Review of Lazarus

Lazarus is another helping of westaboo porn by courtesy of Shinichiro Watanabe, his stable of writers, and Kidult Swim. The producers approached Watanabe in hopes of replicating the success of Cowboy Bebop with another sci-fi action series, to which he asked if they meant something like Space Dandy. Their response was "No, something more serious." But clearly not much more serious, given the aloof and referential hipster farce that we got. Since Lazarus will likely be compared to Cowboy Bebop because of the director, a similarly gritty visual style, a touch of jazz and other American pop music, and a cover and OP drawing fromthe older title, it is worth making a quick comparison. The Cowboy Bebop English dub was legendary in anime circles compared to the average dub of the time, but a lot of the lines in Lazarus are delivered without much conviction and often in monotone, with Eleina sounding like an actual robot; while I am by no means a Japanese dub purist, it is the superior choice here, even if the authentic westaboo vibe would suggest otherwise.

This series becomes a Team Avengers plot and a wacky race to save the world rather than being a moodier episodic offering of smaller and often better-written stories like in CB. Lazarus is semi-episodic in the sense that they are always hunting for Skinner as the days are counting down to humanity's demise. There is hardly any character development or plot progression along the way. Not all characters need development, but there is nothing about Team Lazarus' character traits, perspective, or backstory that make them compelling or memorable. Every so often, there will be some attempt at filling in a past for these dullards, mostly coming from rushed episodes like the one involving the cult or an out-of-the-blue lesbian spy subplot, which complements a prior "yuribait" scene; there is also the drama between Leland and his sister, coming too late to matter, when the world is supposed to be "ending" in a couple of days. The drama is bad to begin with, but it feels like a prank in this context. Spike was supposed to be a stoic, cool character, who knew chop socky, and the intent is likewise for Axel to dazzle the audience with acrobatics and always being the coolest cucumber in the room, though in a far more watered-down and heavy-handed fashion, to the point of being distracting. Usually, the dynamic is that Team Lazarus is trying to fashion an elaborate plan to, say, enter a secured building, but Axel struts right in and cues up a fight scene. "So cool and ironic, bro. Can't wait to see the sick action scenes. Let's gooooooooo! 😎" Yeah, you just need to turn your brain off and enjoy the action, spectacle, and eye candy. The characters and story are z-grade at every turn, and even the visuals and action pale in comparison to the director's CB or so many other anime that will continue to be mentioned again and again after Lazarus is rightfully seen as a dud and forgotten after a few seasons. In the end, what does the animation amount to other than a few parkour scenes with minimal energy and tension and a flashy, emotionless final duel with a schizo?

The Characters will goof off for a bit, get a lead, go look for Skinner, and find out everything they did for the whole episode was basically a waste of time. Yet they end up getting a clue by the end. That clue is carried over and explored in the next episode, most of which end up feeling like filler because of this formula, with there being hardly any plot progression until the last 3 or 4 episodes. Many of these leads that they get from going down various rabbit holes are either public information or obvious. For example, they get a lead before they investigate the pharmaceutical company, when that would be an obvious place to check much earlier; a smoking-hot cliffhanger reveal about a character having a connection to Skinner was easily accessible public information, and Team Lazarus being ignorant of this fact was confirmation that they were too lazy to even finish researching Wikipedia before going on adventures around the world.

Team Lazarus investigates a bunker that Skinner owned, a drug company, a homeless camp, Skinner's grandma's house for a milk and cookie break, etc. Seemingly any place that Skinner had ever been to is open for investigation, and probably even his elementary school would warrant checking if the series were any longer. The relatively self-contained episodes have plenty of surface level writing about social issues. Whether it is confronting goofball roofie rapists, a rushed episode about cult identity and AI ascending to godhood, the abuse of AI and its potential for creative and intellectual atrophy of humanity, or even the most egregious example of the hilariously cliched social commentary about how the homeless are ignored but to view them with new eyes leads to a Where's Waldo? puzzle of apocalyptic proportions being solved—try not to face palm when you immediately see something that the dunces of Team Lazarus overlook.

