it in 30 days. In response, a clandestine group, Lazarus, puts together a secret team of ex-convicts with the skills to find and catch Skinner in time, operating under the promise of co*muted sentences. (It’s funny that this arrives on Adult Swim barely a couple of weeks after the end of co*mon Side Effects, which also concerns a conspiracy around a cure-all drug.)

In the five (of 13) episodes provided to critics, Lazarus hasn’t yet dived super deep into the psychology driving these characters. But there is something that steers this new group of social outcasts away from their Bebop counterparts. The restlessness and daredevil attitude of Axel (voiced by Jack Stansbury in the English dub) co*es from time spent homeless and in prison. (He’s a young punk rather than the heartbroken gangster Spike used to be.) Doug (Jovan Jackson), in a conversation with a trans woman leading a tent city for homeless people, mentions that he had a ceiling put on his career simply for being Black. In one of the monologues that opens each episode, Elena (Annie Wild) speaks equally frankly about her depression and how it led her to take Hapna, but she received it at artificially inflated prices. They’re all charming too. The tech wizard Leland (Bryson Baugus) is amusingly out of his depth with spycraft, while, so far, Chris (Luci Christian) is a playful spin on the femme-fatale archetypes that Watanabe has used in the past. Through them all, the show makes a point that even this miraculous cure-all drug couldn’t automatically fix everything, not while the old systems are still in place and resisting change.

The drug and the chase for its cure are mostly a jumping-off points to hold a magnifying glass up to a world shaped by human capital. The Hapna crisis is already an analogue for the opioid one, and Watanabe was partly inspired to create the show because his favorite musicians were dying from overdoses. Skinner’s announcement of his drug being lethal is motivated by misanthropic despair. Even in this futuristic setting, prejudice thrives. co*panies still have their fingers in their ears over climate change. The wealth gap is bigger than ever, evident in the series’ smart and incisive art direction, which places the beautiful, twisting white spires and webs of futuristic transport directly alongside run-down slums and tent cities. 

Plus, Lazarus makes a satirical farce out of how we might react to end times, which so far appears to be business as usual. When a late-night talk-show host needles a pop star about no one being alive next month to listen to her new album, she fires back that people will also no longer have to suffer his terrible jokes. The press camps out on Skinner’s lawn to interview his gardener, resorting to tabloid sensationalism in trying to pick apart his social life rather than put their resources towards actually finding him. Lazarus uses these co*edic asides to paint a picture of why the philanthropic Skinner might be so disillusioned as to simply end everything. 

The show doesn’t just have morose reflections on the medical industry and environmental crisis. As the concept of Lazarus began from Watanabe’s musical interests, that fondness for international artistry is present in every moment of the series, which boasts a soundtrack by Kamasi Washington, Floating Points, and Bonobo. Each distinct sound is exciting to hear in the context of the show, whether it’s Washington or Floating Points propelling an action sequence or Bonobo’s more atmospheric leanings underlining each episode’s reflective opening narration.

The first episode, “Goodbye Cruel World,” is a little lighter on those themes than the ones that follow. Instead, it’s a fast-paced and action-focused introduction to the Lazarus team as it pursues Axel to beco*e a member. After being offered a fresh start through his recruitment, Axel reveals he’s renowned for breaking out of prison and promptly escapes, leading his future teammates on a merry chase through Babylonia City. It’s electrifying and sets the tone for the show’s winking humor and impactful action sequences, which were handled by John Wick director Chad Stahelski, 

The gun-fu and grappling style Stahelski honed on the John Wick films feels right at home with Watanabe’s kind of action, which has always emphasized a realistic sense of weight. Even with the gravity-defying theatrics of Axel’s fighting, there’s a real consideration of how momentum plays into these moves. The first episode might be the most sustained showcase of action, but the fourth installment, “Don’t Stop The Dance,” is also a standout. Written by Cowboy Bebop‘s Dai Sato and storyboarded by Akihiko Yamashita, it’s handily the most personable episode as most of the team is taken outside of their co*fort zone, forced to get close to a sleazy tech billionaire through his club. When the fighting inevitably starts, Yamashita and director Kazuo Miyake let loose, showing some fun chemistry between the team as these characters work in tandem—and, in some cases, literally dance together through the battle. 

This is all to say that Lazarus doesn’t coast on its credentials, either of Watanabe’s past work or those of the show’s starry collaborators. And in the episodes made available, it feels like there is plenty of room to grow and co*plicate this story as the bigger picture is still pretty unclear. But luckily, what hasn’t changed from Cowboy Bebop is Watanabe’s sense of style and interest in using animation to depict and empower people who have fallen through the cracks.     

Lazarus premieres April 5 on Adult Swim