On Friday, October 18th 2024, New York Comic Con attendees filled the panel for Adult Swim’s upcoming new anime Lazarus, eager to see and hear from director Shinichiro Watanabe as he divulged more information about the show, set to premiere in 2025. What these attendees may not have expected, since it hadn’t been promised in the panel’s official description, was that they were about to be the first audience in the world to see the premiere of the very first episode of Lazarus. As the emcee warned the audience not to stow their phones, the room filled with hushed anticipation and excitement to see the Cowboy Bebop director’s latest series, which had been promised to be an action sci-fi thriller oozing with style and punched up with action.
Indeed, the first episode of Lazarus was a banger, and very Bebop-like in tone and music. Titled “Goodbye, Cruel World,” the episode wasted no time introducing viewers to said cruel world, expositing how a genius scientist named Dr. Skinner created an affordably priced wonder drug, Hapna, that could cure all illness. After the drug spread in popularity and usage around the world, Dr. Skinner mysteriously disappeared. Three years later, Dr. Skinner resurfaced with a video message to the world warning that everyone who took Hapna will die in 30 days, challenging people to find him and convince him that humanity is worth saving before time runs out.
We are then introduced to our protagonist, Axel Gilberto, working out in his prison cell in a manner reminiscent of how Spike was introduced working out in Cowboy Bebop. Axel in general has a very Axel is visited by an Amanda Waller-type woman named Hersch, who informs him of the situation and tries to recruit him. Unimpressed, Axel casually provokes a guard and steals his gun. Using Hersch as a hostage, Axel escapes the prison in the show’s first elaborate action-chase scene. He ventures out to Babylonia City, where he ends up getting noticed by security cameras at Grand Central Station, leading the show’s second extended action-chase scene as drones and agents of Hersch’s chase Axel through the city. After some cool parkour sequences on top rooftops, Axel jumps off the roof of a building as white birds fly past him in a pointed moment of symbolism of him being free as a bird, only for him to immediately be shocked unconscious while taking a selfie with a cute blonde girl (Chris). Axel wakes up in an abandoned barbershop greeted by various characters involved in chasing him throughout the episode, briefed by Hersch that he has been inducted into Lazarus, an organization tasked with finding Skinner.
The ending credits show every character passed out on a highway amidst pills and feathers, panning through the scene until reaching Axel, who stands out and looks out on the devastated landscape. It reminds me a lot of the ED sequence of Paranoia Agent, and the idea of sleeping through a greyscale apocalypse spurred on by capitalism and corporations certainly is a mood going into 2025. As a side-note, while the premiere was shown subbed, Sentai is credited as the dubbing studio for the English dub, which tracks considering Adult Swim has relied on them for the dubs of their other recent originals like Rick & Morty the Anime.
Regardless of the show’s dark implications for the near-future, the audience loved it and expressed their approval with great applause. The panel discussion then began in earnest, with Shinichiro Watanabe, producer Joseph Cho, and executive producer Gil Austin coming on stage. Gil came in place of Jason DeMarco, who he claimed was sick with pneumonia and couldn’t come. DeMarco had appeared on The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim panel earlier that day, so presumably his illness worsened significantly in the 3.5 hours in-between them.
Watanabe described Lazarus as a continuous story across one cour of 13 episodes. He explained he had been asked to create a new sci-fi action series but kept rejecting it because he didn’t want to keep making the same thing. Even though he’s repeatedly been asked to make sequels to Cowboy Bebop, he has no interest in that. Watanabe asked the crowd whether they’d really want to see a Cowboy Bebop 2 or 5, which of course they answered with cheering approval. Watanabe seemed surprised and perhaps a bit dejected by this response, but was quickly reassured by shouts from the crowd that they wanted to see Lazarus just as much.
Watanabe admitted it took a while for him to feel up to taking on the sci-fi genre, and now felt like the right time. But he didn’t want to repeat himself and do the same thing all over again. He wanted to modernize the action sequences and make something new. John Wick got Watanabe’s attention, it was a new kind of action, he felt. A lot of producers (though Joseph insisted “not him”) laughed at the idea of pitching Chad Stahelski, the John Wick director and action choreographer, to do action sequences for an anime. There was also an issue with the budget difference between anime and film, and them having a lot less money and resources to make do with. But, Watanabe wanted to try asking Chad anyway, and the minute he did, Chad told him “of course I will!” Watanabe warned Chad they didn’t have a lot of money, but he said money’s no object because he was inspired by Champloo and Bebop, so this was payback time for him. Watanabe jokes that Chad became his new favorite person. Chad wasn’t involved in all the episodes, but was hands-on in building out the action sequences in 4 or 5 of them. Some episodes were only made by the anime staff, who brought a different kind of action to the table. Watanabe described them as innovative action sequences created by some of the best action animators in Japan.
