On Sunday, January 12th, Anime Los Angeles attendees filled into the convention center’s biggest panel room for one of the weekend’s most anticipated events, the west-coast premiere of Shinichiro Watanabe’s newest series, Lazarus. With it having been ten years since Watanabe’s last series, Space Dandy and Terror in Resonance, there had been much excitement and anticipation for his newest series throughout the weekend. This was reflected in the packed autograph lines he had on every day of the con, the last of which I had just barely managed to make the cap for earlier that morning. As I waited in the line, I heard much discussion from other fans about their love for his series and the speculation and excitement to see Lazarus. One person in another autograph line even started throwing a fit when they realized they would have to miss the panel later that afternoon.
As for myself, I was honored to get an autograph from the director of some of my favorite series, and even though I had already seen the world premiere of Lazarus at New York Comic Con, I was looking forward to watching it again and seeing what new details I’d pick up from it on a second viewing. Moreover, I had a gut feeling that Watanabe would reveal and show even more behind-the-scenes information and production art for the show during this panel than he did at NYCC, an instinct that ultimately proved to be right on the mark. And so, here’s my recap of the Lazarus panel at Anime Los Angeles featuring Shinichiro Watanabe.
The panel began with a staff member informing us that no photos or video would be allowed at any point during the panel, not just during the screening. They also asked us to stow our phones away for the duration of the panel. As such, I handwrote my notes on it, and only took quick pics of the stage and screen as the panel was ending.
With the audience now both fully warned and warmed up, host Victor Frost started hyping everyone up by inviting Watanabe onstage. Humorously, it took him a while to come to the stage since he had to walk up a bunch of stairs. Because the projection screen was positioned to the left of the room, and Watanabe’s table was in the center, he couldn’t see it. So, he asked the crowd to tell him what was on screen whenever he changed a slide. There was a technical issue with the pointer at first, but that was resolved quickly as Watanabe changed the screen from one piece of Lazarus key art to another, and the panel began in earnest.
Watanabe says that the production of Lazarus has been completed. He was not allowed to say when the air date is, but he believes that it will happen when the weather gets warmer, strongly implying it’ll come out in the spring. Sure enough, it was later announced on the show’s official social media accounts on January 24th and confirmed by Adult Swim that Lazarus will premiere in April. Watanabe then went over the story and characters of Lazarus before the screening, showing key art featuring all of the Lazarus team. Watanabe reflected that he was inspired to do make Lazarus seven years ago while he was making Blade Runner Black Out 2022. Working on a sci-fi action short was fun, and he was inspired to make his own original action sci-fi show.
Watanabe proceeded to show key art for each of the characters. As a disclaimer, I was not able to take pictures of the exact art shown, so I have used key art images from the official Lazarus social media account. Watanabe shows key art for Axel, who is nicknamed the “Flying Jailbreaker.” Watanabe explains that all the principal characters in Lazarus are convicts. They all have committed a crime and have a past. We will get to find out what crimes they committed over the course of the show.
The story focuses on a painkiller called Hapna. The story starts when the nobel-winning Dr. Skinner invents this pain killer that cures all pains and illnesses, believing it to be the salvation of mankind. This medication even works for mild depression and broken hearts! This wonder drug is a smash hit around the world, especially because it’s affordably priced. However, Skinner suddenly goes missing. He eventually reappears 3 years later, releasing a video message on Youtube. He announces in this video that the Hapna will mutate and kill everyone who has taken it in 30 days. The jist of the show is averting this crisis.
Watanabe then starts showing key art for the various characters, showing their designs and epithets. In order:
Doug, nicknamed “The Brain.” Watanabe notes the team is assembled from many different countries. Doug is their researcher, but he was also a criminal.
Chris, nicknamed “Lady Trigger-Happy.” Chris also has a serious secret that will be revealed over the course of the show.
Leyland, nicknamed “Charming Swindler.” Watanabe notes that while he looks like an innocent kid, he has a deep secret.
Eleina, nicknamed “Punk Hacker.” Contrary to appearances, Watanabe teases that Eleina is the most serious criminal of them all. Watanabe remarked that if he reveals too much about the characters now, he’ll spoil the surprise of the show. So he’s only giving out bits and pieces for now.