Part of the worldview of the creators seems to be that the end of the world will be a casual decline with few differences and people going about the daily grind as if nothing changed at all, other than a wistful soliloquy here and there, with the intent seeming to be a reflection of how people confront the political issue of anthropogenic climate change in the present: "People aren't nipping climate change in the bud in the here and now, man, so, like, people are totally cool with the world ending for real, man. It's, like, common sense, man. 😎" Oddly, rioting and social unrest are nearly non-existent, even though you would expect people to be razing government buildings or pharmaceutical corporations to the ground for having ushered in the end times. What do they have to lose? Imagine the greater impact Axel's prison break would have if the streets were swarming with rioters who were smashing windows and torching buildings, and the pigs were rushing them with riot shields and batons and falling back on tear gas and water cannons or other crowd management methods. The series' apocalyptic mood would have a more persuasive punch. All we get is a bumbling cop who has many cameo appearances, but he seldom has anything to do other than react to someone trashing a car or having a conspicuous Axel walk right past him, unnoticed; similarly, while governments actually are searching for Skinner, it is easy to forget anyone other than Team Lazarus are sniffing out his stink. The world is simply dead and ill-conceived.

Lazarus is a realistic-looking series set in the U.S. and has a trace of that kind of "mature tone" you might get from Cowboy Bebop, but it is like the little kid who smokes cigarettes, drinks beer, and curses to feel mature rather than anything close to actual maturity. Maybe the worst offender when it comes to dialogue is when we get to our first round of banter (I have rendered the dialogue verbatim) with our five mains: "This team wasn't formed for personal gain or profit." "Okay then, what's it for?" "Well... [dramatic pause] We're here to save the world." "Oh? So basically, we're superheroes." "That's cool. We're like the Avengers or something." This is like a masterclass in terrible referential dialogue! as if the Team Avengers vibe (or Isekai Suicide Squad, which is not any better) were not already obvious from episode 1. It seems like they have a quota to fit at least one cringe reference in per episode, as we get "secret agent" and "License to Kill" from James Bond/007 (7 IQ, that is), and we are spooned two helpings of the corny "Uh, layman's terms, please," to tone down technobabble. This is actual dialogue from Lazarus, and the oppressive hentai vibe sums up the experience well: "Don't look at it and just open your mouth. It's proof of our bond. Now swallow it. 🥵"

The problems with the writing are multi-faceted and not limited to the dialogue. One of the silliest things about Axel is that he is a veteran prison breaker who has been sentenced to 888 years and is like a flipping MAPPA monkey who bounces off walls, climbs up multi-story buildings, and is too nimble for the donut-sucking pigs to shoot. He should be in solitary or his hands and feet always cuffed and probably even some kind of other body restraint to keep him in check. There are all kinds of odd moments, like Leland's laughable solution to get past guards by having them foot the cleaning bill; one has to conclude that the writers were desperately struggling to find some use for Leland early on, whose main role otherwise is to play with Tonka trucks and RC helicopters. They easily find a clue at Skinner's house that the police missed without even trying, which is then forgotten about for more than half the series until the slept-on clue provides them with yet another lead. A former professor-cum-hobo known by a member of Team Lazarus just happens to have been a past colleague of Skinner and remembers some useless story about Skinner's grandma that turns out to be a hot lead. Later, Team Lazarus are attacked by a vicious gang in Istanbul and one character yelling, "We want to see grandma Skinner and eat baklava" results in a deus ex machina and plot convenience because this gang happens to know her and immediately become tame enough to roll over and have their tummies rubbed. Axel finds a camera that Skinner left inside of grandma Skinner's apartment in about 10 seconds. The scenes are often conveniences piled on top of conveniences, which should form a mountain by the end.