Watanabe noted that this project is the first time that they’ve built the sound mix with a team in Hollywood. They worked with the Formosa Group, who’ve worked on the sound design for major Hollywood productions like Dune, Blade Runner, Top Gun Maverick, and Game of Thrones. Watanabe thought their work was amazing and really wanted the opportunity to work with them. Other producers laughed at the idea, the budget was not there. But it turned out that Formosa also wanted to try their hand in anime, and several members of their team were influenced by Cowboy Bebop. Despite getting them on board, Watanabe joked that they can’t tell us how much they cost. Even so, he is proud that they had so many amazing collaborators, and hopes we will really enjoy the results of their work.
Watanabe admitted that even some of the staff wondered if Lazarus was too similar to Cowboy Bebop, and asked the crowd what they thought. This got a mixed response, since most folks didn’t seem to know what answer he wanted. Regardless, Watanabe insisted and remained confident that he has made a fundamentally different series. Watanabe then revealed that when they first started out on this project, he wanted to work with the late Keiko Nobumoto like he had on Bebop. They did a lot of preliminary work and talked about the characters and story together before she passed away. He noted that there are some elements retained from the development he did with Nobumoto in the finished version of the series, so those elements might feel the most Cowboy Bebop-ish. Watanabe stressed that if you feel any similarities to Bebop in Lazarus, it’s because of her influence, and not because producers told him too. He hopes the series will be successful as a way to pay tribute to her.
The panel was then opened up to audience Q&A, and even though they advised people to only ask questions pertaining to Lazarus, and explicitly said no to asking Bebop questions, the first asker did anyway. Even so, Watanabe pointedly pivoted and connected every unrelated question back to Lazarus. In answering the first question, commenting on the rapport between himself and the Bebop actors, Watanabe explained the personalities of Bebop characters were inspired by their voice actors, and some of those actors have joined him on Lazarus, so they feel like old war buddies. Koichi Yamadera, the voice of Spike, asked for a role – even a small one, even a dog. But Watanabe muses he has a better role than a dog, playing Dr. Skinner.
On the musical diversity of Lazarus’s score, Watanabe noted that he wanted to modernize the music genres he usually uses in Lazarus. Afro-Latina funk musician Komssi was another artist they worried would be difficult to join the project. Luckily, when Watanabe met him, Komassi told him he watched all his anime and would like to join his project. Watanabe said that they collaborated with many musical artists because the score would be too vast and had too many tracks for just one person to do. He feels it’s good to have a variety of musical styles to liven up the show.
Describing the themes and sci-fi elements of the show, Watanabe said he really wanted to explore new tech and themes in Lazarus, including drones and AI. But he noted that it’s not just a story about AI, but something more along the lines of AI starting a cult. Watanabe reflected that he decided to revisit doing a sci-fi show after doing the storyboards for the Blade Runner short he did. He particularly loves how the action style turned out in Lazarus.
On the naming inspirations for the characters, Watanabe noted that Axel Gilberto’s name comes from his South American background. Despite their similarities in name, his character is very unpredictable and a bit reckless, so he doesn’t feel there is a relation between him and Axel Rose. Instead, the name Gilberto was inspired by John Gilberto.
Finally, and unexpectedly, I had the luck of asking the last question of the Q&A, and as Gil joked was put under “no pressure” to make it a good one. Reflecting on the stories Watanabe told during the panel, and Watanabe’s successes in recruiting creative collaborators to join the project based on the influence and reputation of his previous work, I asked him what he hopes his legacy will be. Watanabe reflected that 2024 is the 30-year anniversary of his debut as a director, which started with Macross Plus. He noted that all of his titles have left a mark on his career and in the history of anime. He hopes Lazarus will be one of the titles that’ll add to his legacy.
3. 2. 1. Let’s Jam! Ready for the Laxurs panel and premiere! #NYCC2024 pic.twitter.com/DacB6RwfTE
— LumRanmaYasha (@LumRanmaYasha) October 18, 2024
Watanabe ended the panel revealing that all 13 episodes have been completed, a few tweaks aside. He watched them all again, and thought “wow, this actually might be a masterpiece!” He joked this feels like a small milestone for him. Watanabe’s confidence and enthusiasm for Lazarus energized the crowd, who eagerly pooled out of the room to grab the special poster being given away to all panel attendees. As for myself, I feel beyond honored that I got to speak to Watanabe and ask him the final question of the panel, and am looking forward to watch the rest of Lazarus when it comes out next year. Adult Swim has had some unfortunate misses with their original anime, but when Watanabe says he believes his newest show might be his “masterpiece,” it’s hard not to be excited. And, after watching the first episode, I’m ready to believe it’s going to carry that weight.
