Lazarus review: "Unfortunately Cowboy Bebop director's new sci-fi anime never quite melds into a harmonious whole"

With only 30 days left to save all of humanity after a miracle drug turns into a nightmare, sci-fi anime Lazarus follows a team of bad apples as they hunt for a vaccine in the year 2055. There's action, intrigue, comedy, and – as expected – some incredible music. That's no shock given Lazarus is the latest project from the legendary Shinichirō Watanabe, best known for directing Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo. But despite being filled with ambitious ingredients, it unfortunately never quite melds into a harmonious whole.

The basic premise is that an incredible drug called Hapna was introduced three years ago by "lauded neuroscientist" Dr. Skinner – a wildly effective painkiller with no known side effects that became widely adopted worldwide and used for all sorts of applications. Dr. Skinner then disappeared, only to resurface years later to say: there's a secondary effect where it mutates three years after use, and it's fatal. Even just one dose is enough to trigger it. Cue the entire world, including but not limited to our protagonists, trying to develop a vaccine, find Skinner and get one from him, or both.

While it takes a moment to set this status quo, the vast majority of Lazarus is spent with the team investigating potential leads in various parts of the world from homeless encampments to massive parties to major corporations in order to track down the missing doctor or anyone that might lead them to him. This narrative conceit allows the animators to show off a number of vibrant locales while also teaming up narratively interesting pairings for more character-oriented scenes, both of which work well overall.

Fight the power

A major marketing beat for Lazarus has for some time been that John Wick director Chad Stahelski designed action sequences for the anime. What, exactly, that means in terms of hands-on work is unclear, but Stahelski is credited as "Action Supervisor" and a number of action setpieces are absolutely distinct. If you're aware of Stahelski's previous work, you can certainly see the pedigree even if it's been interpreted through the skilled hands of animators from MAPPA.

The John Wick franchise is known for nothing if not its action, and bringing that sensibility to a project helmed by Watanabe, who has his own fair share of experience directing stunning action, seems like a no-brainer win. On paper, anyway. But the execution often leaves something to be desired.

Maybe John Wick-style action simply doesn't translate well to animation. There's something raw and real about the way Keanu Reeves handles himself and all of his enemies in the franchise. It's a grounded-yet-stylized ballet of fists, blood, and bullets. Trying to duplicate that effort into animated action in Lazarus clearly seems to have been the goal, and the vision is absolutely apparent, but it regularly comes across as messy, brief, and generally lacking clarity. And the scenes where it does actually come together, while nice in their own right, make the others look worse by comparison.

It's unfair to directly compare Lazarus with Watanabe's previous projects, given the explicit differences in animation studios, talent involved, and so on. And yet, it's impossible not to; there's nothing I've seen yet in the series that even comes close to, just to name one example, the hallway broom fight scene from Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, despite it being two decades old.

Reach for the sky

The underlying issue with Lazarus's action – technically accurate and novel, but clumsy in effect – is fairly representative of the other problems the series has. We've not yet reached a point where CGI looks totally natural when used in tandem with traditional animation, and so it's often distracting or uncanny rather than additive. As another example, the English dub is frequently stilted and dull despite the experienced cast, though I can't speak to the Japanese version.

But when it does work, it all feels a bit effortless. There's a small segment ahead of every episode I've seen where characters provide some emotional voiceover about their prior experience with the fictional drug Hapna. It's brief, no frills, and the animation and music seems to be reused for each sequence. It's not flashy, and there's no extended parkour sequence, but it both stands out and resonates.

What I've seen of Lazarus so far isn't great. It's fine – good, even. But it's ambitious as hell, featuring a killer soundtrack and creatives working on it with major bona fides that have earned the benefit of the doubt in my book. Of those I've seen, there's at least one episode where all of it comes together to be more than the sum of its parts, and there's every possibility that this happens more often than not in the second half of the season. I certainly hope so.

Lazarus is set to premiere on April 5, 2025, on Adult Swim in English. New episodes will then debut in English every Thursday starting April 10, 2025. Those English episodes will debut on Max the day after airing while Japanese-language episodes with English subtitles will debut 30 days after premiere on Max.

For more, check out our guides to the best anime to watch now and all the new anime on the way in 2025 and beyond.