Since a lot of American political hot topics are incorporated, the script is obviously cartoonish, with even the original Gundam from 1979 feeling more mature in its politics. Cutting edge social commentary incoming... "Can you help us find this person?" Leading to the non-sequitur of a minor support character who does not need a backstory: "Hey, listen, I'm a bankrupt transgender woman who went to prison." All of this information could be inferred without dialogue. Then, of course, the black Pirates of the Caribbean extra, instead of asking what that has to do with anything, has to compete and insert his sob story too: "Oh, yeah? Well, back when I was an academic researcher, a guy said to me, 'There will never be a black Einstein,' and it'd be impossible for people like us to win a Nobel Prize [at least 17 blacks have won the Nobel Prize, by the way; it is true that they have not won any in the physics category, which is probably what he means, but this script is still awkward]; so, uh, guess who that guy was... he was actually the dean of the university, and I knocked his ass out, LOL." Uh huh... For social commentary to work, it cannot be this fake and lazily written, and the writer is trying to cram in too many half-baked ideas, poorly inserted pandering, and stereotypical characters who are nothing but some boohoo backstory in the waiting. People will celebrate this as "trans and black representation," but this is abysmal writing, and these are presently not even characters: They are, at their essence, walking political talking points. This is Watanabe's fumbling attempt at engaging with social commentary, like Terror in Resonance or Carole & Tuesday all over again, but many times worse and overdosing on Reddit screeching and uptalking TikTok influencers. Upon arriving at the animal testing segment, I assumed we were going to get a heavy bong hit of social commentary of the week until our eyes went bloodshot, but the writers could not care less about this issue, and I have never seen a more squeaky-clean depiction of big pharma.

The year is 2052, which is most likely a reference to Jorgen Randers' book of the same name, who was a co-author of the well-known The Limits to Growth report that was commissioned by the Club of Rome, which is relevant because the environment is the core issue of this series. Our main villain, Dr. Skinner, after a disappearance of three years, delivers a video speech to the masses, which might as well be this: "Although I'm stoked that we finally got a female president—UOOOH #I Stand With Her... Blah, blah, blah, the evil of inequality, war, and cow farts must end, so I will now reveal that the unrealistic panacea drug that I have created was laced with super secret ingredient x and has mutated, and you will all die unless you stop me. Let's play a game! Mwahahahaha!" It is hard to endure these preachy humanitarian Einstein activist/Bond villain plots nowadays, as they just keep getting worse.

Hapna, the super drug Skinner pumped onto the market, is basically like Brave New World's cure-all Soma but with a deadly twist. Watanabe's influence was the opioid epidemic, in large part spearheaded by the underhanded Sackler family, who went so far as to pay off medical journals and shill doctors to line their pockets. Instead of this potentially more interesting and complex story of pharmaceutical corruption, we have an evil genius and an incompetent FDA (and every other drug administration in the world) that failed to do due diligence with proper testing and rolled these drugs out immediately. You have to suspend disbelief for an oversight of this scale in what is effectively a global idiot plot. Admittedly, while it might seem ridiculous for so many people to be using Hapna, if you compare it to aspirin usage instead of opioids, it becomes a lot more reasonable, as daily aspirin usage is quite high, the average person probably takes at least one aspirin a year for minor things, and Hapna appears to be at least as potent as opioids but without the side effects or a need for a prescription. It is also cheap. At the very least, a massive amount of the population will die and send the world into further chaos—or maybe I should say actual chaos, since the public takes a "Keep Calm and Carry On" approach to the countdown to death. Even though there are some ridiculous things about Hapna, there are not as many holes in this piece of cheese as quite a few other parts of the plot.

It does not help that I predicted cow farts would be a motivating issue by the first episode, and it turns out the reason Skinner embarks on his dastardly scheme is because "The ice in the north pole will melt and be lost forever!" Skinner then whines and goes into hiding once everyone laughs him out of the UN, seething in his hole while he readies his plan. That is right, he has a butthurt hissy fit because the unwashed plebs are not doing anything in response to his soundbite, so his solution is global pharmaceutical genocide in hopes of getting his way. It smacks of Attack on Titans' Eren 2.0, but at least Skinner's balls have dropped far enough to go all the way... There is also the edgy opinion (and a position clearly endorsed by the writers) floating around that Skinner is a good boy, representing the change that humanity needs, but he is effectively punishing the powerless masses of the world, many of whom are too busy trying to make ends meet to worry about such bourgeois concerns. Of course, blame everyone who has no say in the matter instead of governments and corporations.

