Review of Lazarus

I love Shinichiro Watanabe's anime, not just Cowboy Bebop, but also Space Dandy and Samurai Champloo; so when I heard about this anime, I was really looking forward to it. I'm sad to say that it's really disappointing. Unlike Watanabe's other works, the characters feel very one dimensional and don't have great chemistry with each other. Some of them feel like budget versions of Cowboy Bebop characters. I feel like I barely know anything about them, even after seeing the episodes where they got explored more in depth. The story could've been good, but the problem was that it took too long for any development.It's understandable that they couldn't have found Skinner quickly otherwise the show would've been over, but it felt like they made no progress at all through most of the show and suddenly got every lead they needed in the last few episodes. Normally I say this problem could've been avoided if the show was longer, but the structure of the show gives the feeling that they would still wait until the last minute for any developments. Some of the episodes also felt pretty poorly written or were just really clichéd. The episode on the oil rig especially felt like it could've been from literally any Hollywood blockbuster, with the twist for one of the character's backstory feeling really clichéd.

The show still had some redeeming qualities though. For starters the animation was amazing, as expected from MAPPA. The fight scenes were also really entertaining, which makes a lot of sense considering that John Wick director Chad Stahelski did the choreography for every fight in this show. The soundtrack to this show was also great, the variety of music genres by the different composers really added to it. Watanabe also managed to blend the songs well with the fight scenes as per his usual directing style.

Overall though, strong production values were not enough to save this show from being better than mediocre and the Adult Swim anime curse continues to linger on.