“If you can’t feel any pain, there’s no difference from being dead.”
Lazarus is sleek and stylish, cynical and cautionary. It is an ominous cyberpunk portrayal of a possible near-future. Visionary director Shinichirō Watanabe returns to the genre with a new, 13 episode series 27 years after his monumental cyberpunk masterwork, Cowboy Bebop aired in 1998 and upended the field.
Lazarus is a 2025 WB show developed for Toonami and Adult Swim, directed by Watanabe, with action and fight choreography by John Wick’s Chad Stahelski as well as a funky soundtrack by Kamasi Washington, Bonobo, and Floating Points. The crew of voice actors is led by Mamoru Miyano, along with Kôichi Yamadera, Makoto Furukawa, Yuma Uchida, Megumi Hayashibara, Maaya Uchida, Manaka Iwam,i and Akio Ôtsuka.
“He flew away like a bird let out of its cage.”
It’s 2052. Nearly three years ago, the celebrated polymath professor, Dr. Skinner (Yamadera) vanishes, leaving the residents of sprawling Babylonia City shocked and dismayed. A talented neuroscientist, Dr. Skinner created the multifaceted wonder-drug Hapuna, a substance with myriad applications. It cures diseases, kills pain, extends and enhances life, and once available to the public, in short order, just about every person on the planet is hooked on it.
Now, returning after his lengthy absence, Skinner has a dire message: He is tired of those exploiting and squandering his gifts; he is tired of this decadent world his work has made possible, and in thirty days, everyone who has taken Hapuna will die. He has a cure, he might disperse it to the deserving, but for the rest, death. As the impact of his message emanating from overridden advertising screens reverberates throughout the streets, the citizens of Babylonia City descend into pandemonium.
There are very few places Dr. Skinner’s menacing missive doesn’t cause chaos. One of those is in Babylonia City’s most secure supermax. There, an impassive prisoner goes through his morning workout in the confines of his cell. His name is Axel Gilberto, and he’s serving out an eight hundred, eighty eight year sentence with extra time added on for each of his 22 attempted jailbreaks. His exercises consist of meticulous and methodically precise, rehearsed movements that use all the available space and horizontal surfaces in the tight confines of his cell. Before Gilberto finishes, a guard interrupts his routine.
Axel is brought to cavernous visitors’ room, surrounded by heavily armed corrections officers. A government lawyer is there to see him, proffer in hand. Before she has a chance to say “Boo”, he takes the opportunity to engage in Escape Attempt #23. Moving like greased lightning, he gracefully whirls around the guards, keeping the room’s buttresses between him and their weapon arcs. Gilberto leaps and parkours to the upper levels of the visitors’ chambers before making his way into the central core of the prison, gyrating through the air, and climbing towards freedom. Suddenly, his strange exercises make perfect sense as it becomes clear that he’s memorized the floor plans and drilled every move he needs to successfully decamp. As alarms throughout the supermax blare, Gilberto clobbers any officer that tries to stand in his way with an impressive combination of Kung-Fu, Capoeira, and Savate de Rue. He slips away and makes his escape.
#23 for the win. Axel is out. He’s loose, he’s on the lam, not giving the proffer any thought. Meanwhile, in the visitors’ room, the government lawyer reports in, informing her superiors of Gilberto’s breakout. Teams are alerted, wheels are put into motion, and the entire weight of every resource in this oppressive information-state is activated to take Axel down and bring him in.
Will Gilberto be able to keep his head down and stay out of prison? What does the government want with him, anyway? What the hell did he do to get locked up for 888 years? What soured Dr. Skinner and set him off on a quest to kill all humans? Can Skinner’s plan be stopped? Please watch Lazarus to find out.
“Hey daredevil, look over here!”
Like Lazarus of Bethany (El-Azar= God helped), a mythical figure who was brought back to life after being dead for four days, the eponymous team in Lazarus is composed of a group of former criminals given a new lease on life. They have been put together by the government as a purpose-built task force and given state-of-the-art equipment and facilities. What is the team for? Was the government of Babylonia City always preparing for Dr. Skinner’s possible return? Did they know the truth about Hapuna, or was the team assembled for more nefarious designs and then repurposed to find Dr. Skinner before the literal deadline?
Chad Stahelski’s incredible fight choreography and impossibly fluid animation by MAPPA Co. allows Axel to dance through the air. Kamasi Washington’s anachronistic, brassy score fits well and complements Axel’s uncanny fighting style. Gilberto’s bold parkour traversal to the upper reaches of the city is magnificent. The stupendous design of Babylonia City is classic cyberpunk. Drones and futuristic vehicles fill the air and the streets are lined with massive, intrusive advertising screens, while the city is composed of countless towering structures of steel, mirrored glass, chrome and neon.
At the end of the first episode, as the credits roll, the camera pans across streets full of the dead. Bodies after bodies lying twisted where they fell, with hands clenching their bottles of Hapuna, spilled pills carelessly strewn across the asphalt. A forbidding and portentous countdown appears in the corner of the screen: 29 days left. Can the Lazarus team succeed in their mission to find Skinner and get the cure from him by any means necessary before the time runs out while the frayed fabric of society unravels around them?
Is this all a test for humanity? Has Dr. Skinner turned Babylonia City and the world into a giant Operant Conditioning Chamber, otherwise known as a Skinner Box? The Skinner Box was created by psychologist B.F. Skinner in the 1930’s, following up on the work of Dr. Thorndike who created a puzzle box to study animal behavior.
In Blue Submarine #6, a 2000 anime, a sinister, mad scientist named Dr. Zorndyke melts the ice caps, floods the world’s cities, and pushes humanity to evolve. Perhaps Watanabe was influenced by that animated hybrid of 1990s Sean Connery vehicle, The Hunt for Red October, and Kevin Costner’s 1995 film, Waterworld. Watanabe’s Dr. Skinner ALSO seems to be assessing mankind, seeing how humans will react under pressure, determining if the people are deserving of his cure.
Babylonia City is a surveillance-state horror, with every aspect of the inhabitants’ lives under constant scrutiny. Cameras are everywhere. The police use carrier drones festooned with squads of unmanned observers capable of launching even smaller drones, all controlled remotely by spies and observers with AI assistance.
Unlike the common sci-fi trope of the Doomed Megalopolis, Babylonia City and the larger setting of Lazarus doesn’t take place in a dying world. Unless the team triumphs and gets Dr. Skinner to give up the goods, it’s a dead world. The inhabitants just haven’t accepted it yet.
Lazarus takes place in an electric and exotic, neon-soaked, sci-fi nightmare world that is terrifyingly similar to our own, where an overclocked, over-acclaimed, alleged super-genius is given access to every facet of people’s lives and proves unworthy of that trust.
Lazarus looks beautiful, sounds superb, the animation moves like few cartoons ever have, and the show is an excellent return to form from one of the genre’s greatest creators. Hopefully, there won’t be another 27-year break before Shinichirō Watanabe follows up with more cyberpunk works, as there is something of a renaissance going on. Lazarus is a splendid addition and can only add to that current cyberpunk revival.
The first episode of Lazarus will air on Adult Swim on Saturday, April 5, 2025, at midnight ET/PT.
Each episode will subsequently be broadcast on MAX the following day.
Newsdesk 
Brian Isaacs - Executive Editor / Publisher