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| First episode got leaked on you know what. Watanabe is back, better than ever, with finally an action series again. Don't get me wrong, his last two projects that had to deal with music weren't bad, but I mean, they weren't up to par with his best either. This though, has been hyped for so long that if it doesn't live to the hype, then I think bro is never going to beat the washed allegations. So, what could possibly be the plot to this one you ask? Humanity is immune to all sicknesses and diseases now thanks to this cure-all drug made by this neuroscientist.. who as soon as he launches the thing vanishes lol. Out of nowhere though, bro comes back with quite possibly some of the worst news ever, that uh, yeah, THAT SHIT IS GONNA KILL YOU. So what's that gotta do with the prisoner you ask? Well, in typical anime government fashion, get you a criminal like our boy Spike, I mean, Axel to help you out... Though, not before he can make his grand escape by parkouring around the place like he's in one of those adrenaline rush youtube videos ofc. Talking about the visuals for a second though, man, I mean, yeah it's MAPPA, ofc it looks good, but jesus those parkour scenes when he's running away from the group was so well done. Not to mention that gorgeous opening sequence that has Yamashita written all over it. But yeah, in the end the group captures him and I think you know where this'll go from here. He teams up with the group to track down the neuroscientist... the group name you ask.....? LAZARUS Banger of a intro, as per usual with Watanabe shows. Just hope that this dosen't fall off both story and animation wise mid way through like most Watanabe and MAPPA originals. But for right now, so far, so good. |
IzanaSolosApr 5, 2025 10:51 AM
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| The animation’s really good, and the premise is super interesting. Dr. Skinner developed a miracle cure-all drug called Hapuna with no apparent drawbacks, then suddenly disappears—only to reappear with shocking news that basically makes him look like the devil. The dude’s like a parkour god—with his agility and flexibility, he pulled off so many impressive and dangerous stunts. But at the same time, it was hilarious how he totally dropped his guard when Christine randomly approached him asking for a selfie. |
XArceusXApr 5, 2025 12:43 PM
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| I thought the first episode you can watch tomorrow!!! kekeke |
| Shinichiro Watanabe is BACK!!! God I hope this quality at least stays consistent if not improves, it's only episode one but I can see this being one of the AOTY contenders. I hope there isn't some kind of mecha or robot involved in this story, lets see. |
| Yeah yeah, the inminent apocalypse scenario is cool in concept and all, blah blah blah. Let's get into those parkour moves though. Holy moly, did you see the way Alex kept jumping off walls, on the bars of the grids and that final leap onto the drone? Man, that was pure Mirror's Edge goodness and the rest of the team mostly kept their cool during the pursuit as well. The movement was really fluid and the track suited well as it did the jazzy track on the first encounter. So far, good start. |
| ⠓⠥⠍⠁⠝⠊⠞⠽ ⠞⠓⠗⠕⠥⠛⠓ ⠎⠕⠍⠑ ⠎⠞⠥⠏⠊⠙⠊⠞⠽⠂ ⠎⠕⠍⠑ ⠺⠊⠇⠇ ⠎⠅⠊⠏ ⠺⠁⠎⠓⠊⠝⠛ ⠞⠓⠑⠊⠗ ⠓⠁⠝⠙⠎ ⠁⠝⠙ ⠑⠝⠙ ⠥⠏ ⠗⠥⠊⠝⠊⠝⠛ ⠊ ⠞ ⠋⠕⠗ ⠑⠧⠑⠗⠽⠕⠝⠑ ⠎⠓⠊⠊⠅⠕ ⠁⠕⠎⠕⠊⠂ ⠼⠃⠼⠚⠼⠁⠼⠓ |
| Overall, that was a pretty good start. Animation was definitely the highlight. The jazz in the first half was nice, but I found it kind of jarring they then went to a cyberpunk-esque synth for the remainder of the episode. You can definitely feel the Bebop influence, but it isn't as stylish. The premise is unique and makes for a good story, but there would definitely be thousands of people who never took the drug. Either being skeptical of it or being isolated from society. Surprised we didn't see more civil unrest considering the circumstances. Looks promising, I just hope it can remain interesting, and doesn't drop off after a few episodes like another Toonami original, Ninja Kamui. |
| Looks fun so far. MC Axel really feels like Spike from Bebop except he's on the other side of the law. |
| IGN is so trash for giving this amazing show a bad review, they need to stop reviewing anime and stick where their expertise lie, videogames. Oh wait, they suck at that too. |
| SEE YOU PARKOUR COWBOY... Interesting premise and solid action. Wonder where this goes. |
| started very well with already some peak scenes that we saw on the trailers i'm already excited to watch the next ep |
| if you hated this episode/chapter, just watch/read something else... 100k on IG (https://www.instagram.com/otakuweek?igsh=em5kY3Q4NTVtNXlh) Discord (https://discord.gg/vbZrk64uH7) for anime links / news / recom etc |