Watanabe then went into his creative ambitions for the series. He wanted to make Lazarus a new type of action show. He didn’t want to do a rehash of past works, but something that was more contemporary. When he saw John Wick, he knew it was a new kind of action flick. Deeply impressed, he asked to get in touch with director Chad Stahleski to collaborate with him. His producers laughed at him, telling him that Chad is the #1 action filmmaker in Hollywood and would have no interest in anime. Watanabe asked to speak with him anyway. Showing a picture of Chad, Watanabe notes that when you look at his face you’d think he’d be a nice guy… and it turned out he was! Chad was a big fan of Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo, and was very happy to accept the offer. And so, they got the green light for the collaboration.
Watanabe shows the storyboards for a fight and escape scene that Chad and his team at 87 Eleven drafted. Watanabe points out how detailed it is, and didn’t think they’d have to go overboard and do that much.
Watanabe then shows the live-action reference film and concepts that Chad’s team shot for an action scene in Lazarus episode 2. He notes that Chad’s theme even scored the test footage with their own music and sound effects. In the scene, Axel and Chris enter a bunker looking for Dr. Skinner. They encounter a figure sitting in the dark who they think may be Skinner. But as Axel and Chris approach, they are ambushed and shot at by cops, leading to a shoot-out. They take cover, and Chris fires back. Axel hatches a plan, and he and Chris work together to fight back and disarm the cops. Chad’s team created three different concepts for Axel disarming a pistol from one of the cops, exploring multiple reference points. In the first, Axel disarms the cops through hand to hand combat. In the second, he leg swipes the guy and kicks him in the face. Finally, the third concept showed Axel throwing the guy over his shoulder and then taking his gun from him.
Watanabe was so impressed at how above and beyond Chad’s team went. They were working on Lazarus while they were in production on John Wick 4. As such, he thought Chad was busy and would only help them just a bit, he ended up helping them out a lot. Thanks to Chad’s help, they had a big boost in the show’s production value.
Before screening the first episode, Watanabe admitted there was one caveat. Chad’s team only started their involvement with the show’s second episode, and they weren’t involved in making the first. He apologizes for any disappointment in having no “John Wick” action in episode one. However, he promised all the action scenes in episode one were the fruits of labor of talented Japanese animators, and hoped the crowd would enjoy their efforts. The crowd approvingly met Watanabe’s request with enthusiasm. With that, they were ready to begin the screening of episode one. Watanabe noted he was curious to hear the crowd’s thoughts afterward.
Lazarus’s first episode is 24 minutes long. It begins by establishing the setup that Watanabe had described during the panel, introducing Dr. Skinner and Hapna’s influence on the world. Immediately, the show depicts an international-focused world, showing many different real-world locations and a diversity of people and situations. The tone of the show, and the underlying theme connecting its characters, is aptly communicated when Doug asks his Alexa-esque AI in his car to play him “something about selling your soul to the devil,” scoring the scene establishing Northport Correctional Facility and introducing Axel working out in his cell to a blues song.
Axel being introduced to us working out is reminiscent of Spike’s intro doing the same in Cowboy Bebop, and they otherwise also feel like very similar characters; cocksure, lackadaisical, unfettered, and quick-witted. He always acts like he’s in control, unintimidated and unimpressed by the odds against him. He easily disarms people with his irreverent attitude, getting the better of them by speedily doing something they never see coming. These qualities are very apparent right away, when Axel is visited by Hersch, an Amada Waller-type woman played by Megumi Hayashibara, who offers hum a deal to get out of his 888-year prison sentence. This is when the thrust of the series’ plot is introduced; Dr. Skinner has resurfaced and tells the world in an online video that everyone who took Hapna will die in 30 days unless someone finds him and convinces him that humanity is worth saving or not.
Axel is unimpressed by these stakes, and instead takes advantage of the situation by provoking and tripping a guard, stealing his gun and holding Hersch hostage to do a jail break, leading to the episode’s first long action-chase sequence as Axel evades guards as he theatrically acrobatically maneuvers his way out the prison. Meanwhile, we are shown various reactions to Dr. Skinner’s doomsday message around the world, including assurances by the President of the United States (depicted as a middle-aged white woman a la Hillary Clinton), showing Wall Street freaking out over a stock market crash said to be the worst since Black Monday (which got big laughs from the crowd), and a scene introducing Leyland asking his teacher if he can go home since he thinks there’s no point to going to school anymore.