Regardless of what one thinks about this controversial topic, scientists have been casually throwing catastrophic predictions out for years, going back well before the 1960s—global cooling becomes global warming becomes climate change becomes WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE NEXT YEAR! The topic is more complex than the propagandistic way the issue is being depicted. The writer is taking a climate change idea commonly parroted in the present and applying it 27 years into the future. Problems arise from this, however, because the future the writers present is far more advanced than our time, the population is undoubtedly larger, and the carbon and other emissions must be even greater. The cited ice still has not fully melted, and humanity has yet to die in the hypothetical future 27 years from now, even after endless prophesying of doom and gloom. Lazarus is just poorly written fiction, and we should not draw any conclusions from it concerning real world issues, but this plot point not only seems to downplay the political issue from the present that the writer presumably cares about, but it is so ill-conceived that it would probably be more likely to make one question whether or not the whole thing is baloney rather than persuade. But Skinner's shining brilliance and the hokey writing is such that only he can produce a mass-adopted super drug with a hidden kill switch and not only time that with the ice caps deteriorating but accurately predict the occurrence. However, the climate change plot is mostly forgotten in favor of something else by the end, indicating the event was not that pressing after all. It seems as if the writer has no self-awareness when it comes to his pet issue, which is too speculative to make for convincing fiction.

We are immediately given dialogue to indicate how you are supposed to feel about the perspective of Skinner on climate change and whatever was presented on his Wikipedia page in this instance: "Sounds like a pretty decent guy." "Sounds too good to be true [Botox bimbo face]. Maybe he was doing some really evil stuff." As if his Hapna scheme were not enough, they have to find some other dastardly deeds in his early life. Oh, he won three Nobel Prizes and donated all of his money to charity. Whoop-de-doo and cue the Community "Ha Gay!" meme. "He was seen giving his seat to an elderly woman on the train... and helping out a homeless person... And there was this time that he tried to eat a sandwich, but then a stray dog took it away from him." "He seems like an all around good person." "The guy's practically a saint." Can I get a barf bag, please? There is example after example of this, and it becomes repetitive fast. I would think this were satire of the left-right divide in the U.S. if not for script cues looking to enshrine Skinner as a saint and ascended master.

However, what the script is initially presenting is that everything about Skinner, on the surface, is "good," but that this veneer conceals the evilest of evil bastard geniuses, which is made obvious when you realize Skinner is supposed to be an Anti-Christ figure. The comparison is not altogether different from the sympathetic portrayal of Lucifer/Satan in Paradise Lost, where Milton must have realized the best way to depict a convincing villain is to make him relatable so that you can imagine yourself being tempted to become him or to make the same choices, were your circumstances similar. Hapna is seen as a godsend, an "opium of the masses," yet this wonder-drug harbors the doom of humanity. Skinner is seen by Lazarus as being like a saint, yet the description of the Anti-Christ in the bible is that he will appear to be good as a means of deception; Skinner is also from Turkey and appears to be half-Turkish, as his first name is the Turkish Deniz. The reason that he is from Turkey is because this is one of the theorized locations for the appearance of the Anti-Christ, and Islam and the Ottoman Empire were commonly enemies of the Christian west. Gog and Magog are associated with end times prophecy, and Turkey is sometimes interpreted to be Magog. There's even a brief, subtle nod linking a prepubescent Skinner to a horseman in Israel, with the White Rider of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse being associated with the Anti-Christ. The name Skinner refers to one who skins an animal, and it pertains to the surface and what is underneath, much like how Skinner appears a certain way but hides a darker nature, though this also applies to certain twists in the story as well. Nevertheless, despite the Abrahamic symbolism, this is not a supernatural story, and anyone concerned with climate change will never be depicted as the real villain in a prominent media production. While Christians often think of the Anti-Christ as an evil figure, he is part of god's plan, and, in that sense, becomes a quite tragic character.