| Watching Axel show off his master escape artist skills made for quite an entertaining premiere! 888 year long prison sentence is insane. Also, only having 30 days to stop everyone from dying is an excellent driving force to have rolling around in the back of my head while watching the show. I'm curious to see how many of those days it'll take to have him fully on board with team Lazarus. |
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| Dude would have had one hell of a Sasuke Ninja Warrior career. Pretty solid start. The music was fire and every scene was dripping with style. Very action heavy which is fine, but I'm more interested in the story and characters. Now that Axel has awakened amongst the titular team of characters, we should get plenty of insight into this next episode. I'm very excited for it. Speaking of Axel, he doesn't seem to be the smartest guy on the block. He walked right into that fake selfie trap, lol. He cracked me up a couple times in the episode, so it seems he is going to have a nice level of humor to his character. Should be fun. |
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| A dangerous "selfie"! Amazing how he was catch!! 29 days to the end fo the Lazarus world!!! kekeke |
| The animation is insanely good on this. If it keeps up, it might end up being one of MAPPA’s best works yet. Just hope the story delivers and the payoff at the end is worth it. |
| Haven't seen the episode yet since I'm still waiting for it to drop on HBO Max, but I've been listening to that opening on spotify everyday since it dropped, it's amazing. I'm so excited to dive into another Watanabe series. Love the character designs and visuals and the animation from what I've seen so far. Been looking forward to Lazarus since it was announced. Super hyped!!! edit: Now that I've finally watched the episode, here are my thoughts. PROS: The music. The music is fantastic. Easily my favorite thing about it so far, from the Opening theme, to the insert song from the intro, to the jazzy soundtrack, the Ending theme, even the title card jingles. This show is full of style and personality (as long as you ignore the performance of the English dub cast) The art style is great. The movement is dynamic and fluid. Very fun to watch. Animation is solid. No complaints from me. The character designs are decent. Nothing too flashy but still effective. Axel's design is especially cool. Surprisingly did have some pretty funny moments too. The plot has potential, it's only episode 1 though, so we'll have to wait and see how it develops! CONS: It's a real shame that the JP audio hasn't been officially released yet. The dub is horrible. I normally like dubs for Watanabe's works, but this one sounds so monotone and soulless. It doesn't help that some of the dialogue is a little corny, and it's especially noticeable with the awful delivery from the English dub cast. The Japanese version sounds much better. But sadly you'd have to find the fansubs online to watch it in Japanese because for some reason it's not on Max. For example, there's a specific line in the episode where Hersch says, "He got away... like a bird who escaped its cage." The line is really on the nose, but the analogy is definitely intentional, seeing how Axel wears a unique necklace with a bird feather. I see the symbolism they're going for. It's passable with the Japanese version. But the delivery of that line with the English dub version just makes it so much worse that it's almost unbearable. And that's just one example. I really want to like this show, but the English dub is making it so difficult. And I hate saying that, because I absolutely LOVED the English dubs for Samurai Champloo and Cowboy Bebop. |
AgravityBoyApr 7, 2025 1:51 PM
art by @u_zuta on twitter   |
| One of those weird forced wannabe western style anime. Concept seems interesting but thats pretty much it. |
MegamiRemMay 9, 2025 1:06 AM
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| I’m still trying to process everything. The animation was definitely the highlight — those action scenes were insane! Super smooth, stylish, and fast-paced. You can tell they were aiming for that cinematic feel, and it really worked. The setting is intriguing, especially the whole idea of a "miracle cure" that suddenly becomes a ticking time bomb. It sets up a lot of philosophical and moral questions that I hope the series will explore more deeply. It’s also cool how they’re blending sci-fi with some cyberpunk and even slight noir vibes. The voice acting took a bit to get used to, but once things got going, I was fully in. And that soundtrack? Intense! Perfectly matched with the visuals and energy. It’s still early to judge the story, but if they keep this level of direction and polish, this could turn into something really unique. Definitely keeping an eye on this one. |