As these events occur, Hersch regroups with Doug and contacts the rest of her team to pursue Axel, who makes his way to Babylonia City. After a brief run-in with a cop, he switches his prison clothes out for a stylish ensemble and takes a subway into Grand Central Station. There, he is immediately identified by cameras as an escapee, leading to the show’s second extended action sequence where he is pursued through the station and in the city the Lazarus team, doing evasive feats of parkour while being pursued by drones piloted by Leyland, being sniped at by Chris, and eventually chased and cornered on the top of a roof by Doug.
In a moment of more Bebop-esque symbolism, Axel jumps off the roof into a flock of flying white pigeons, representing his unbounded and free spirit, that obscure Doug’s line of sight and destabalize Leyland’s drones, and he gingerly maneuvers his way to land on the ground. He then lets his guard down when Chris comes up to him and lavishes him with praise for his stunts, asking to take a selfie with him and then stunning him on the neck with her watch, knocking him out. While he blacks out, he sees falling feathers, more symbolism about himself as a bird whose lost his wings or such. Axel wakes up in an abandoned barbershop, officially introduced to and inducted into the Lazarus team, the episode ending with text noting there’s just 29 days left to find and stop Skinner.
Ominously, and in beautiful greyscale, the ED sequence is one long low-to-the-ground camera move through a highway upon which all the characters are shown lying down, unconscious, surrounded by pills and rubble. The ED sequence culminates in the long camera pan ending on Axel, who wakes up and stands out, looking out towards a road littered with more unconscious bodies, pills, and rubble.
Lazarus is an incredibly good-looking production, with a richly detailed world and fashionably distinctive character designs. The music is an eclectic mix of different styles, tunes, and themes that nonetheless feels distinctly like Watanabe’s jam. The action sequences are really the star of the show, with fast, ambitious, and intricate choreography, full of crowd-pleasing “whoa” moments of stuntwork, violence, and spectacle that readily show their modern action movie influences, obviously indebted to John Wick but also the likes of Mission Impossible and The Fast and the Furious. Much like Axel himself, the show has an almost effortless charisma in its swagger, humor, and coolness. It’s easy to like and be taken in by, and was definitely a crowd-pleaser at ALA, impressing and exciting many with its action setpieces, getting quite a few laughs at the humorous moments, and wowing and surprising some folks with its thrilling twists and turns. By the end of the first episode, it’s hard not to be on board and want to see more of the action setpieces Watanabe, Chad, and their team have in store and see if they may surpass our imaginations and what we’ve seen before.
Needless to say, the crowd at ALA was very impressed and enthralled by the premiere. Watanabe asked the crowd for their impressions, one of the first shouted out was “don’t do drugs,” which is fairly apt. The first attendee given the mic did that annoying time-wasting thing where they gave their impressions in Japanese, going on for what felt like two uninterrupted minutes until host Victor Frost asked them to give the cliffnotes version in english so everyone could understand. They then stuttered through a joke about asking to have the animators’ salaries raised and make them world treasures, basically just trying to say the animation was awesome. They then more specially commented on scenes they liked, particularly the scene where Axel is falling slowly while being surrounded by the white birds. The attendee noticed that the sky in the scene was very muddy, as if affected by air pollution, and asked if there was some significance to that. Watanabe thanked the attendee for their thoughts, and complimented their great observation about the sky and the messiness of it, teasing that more about it more explored and revealed in the show’s 7th episode.
The second attendee given the mic told Watanabe they liked how the show takes inspiration from many international influences. Watanabe reveals that they based the talk show shown in the first episode on an existing American talk show, and jokes he hopes they won’t get sued for it. The third and final attendee given the mic commented on whether the show would explore people who were forced to take the drug who didn’t want to or were otherwise skeptical of it before Skinner’s reveal. Watanabe notes that naturally, there would be those suspicious of a free drug, commenting there’s a saying in Japan to that effect; “there’s nothing as costly as free.”
In his closing remarks, Watanabe asked fans to raise their voice if they liked the show. The crowd yelled out enthusiastically. Watanabe was relieved to hear their vocal approval, worried they had been bored because they were so quiet during the screening. His interpreter reassured Watanabe that they were quiet out of respect for him. Watanabe ended the panel by asking all who attended to watch the show’s broadcast later this year and to spread the word about it, walking off stage to applause and cheers. Truly, ALA went out with a Bang.
