LAZARUS – Episode 1

What’s it about? Forty minutes in the future in the year 2052, genius neuroscientist Dr. Skinner discovers “Hapna,” a drug that relieves any and all pain—then disappears. Three years later, he reappears and informs society that anyone who’s taken it will die in thirty days. Now, it’s up to a crack team of five agents to find Skinner and create a vaccine. Its code name: Lazarus.

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My primary engagement with Watanabe Shinichiro is through the perennially fantastic Samurai Champloo. I first found it, in full, while in Japan and watched it while a fellow language teacher from Barbados took out and redid my braids over McDonald’s and Pizza Hut. It was a deeply moving experience, watching all twenty-six episodes while going through one of my most cherished Black rituals. It’s a moment that, even in 2025, has clearly stuck with me.

I share this because I’m going in with a different perspective than I suspect most viewers familiar with Watanabe’s work will be. I haven’t watched Cowboy Bebop, other than its Netflix adaptation. I haven’t watched Carole & Tuesday. Hell, I haven’t even seen Terror in Resonance. So for me, I have nothing to compare this to, in terms of shows set in the future. This feels like a very raw experience, and it’s my hope that it will let me be nuanced as an outsider who hopefully, can find a new sci-fi thriller to satisfy the part of my brain that loves futuristic trouble.

But will LAZARUS come back all clear, or is it dead on arrival?

Episode 1, “Goodbye Cruel World,” opens with a monologue, establishing the more horrific aspect of our far-flung world. In a world without pain, there’s an ultimate cost: the drug that can save the world turns out to have been a bitter pill. But the end isn’t here: it looms, but there’s a sliver of time before everything falls apart and the world gets flung into its worst medical nightmare.

Enter Axel, a Brazilian prisoner who, one day, receives a visit that changes his life: a visit from Hersch, who sets him on the path to being part of the effort to reverse the adverse effects built into Dr. Skinner’s too-good-to-be-true medication. But his entry into the team known as LAZARUS doesn’t come easy: Axel has a past, and he’s not so willing to get all buddy-buddy with a new crew, though he is more than willing to cause a bit of a kerfluffle.

LAZARUS reminded me a lot of Gnosia, one of my favorite video games and a soon to be anime adaptation. It’s questioning the larger position humanity has in terms of existence, only instead of considering it through the lens of a virus-like species of aliens, it posits a medical mystery. Hapna feels cruel as a social experiment, especially when you consider the implications of how this functions in terms of eugenics and disabled individuals in this futuristic society—something that LAZARUS doesn’t seem to be in conversation with right now.

In truth, I can’t help but find LAZARUS intriguing. I think that it’s neat to see a Brazilian lead be part of saving the world, especially in 2025 when Latin-American communities are among those being terrorized in a way that echoes Carole & Tuesday’s premise. Combined with an unknown past that caused an 888 year life sentence, I found Alex immediately interesting, though I’ll fully admit he still feels a bit half-baked because we know so little about him. Then again, if we got shown every card in the deck at once, nothing would be interesting. I suppose, just like real life, I’ll have to be patient and see where this story goes instead of trying to constantly preempt it.

LAZARUS is interesting as a premiere. It sets up its narrative well enough that I’m drawn in, though it leaves a lot of questions ahead of episode 2. I mentioned above my own thoughts regarding Hapna as a social experiment that, if affecting all of society, would have affected disabled people as well and the fact that we don’t even scratch the surface of that in this premiere. Granted, I could be getting ahead of Dr. Skinner and his plan, as well as the larger plot of LAZARUS.

It’s my hope that as we explore the wider world of LAZARUS and the ongoing implications of Hapna and Dr. Skinner’s darkly “optimistic” dreams of Hapna’s three year half-life, we’ll see LAZARUS pull from those same diverse, complicated roots Watanabe so often uses to complicate narratives and enrich the reality of the characters in his series. I’m certainly going to keep watching, just to see how things play out because I’m curious whether this story will satisfy with as happy an ending it can, or if realism and actuality will complicate Hapna, Dr. Skinner, and the larger narratives of the global pharmaceutical system.

Ultimately, I think LAZARUS is worth your time, whether you’re here for the soundtrack, the premise, or to see where Hapna’s horrific half-life takes society. Just keep in mind that–in one of the many frustrating decisions of modern streaming–that it’s currently only available dubbed, with the Japanese subtitled track coming out on a one-month delay.