| Sakuga aesthetics fs, however the honey pot capture was way too on the nose for me, |
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| A doctor made some type of miracle drug that somehow got adopted by the whole world in just 4 years? Okay. The first episode was decent. The animation was amazing. But the story didn't hook me yet. It'll probably be a good anime but I doubt it'll be anywhere near as popular as Cowboy Bebop was. |
| Fine american cartoon to watch while you're eating (or something, idk), because who cares about the story. Drawings are weird sometimes (background people lul), but animation is smooth. Idk why it's called anime, guess Watanabe just doesn't care anymore. |
| A series helmed by Shinichiro Watanabe with the John Wick director in charge of the action? Sign me up, regardless of how this turns out by the end I know I'll at the very least walk away entertained. Good first episode so far, hopefully the rest holds up. |
| People on MAL refuse to actually enjoy watching anime. Your taste in anime isn't a personality trait. Take me back to the days before MAL became infested with Twitter's favorite buzzwords. |
| First episode really surpassed my expectations so far with great background music and beautiful animations. This is more or less Cowboy Bebop meet Common Side Effects which comes on right after Lazarus. This series tackles the corruption of the Big Pharma releasing a miracle drug created by Dr. Skinner who disappeared for several years only to randomly come back to say that the drug was harmful and has the cure if they can find him in 30 days. The Lazarus team believes that Axel is the key to finding Dr. Skinner and they let him break out of prison to recruit him on the team with only 29 days left. MAPPA is killing it with these originals |
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| Shinichirou Watanabe: Let me show you how to not replicate Cowboy Bebop! Me: Why bother, man? Like the technical aspect is weird. Both: the simplistic smooth 3D CGI and the low detail 2D with its capoeira + parkour thing are nice on their own, but together they are horrible. And the writing so far is some sort of mid-tier cyberpunk novel from the 80s. The VAs (the japanese ones) don't sound very exited to work for the show. The best thing is the music, but we already expected that as given. I mean I will continue to watch this, but a masterpiece it isn't. |
alshuApr 6, 2025 8:46 AM
| Story is whatever, dub is bad but the action is solid and the tech girl is cute. It’s probably gonna be hardstuck 6/10 the potential isn’t really there due to the unremarkable characters, whatever premise and script chock full of unnatural lines (potentially just an english dub issue) |
MalawaApr 6, 2025 9:01 AM
| The animation is peak, though that's to be expected from a MAPPA series. The plot is basically that a drug created by this scientist guy is said to cure every disease or whatever. After a few years of going missing, the scientist guy comes back and is basically like, "Uh, yeah, that shit's gonna kill you lol." and the whole world (obviously) panics. Meanwhile, jn some prison, this Axel guy hears the news from some woman and escapes soon after. After a few minutes of great animation of Axel running from the police, he's captured by a group of people who call themselves "Lazarus" (the title of the show!!!), and it ends on a cliffhanger. There's not much to say so far. As for characters, I like Axel, but that's about it. They haven't really established anyone else yet. Guess we'll have to wait next week to see them all in action! |
SAIKII KUUUSUUOO  |
| just finished JP airing. Already love Mamoru as MC and other cast too. |
Reply to Malawa
Story is whatever, dub is bad but the action is solid and the tech girl is cute.
It’s probably gonna be hardstuck 6/10 the potential isn’t really there due to the unremarkable characters, whatever premise and script chock full of unnatural lines (potentially just an english dub issue)
It’s probably gonna be hardstuck 6/10 the potential isn’t really there due to the unremarkable characters, whatever premise and script chock full of unnatural lines (potentially just an english dub issue)
| @Malawa everything i wanted to hear is in 1 sentence. i wish people wrote concise comments like this :D |
| The animation is good but I'm not a fan of how they did the exposition dump, and we're being introduced to a lot of characters very quickly. Seems rather rushed. Some of the dialog also felt incredibly awkward. |
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