Review of Lazarus
Around the World in 30 days meets Outbreak is a good idea on paper that is unfortunately very flawed when applied to this story. From the same visionary mind of Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo, its this knowledge that makes this review all the more heartbreaking when you know what they are capable of. 30 days is all the world has before everyone dies. A wonder drug that everyone took was secretly poisoned as its creator holds a psychological sermon for the entire world to find him and show humanity is worth saving. Introducing Lazarus our 5 person super agent team to trackhim down and save the world, made up of a sexy ex-Russian spy, a shy cute hacker girl, a no nonsense African American, a ditzy boy who's good with drones, and a "HE'S JUST SO DAMN COOL!" male lead protag who definitly wants to be Spike when they grow up, which leads to the first downfall of this show.
None of the characters seem real, or believable, and almost sound like they were given as notes to sell to a broader audience in the same way a Hollywood producer says "we gotta hit this demographic", that feels like the same Hollywood slop we see in every new action movie where the formula never changes, with dialogue that makes them sound like they came out of some 16 year old's forum fanfiction they wrote and posted, which leads to the next part of the writing.
The story, while the basis seems interesting enough, is held back by its very cheesy writing, and its not even skin deep approach to religion, politics, socio-economics, and government corruption, that it comes off like the aforementioned 16 year old who is totally not like other guys and knows the world is corrupt. We all acted like this when we were younger, thinking we new better, but when you hit a certain age you look back and realize you knew nothing. This isn't even good over the top writing in that way where its so bad its good, its just plain bad. Finally the actual story is so convoluted and filled with cliche's that you hit your limit at episode six and almost die of cringe, which only allowed me to continue thru cause I hoped we would now go so far downhill it would be fun, but sadly no you just continue to be on a bad roller coaster.
The animation, while beautiful, really struggles with anything not using natural or bright light, and every time a night setting or a dark corridor comes up, you feel like you're watching it thru a TV who's bulbs are about to fade out, and the only way to watch is to adjust the brightness setting on your TV. The action is solid, and if this was an anime from the early 2000's you may even say it is amazing. However there are a multitude of animation errors, clunky parts with bad CGI, which is a detriment to it as a whole, because it is a very beautiful anime when you can look past all these issues.
With their prior works you expect a banger sound track and once again you would be let down, as no singular track really stood out or will draw your attention back to the screen if you look away. It's a lot of violins and sad pianos and not much else. You half expect a fun jazzy transition here and there, which I can't even recall any particular fight music putting me in the mood to see the characters throw down to, perhaps I was to busy covering my ears from the dialogue of our main protag who again IS JUST SO COOL YOU GUYS!
It's a show I leave you to form your own opinion and I can see where it may have its own fans, just turns out that I'm not one of them. This anime sadly will not shatter or do anything different for its genre and is just fine at best. You may even call it average, but when you take it as a whole and other parts brining it down, even a mediocre story cannot bring it back from the dead.