Lazarus Episode 1 Discussion

This anime draws strongly from religious symbolism. Its name, Lazarus, might suggest a reference to the biblical character of Lazarus of Bethany who was allegedly resurrected by Jesus. For Christians this figure symbolizes hope and salvation, but in my view anime in general struggles when portraying Christian symbolism, so I don't have high hopes in this particular work.

Here's my two cents on this one.

---

Strengths:

• The visuals and animation are impressive. The line art is bold. The color palette is saturated and dark in tone, the ambiance is dark, urban, and apocalyptic. All this makes for a cyberpunk and typically masculine art style. Structural, architectural, and vehicular designs stand out to me.
  
• It's rich in religious and philosophical themes and symbolism, which can add nuance and complexity to the story, but how good this is depends on how good it is developed, but it is intriguing nonetheless.
  

Weaknesses:

• The dialogue is simplistic and feels very dumbed down outside of characters representing bosses and government figures, which is atypical.
  
• Some animation sequences seem exaggerated and inconsistent. For example, during the prison breakout the character is seen seemingly jumping over two meters vertically, on the same spot, to grab a prison guard by the hair and jump over him (a superhuman ability). However, seconds later, he had to help himself with a much lower guardrail to scale another obstacle. These nonsensical inconsistencies make the animation look silly and cartoonish sometimes, as if gravity did not always apply to the main character.
  
• The choice of making the character being easily captured by the seducing acts of a woman is extremely stereotypical and was an eye-roll moment, it looks like lazy writing.
  

Neutral:

• The art and the animation looks good, but I was left wishing for more detailed line artwork. The line art is very bold, and it does not allow for complex details or depth (lines representing arm hairs are as thick as those representing torsos), which is not of my taste, and combined with a lack of complex dialogue makes the characters look schematic. This is just my subjective opinion.
  

---

Overall, impressive visuals, the story revolves around themes of social conformity, the human condition, and scientists playing god, but I think any philosophical ambitions behind this will struggle to develop due to its simplistic dialogue. The drug mentioned, Hapna, echoes the fictional drug Soma in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, but I don't think these elements are going to be fully explored due to the shallow character interactions.

The highlight of this episode to me was the scene where the character is cornered on a rooftop by the predictions of the supercomputer. The character is able to escape by making a bold, risky move that I think echoes, metaphorically, real world dynamics between humans and artificial intelligence players in tabletop games, where human players win by surprising the AI with an unexpected "divine move". But if this was the intended meaning behind this scene then it was made in a very obscure way.

I liked the flying pigeon CGI in this same scene.

This episode was stylized like a Western action movie. It felt like all of the camerawork was taken from MCU and James Bond films. Still, it looked cool. As the episode wore on, though, I got a bit bored with the parkour because it felt like story was at a standstill. I wish more development were given to the other characters. Kind of eyerolling the obvious sexual tension that will emerge. However, visually fun to look at, mostly good soundtrack (it went a bit trancelike during a parkour scene, perhaps contributing to my boredom).

Hopefully the plot won't be as predictable as it feels like from this episode.

@DriedOrchid

Action scenes of the anime are designed by the guy who directed John Wick films.