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Warning: Contains spoilers for Lazarus.After weeks of severely diminishing returns,Lazarushas finally ended its run on Toonami. Despite all the hype it garnered from being the latest anime from Shinichiro Watanabe ofCowboy Bebopfame, it quickly became one of the most divisive anime of the season for its poor writing and pacing, and the wait for the finale became more about people wanting it gone than anything.
After learning that Axel was a test subject for a prototype of Hapna, Axel was sent to question his prison doctor to learn more about Hapna while Eleina and Doug went to Pakistan to find Popcorn Wizard, who could track down Dr. Skinner’s artificial heart. Unfortunately, Axel had to fight the deadly assassin Soryu, and after a long fight,Axel only barely avoided death because his winged pendant triggered a violent memory for Soryu. With only five days left before Hapna took effect,Lazarus’ climax became appropriately tense, although how well it lived up to that is another story entirely.
How Lazarus Sets Up Its Final Conflict
Lazarus' Final Battle Explained
Axel awoke from his fight with Soryu several days later in a hospital, with Chris telling him that the doctor he was looking for had been killed while he was unconscious. There was now only one day left before Hapna took effect and people started dying, and as the weight of their situation took hold,Axel admitted that Lazarus was the closest thing he ever had to a family before Chris kissed him.
Meanwhile, in Pakistan, Eleina found Popcorn Wizard, who revealed that she was helping hide Skinner as thanks for him saving her people, the Maldives, when their islands sank into the ocean. Nevertheless, because someone did find her, and because she liked Eleina, Popcorn Wizard followed Skinner’s instructions and revealed thatDr. Skinner had been hiding out in the homeless community from episode #2 the entire time.
As Doug and Eleina made their way back to Babylonia City to find Skinner, Abel, with an executive order from the president, raided INSCOM to rescue Hersch and arrest Schneider, where it was revealed thatthe Hapna prototype Skinner accidentally released in the Schiphol Airport incident was a chemical weapon Skinner tried to reveal to the publicbefore INSCOM stopped him. Everything INSCOM did was to cover up their involvement, and with them defeated, the only thing left to do was find Skinner.
How Lazarus Ends Its Story
The End Of Lazarus Explained
While recuperating in the hospital, a cryptic message called Axel up to the roof of Babylonia Tower, where he was confronted by Soryu once again. The two fought to both settle the score and so Soryu could get Axel to answer his questions about the Hundun, the monster his secret assassin program was named after, and during the fight, Soryu shot down an army helicopter that then crashed into Babylonia Tower. Soryu was crushed under rubble, and as he died,Axel, heavily implied to also be from the Hundun Program, answered Soryu’s questions and helped him die in peace.
With Soryu defeated, the entire Lazarus team could get together to find Skinner once and for all. As they all converged on the homeless community, Abel revealed a new piece of information he had discovered in his raid of INSCOM: everyone in Lazarus was exposed to Skinner’s chemicals at the Schiphol Airport incident, only for them to miraculously survive and develop a partial immunity to Hapna, andit was Lazarus’ survival of the Schiphol Airport incident that inspired Skinner to carry out his plan.
After arriving at the homeless community, Leland remembered how Skinner liked a specific type of flower, and everyone used that to narrow down his whereabouts before finally finding him. As promised,Skinner gave Lazarus the formula to create a cure for Hapna, and as the effects began to kill Skinner, Axel told him that despite all the mistakes they had made, he believed humanity was worth saving.
With the cure for Hapna secured, the Lazarus team assumed they would be killed to keep their silence, but to their surprise,everyone in Lazarus was pardoned for their crimes and invited to keep working together to solve future crimes. The entire team agreed to stick together, and the series ended with a montage of everyone going about their lives as the cure for Hapna was shipped out and the world was saved.
Where Does Lazarus Rank Against Shinichiro Watanabe’s Other Anime?
Is Lazarus One Of Shinichiro Watanabe’s Best Works?
There’s no denying thatLazarusis, at the very least, a gorgeous show. Between the usual stellar animation of Shinichiro Watanabe, combined with a score by Kamasai Washington, Bonobo, and Floating Points, and fight choreography done byChad Stahelski ofJohn Wickfame,Lazarusprobably has the best basic presentation of any of Shinichiro Watanabe’s anime.
Unfortunately, everything else aboutLazarusmakes it fall apart. Whether it’s because of the short length or a general lack of care, there’s never enough time put into making the audience care about the characters or the story, and that continues as its finale is both rushed and incredibly slow.Lazarusultimately had nothing going for it besides its stellar action, and that makes it the worst ofShinichiro Watanabe’s anime, by far.
Was Lazarus Worth Watching By The End Of Its Story?
Lazarushad a lot going against itby the time of its finale, and said finale didn’t help in the slightest. Not only was half the episode wasted on Axel and Soryu’s conflict, despite it not having anything to do with the story, but the ultimate resolution to the conflict with Skinner is resolved very anticlimactically, despite how serious it should have remained. Overall,Lazarus’ series finale was a terrible end to the anime, and that’s nothing but hard to deny.
It would have been weirder, however, if the finale was worth watching. As great as the fight scenes were, the characters involved with them never had any real development from start to finish, so they eventually got as boring to watch as the characters, themselves.Lazarushas one of the worst cast of characters in modern anime, and the finale trying to make a big moment of the team coming together as a found family is nothing but laughable.
What really hurttheLazarusanime, though, was its terrible pacing. Despite a short runtime and a strict in-universe deadline, most episodes just had the cast messing around with random adventures that ultimately went nowhere, and it wasn’t until the penultimate episode that they had a real lead on Skinner’s whereabouts. Add in the surprising lack of urgency presented by the cast and the wider world, and it’s easy to see thatLazarus’ terrible pacing was the biggest reason it was so hard to watch.
Lazarus’ terrible pacing was the biggest reason it was so hard to watch
As big a legacy as Shinichiro Watanabe might have cultivated withCowboy Bebopand other shows, his works are rarely ever flawless, especially his more recent works, and between the terrible pacing and writing that fluctuates between nonsensical and downright bad,Lazarusis the anime that embodies the worst things a person can expect from a Shinichiro Watanabe project.Lazarusmight have received a lot of hype leading up to its premiere, but it ultimately wasted all of it, and it’s a show no one should waste their time on.
