Lazarus
Entry updated 26 January 2026. Tagged: TV.
Japanese animated tv series (2025). MAPPA. Created and directed by Shinichirō Watanabe. Written by Shinichirō Watanabe, Dai Satō and Takahiro Ozawa. Voice cast includes Koichi Yamadera, Maaya Uchida, Makoto Furukawa, Mamoru Miyano, Manaka Iwami, Megumi Hayashibara and Yuma Uchida. Thirteen 24-minute episodes. Colour.
In 2045 (see Near Future), three-time Nobel Prize winner Dr Skinner (Koichi) – Scientist, environmentalist and peace activist – releases Hapna, a cheap painkiller without any side effects (see Medicine), which is an enormous success (it also dulls emotional pain and is used as a recreational Drug by many). A year later, Skinner vanishes. He reappears online in 2049 to announce Hapna was engineered to remain in the user's body and, after three years, mutate into a lethal toxin: people will begin dying in 30 days. His motivation is despair at humanity's violence and environmental destruction; but he says he does not wish to play God: there is a cure, and if he can be found in time, humanity will be saved. Skinner later adds that as he was the first to try the drug, he will be the first to die. The US Government realizes that 30 days is not long enough to research a cure, and the National Security Agency sets up the "Lazarus" team, led by Hersch Lindemann (Megumi), to find Skinner. All her choices are criminals: Axel Gilberto (Mamoru), an extraordinarily athletic Brazilian prisoner whose sentence is currently 888 years (originally three; his repeated jail breaks, which he treats as a hobby, led to its current level); calm and intelligent Nigerian Douglas Hadine (Makoto); ex-Russian secret agent Christine Blake (Maaya); teenage Hong Kong Computer hacker Eleina (Manaka); and Canadian Leland Astor (Yuma), the young heir to a fortune and good at piloting drones. Their cooperation is guaranteed by a wristband that punishes transgressions, and doubles as a computer interface.
Early episodes see the team chasing fruitless leads to Skinner – such as a cult worshipping an AI based on a scan of Skinner's brain. It also turns out Axel is the only survivor of a prison's clinical trial of a Hapna prototype overseen by the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), who were developing it as a chemical weapon. On learning this, Skinner smuggled out a sample, with INSCOM faking a terrorist incident in an attempt to kill him; they failed, but the sample leaked and killed most people at the airport, resulting in Skinner's disenchantment with humanity. All five of Hersch's team had been at the airport, briefly died but recovered (thus the team's name), resulting in an immunity to Hapna.
These early episodes are fairly routine. There is an improvement from the eighth, where Christine is kidnapped by her vengeful ex-Russian colleagues and a rescue is organized; this is followed by a subplot involving a super-capable assassin, hired by INSCOM to murder Axel. Unfortunately the main plot's conclusion is rather half-hearted: Skinner is found and writes down the cure's formula (dying shortly after); the world is saved and lessons appear to have been learnt. The Lazarus team's wristbands are disabled, but they accept an offer to stay together to deal with other problems.
Set in a 2049 whose Technology and cityscapes are very advanced, Lazarus has some exciting action scenes, but the plot fails to convince and is often contrived – such as the airport incident's survivors all not only gaining criminal records, but becoming exceptionally talented in disciplines ideal for such a manhunt (their immunity being one of the reasons for their selection, as they will not become sickly as the deadline approaches). This is a flawed Anime, whose best scenes tend to be incidental to the main story. Shinichirō Watanabe was the director of the highly regarded Cowboy Bebop (1998-1999) and co-director/co-writer of Space Dandy (2014). [SP]
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