To reinforce this tragic element, the scene in Turkey is also heavily symbolic. The red tulip derived from Skinner relates to Islamic and Turkish legends. Leland, by dressing in an Arabic thawb was not just playing the clown for a quick laugh but was meant to look like a "prince," as referenced by the young girl playing with dolls. This scene is a nod to the story of prince Farhad and Shirin. Another similar story is the Battle of Karbala, where the imam grandson of Muhammad, Husayn ibn Ali, dies and is martyred. He is often referred to as the "prince of martyrs." Upon their death, the story goes that their blood seeps into the desert and gives rise to red tulips, a symbol of sacrifice—often carried out for the sake of higher causes. And what could be a higher cause than a 5D chess scheme to unify the population and have the UN enforce the Worldwide Butt Plug Filtration Act to reduce emissions? I'm speechless, and Skinner's transcendent love for humanity knows no bounds.

Aside from the reference to Lazarus, the character Christ brought back to life after 4 days, there are other references to Christianity. Axel is supposed to be a Christ figure, which might not appear obvious at first, but he frolics with the "sinners" and dregs of society (we are even taken to a homeless camp on his initiative), much like Christ; Axel is also (involuntarily) doing a good deed for humanity, much like how Christ, um, washed dirty feet, I guess? A minor point is that Axel's good luck charm is a wing, like that of an angel's, supposedly protecting him from harm, with it also being connected to creation; he wears a red shirt, and red is associated with him on the OP and one version of the cover art: The color is evocative of Christ's sacrifice on the cross and the symbolic significance of blood in religious practices. More serious points include the name Axel being derived from the Danish Absalon, which is thought to be a corruption of Absalom, a Hebrew name. One of the sons of King David is named Absalom, and the name means "Father of Peace." Christ is supposed to be descended from King David as well, even if this makes no sense in respect to the supposed "virgin birth"; speaking of which, even the desaturated ED is "pregnant with meaning," as the camera tracks through a highway of seemingly dead bodies, only for Axel to "resurrect" and stand up at the end of the road. The other hint is the symbolic 888-year prison sentence that Axel received. In certain Christian numerological or gematria circles, Christ is associated with this number.

There is also plenty of Judaic and Christian imagery as well, such as flocks of doves; the seven angels sounding the seven trumpets of Revelations, each resulting in a cascade of cataclysmic events, until the seventh ushers in the kingdom of Christ; the ugly post-post-modern crucified figure on a building that looks like the cat coughed up the Tower of Babel (on a similar note, a key multicultural location is called Babylonia!); and the dreidel in the introduction, with the letters on the four sides often thought to be associated with enemies of the Jews, such as Babylon, Rome, etc. Christine could be viewed as having a meaning like "follower of Christ," and the name is close to the word Christian. Another notable name is Hersch, the old hag leading Team Lazarus: The name has German, Hebrew, and Yiddish associations and means "deer." Quoting Psalms 42 might be the best conclusion here: "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God." And Psalms 18: "He makes my feet like the feet of a deer; he causes me to stand on the heights." Plenty of this could be overlooked because they're squishing it all into symbolism and coded references, but the writers want to make sure everyone absorbs this oh-so-deep message of a battle between good and evil on some level. They give you the secular comic book version by referencing Team Avengers. They also give you the tl;dr religious version: "I swear, Skinner is the devil incarnate..." "Well, if he's the devil, then I suppose that makes us the angels that are going to kick his ass back to hell." *The rest of Team Lazarus groan on their Zoom call.*

Ultimately, this is a hokey Abrahamic-filtered eschatological (scatological is easier to say and just as accurate) thriller in the vein of the Left Behind novel series, only it is a mixture of seinentard realism and caricatured political dystopia rather than a fantastical exploration of the Revelation prophecy, the Anti-Christ's plans, and the rapture; the Anti-Christ in LB similarly gives a speech before the UN, but he is a smoother operator than the crybaby Skinner, and the "Tribulation Force," sounding quite similar to a Team Avengers-like entity, is organized to stop him. Other than that, Lazarus has the John Wick guy choreographing fight scenes that look like Jackie Chan flipping around on a spaceship with zero gravity and toppling baddies far bigger than him, along with some zany hijinks along the way that resemble the scattered neo-noir subplots of CB, yet the action is the only remotely compelling aspect of the series, and this new "current thing" kind of political angle is unlikely to age well.