Lazarus, 4 Episodes in and I have Mixed Feelings about thie anime

Article at a glance:

• Lazarus looks and feels incredible—MAPPA’s animation and Shinichirō Watanabe’s direction deliver a visually stunning world, but is that enough to carry the show?
• The premise is gripping, but the anime isn’t fully exploring the chaos you’d expect from such a dire setup… at least not yet.
• My biggest hangup? The dialogue. Characters trauma-dump their backstories in clunky exposition dumps—a far cry from Watanabe’s ‘show, don’t tell’ mastery in Bebop and Champloo.

I think we can all agree that expectations for Shinchiro Watanabe’s next project were high, especially when it was announced that Mappa would be handling this anime. Well Lazarus is out and I have to say, I have mixed feelings about this anime. Now, don’t get me wrong, there is a lot to like in this anime. But some things just put me off. Of course, I never expected this anime to surpass the legendary Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo. And I still do like the show, just that there are some things I wish were handled differently.

I am sorry for being vague but I didn’t want to get into spoilers right in the introduction. But yeah, welcome back to another article. And today I will be going over why I am so “mixed” on Lazarus. Of course, spoilers ahead. And let’s get started.

Lazarus Anime – mixed feelings?

Let’s go over what the does really well before I start complaining. The direction and animations are fantastic. The anime just looks so good, it is presented creatively and the world in general looks phenomenal. The animations are smooth and the fights we have gotten so far have been really fluid. The character designs are great and I just cannot get over how good the locations featured in this anime look. Despite being set in the future, there is a very “grounded” feeling to the locations featured in this anime.

Aside from that, I think that the plot and setting are very interesting. A world where everyone is told that they will die in the next 30 days after being completely disease-free for years? Yeah, you bet there is a lot of interesting stuff you can do. But this brings me to my first problem. I feel like the madness of this world is not fully explored in the anime. Well, not yet anyway, they may do it later. People should be absolutely LIVID after being told that they will die in the next 30 days. I bet most of them will be up to no good.

As for my other issue, I like the characters so far, but god the dialog is so exposition-heavy and trauma-dumpy at times. We are just “told” the backstory and history of the characters, rather than showing all that throughout the show more naturally. I don’t remember Spike or Faye talking about their trauma, the show trusts us to understand their mental state after we are shown their backstory. Episode 3 has been the biggest offender of this so far, we are just told the backstory of all the main characters and some of them just trauma-dump for no good reason.

That is all for now

I…man, it may sound like a nitpick but it is very jarring once you notice it, and mind you, both Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo did not have this issue.

But yeah, I know not everyone is going to agree with this take and that is fine. This is just my opinion. But this why I have mixed feelings about the Lazarus anime. With that said, I will take my leave here. See ya!

Also, if you are a romance fan, you should check out this anime!