Anime original by MAPPA
Streaming on Max and Hulu
Premise
In the year 2052 mankind has become reliant upon Hapuna, a wonder painkiller developed by famous scientist Dr. Skinner. Three years ago however Skinner disappeared, and as our story opens he returns with a dire warning: In the next 30 days everyone who has taken a dose of Hapuna will die.
Zigg’s verdict: Failed Resurrection
Look, I don’t want to be too harsh on Shinichiro Watanabe. The man is an icon of anime, the key creative force behind a number of fantastic shows, and responsible for one of the best productions in GLORIO blog history, in the form of Space Dandy. His legacy as a titan of the industry is secure, and even though I’ve felt that some of his more recent work (Carol & Tuesday, Terror in Resonance etc) has not lived up to his groundbreaking earlier shows, I’ve never doubted the sincerity and passion that he put into those projects.
Lazarus, though, is different. Everything about this first episode screams contractual obligation, like Adult Swim rocked up to Watanabe and said “Hey, make us Cowboy Bebop again!” and, after years of saying no, he just threw up his hands and went “fine!”. The tropes of the older show are liberally scattered across lazarus, from the vaguely cyberpunk-ish future, the too-cool-for-school hero and even the stabs of jazz and swing music that punctuate the soundtrack.
That might sound appealing, if familiar, in abstract, but the reality is Lazarus comes across a sloppy mess of recycled ideas and appropriated aesthetics. The overall plot, seemingly centred around a benevolent medical researcher turned insane idealogue, is just dumber than a sack of hammers and seems to be pulling deeply from the Garth Marenghi school of writing. And while this opener introduces us to a huge spread of characters, it doesn’t do much to emndear them to the audience beyond their tired suface level cliches. Lead Axel Gilberto is especially bad in this regard, as he gets the lion’s share of screentime yet he’s so busy showing us what a badass and insouciant dude he is that he forgets to demonstrate any personality traits beyond ‘cool guy’.
What compounds the problem is that, even though Watanabe is famous for his tight, exciting cinematography, and MAPPA is an (extremely evil) top-tier studio, this debut episode is very visually underwhelming. The colour palate is almost universally made up of muted shades of grey and brown, and the shot choice is suprisingly unambitious – there’s very little directorial flair or distinctiveness, which combined with the flat character and world design makes the show uninteresting to look at, if technically competent. Another issue is that this is a dub-first show, and the dub is…let’s say that like many aspects of the production it seems to be harking back to the early 00’s, and not in a good way.
Ultimately, the main impression that I took away from this first episode of Lazarus is that the show is trying so, so hard to recapture that indefinable sense of style and iconoclasm that characterised Watanabe’s best work, that it feels as if it has no personality of its own. It’s a Frankenstein creation, knitted together from reused parts of other, better shows. It’ll move, sure, but only with a generous application of outside power. Ironically, it’s forgotten one of the most important rules – there’s nothing less cool than desperately trying to be cool.
