アニメのイントロダクション
I think it's a great anime for Americans, actually, because it's set in the United States.
I do think it would be something that most Americans would like in terms of the action
sequences, the different characters, the diversity of the cast. I'm going to withhold
some judgment to see where they go with the opioid metaphor, but potentially that too.
Welcome back to 2AM OTTACK! I'm your host Mayu, a born and raised Japanese non-otaku, and
I'm Cisco, an American otaku.
In this podcast, we share our reviews of anime and manga through our distinct perspectives
with commentary on Japanese culture, history, and language.
Cisco, you're a big fan of Cowboy Bebop, right?
Yeah, I am. Yeah, Cowboy Bebop is the ish.
And you're so ready to watch this anime we are talking about today, and here we are.
All right, it's finally time.
The original anime has the same director with a few of the same voice actors from Cowboy Bebop,
but it sounds like this has more budget because it's collaborating with Hollywood director,
musicians, and Cartoon Network.
So today we are going to talk about Lazarus.
Before we start, we'd like to hear from you.
Share your thoughts, ideas, questions, or even suggestions that we should talk about.
Send us a message to the email in the description,
or you can use Spotify and YouTube comment section as well.
All right, so yeah, we just talked about Cowboy Bebop, and then from the visual,
you can tell it kind of reminds you of Cowboy Bebop made in, I don't know, how many years ago?
God, not 20, but almost 20 years ago.
Wait, sorry, it's more than 20 years.
It's not 30 years, but it's between 20.
It's more than 25.
Oh my god.
Wow, okay.
It came out in the, I think it came out in the late 90s, like 99-ish.
Yeah, it's like, or maybe 98.
It's like around the end of the 90s.
Oh damn, okay.
Yeah.
But it's very reminiscent of Cowboy Bebop, both the art style,
not a little bit the character design,
although that's actually the thing that it has least in common with, I think.
The music is definitely inspired by Cowboy Bebop.
The opening is definitely inspired by Cowboy Bebop.
物語の設定
Yeah, a lot of the things are pretty Cowboy Bebop adjacent.
Right.
The plot is different.
So could you tell us the plot of Lazarus?
Sure.
So the setup is that there's a man named Skinner who invents a drug called Hapner
that I think is supposed to be like an opiate-ish, or it's supposed to be a painkiller, right?
And everyone in the world takes it.
It's like not just a painkiller, it's also sort of a party drug.
So over the three years since Hapner comes out, almost everyone on earth has taken a Hapner.
And it turns out that he's made it such that it will start killing people,
or killing everybody who's ever taken even one,
in about a month from when the series opens.
He releases a video of himself being like,
it's going to kill everybody in a month unless you find me.
And then he seems to have taken all sorts of steps to erase his presence from the world.
So an elite group of misfits is put together by the NSA to find Skinner
and prevent everyone from dying.
キャラクターの紹介
Lazarus is called Lazaru in Japanese.
It's an original anime television series produced by MAPPA and Sola Entertainment
that was created and directed by Shinichiro Watanabe, who directed also Cowboy Bebop.
Watanabe said the opioid crisis was one of the inspirations he had for creating the anime.
Yeah, it's really clear, especially from the ending animation.
So there are several main characters.
They kind of look like, you know, from all over the world,
but you can't really know it, or at least I couldn't.
For example, the main character, I guess, I think I can say is Axel Gilberto,
who is Brazilian.
And Douglas, Doug, is Nigerian, 23 years old.
Is he like from Nigeria, though?
Or he's like American by way of Nigeria?
There's not that detailed description about him.
He's just Nigerian.
Doesn't it seem like he went to college in the United States?
Right, right.
Right, he has like a whole story and backstory about that?
Probably.
And Alexandra Sasha Christine, Chris, is Russian, we know that.
And she doesn't tell her age in the show, so we don't know.
Leland is Canadian, 16.
He's Canadian?
What about the whole episode where they went to his mansion?
That was like in Canada?
So I was thinking, oh, but they travel so much.
I mean, I guess so, but I feel like they drove there, though,
from their hideout in basically whatever, New York, right?
Right, right, right.
Yeah, it's not that far to Canada, but he really comes across as American.
Okay, sure.
He's Canadian, whatever.
Elena is 15 years old from Hong Kong.
She's from Hong Kong?
But she grew up in a religious cult in America.
Yeah, don't know why.
Sure.
Okay, all right, okay.
Yeah, and then Harsha is a little bit older woman, and voiced by Megumi Hayashibara.
And Dr. Skinner is voiced by Koichiro Yamadera, who voiced Ford.
Both voice actors voiced in Cowboy Bebop.
Skinner's voice is by the same person who did a voice for Spike.
Really?
Whoa.
I guess you don't hear Skinner talk that much, except in the beginning, yeah.
But he's like a very, very famous voice actor, and he does a lot, yeah.
Interesting.
But like, you know, the director decided to hire two kind of like, you know,
veteran voice actors in the new show, so that probably tells something.
Also, I think Sound Audio, they are using people from Top Gun Maverick.
Wow, fancy.
Yeah, so like, they spent a lot of money on this, I think, I assume.
Right.
For this anime, yeah.
アクションシーンの魅力
There are a couple of stuff we like about Lazarus, but let's start with Sisko.
What's your favorite part of Lazarus?
I think by far my favorite part is the action sequences involving Axel,
who I have a hard time even not thinking of as Spike, because they are exactly the same.
Well, they're not exactly the same, but they're so much the same character.
They're like an insanely lucky, like, very acrobatic, like,
dude with a weird hairstyle and the same face, right?
And anytime he's fighting anybody, it's like pretty exciting and cool.
And like, the dynamic camera action of, you know,
that shows you him fighting people is just great.
So as with Cowboy Bebop, the scenes where Spike is like,
doing his kung fu on people is the best part of that show.
And this is absolutely still the best part of Lazarus.
So action or fighting scenes by Chad Stahelski, I think, I hope I get.
Probably Steleski, but I'm not like, great at, yeah.
Who is notable for directing the John Wick film franchise?
That makes sense.
He designs the action sequences.
So that makes so much sense.
Cause like, I thought like action scenes were like really good.
Like how they, I don't know much about action,
but how they kick or punch or like, you know, like very unique way.
I think the direction of the action sequences is a highlight of the show.
I just really agree with that.
It's like very exciting and dramatic.
I think in my opinion, it's the same action scenes, really good.
And I have to say, I like the ending song, same song.
音楽の影響
Yeah.
Well, so that song is like way older than this anime.
Right.
It's from the, God, is it from the 70s or the 80s or something?
No, no, no.
It was produced in 1992 by the Blue Radleys.
Right.
They're like English alternative rock band.
Yeah.
So, I mean, so they had already written that song.
I think its title is Lazarus, right?
Right.
Actually, the director got inspiration from this song
and decided to use a title for this anime.
Cool.
Okay.
That's actually a little bit disappointing, but yes.
Okay.
Sure.
Why?
Well, Lazarus is a biblical character.
He's in the Bible.
He's the person who dies that Jesus brings back to life in the New Testament.
So yeah, like a lot of the implication of it being named Lazarus
is that somebody is going to get raised from the dead sooner or later.
Someone will die and come back to life.
And so it seems really likely that with whatever happens with Hapner,
and you see this happen at the very end of the ending theme song,
everybody seems dead.
And then Axel stands up at the very end.
Right.
Right.
Like coming back to life like Lazarus.
But so that's, will humanity come back?
And Skinner says he's trying to force humanity to change, right?
By making them either evolve through this or perish, right?
So I assumed that the point of the show was to say something about that,
like dying and coming back to life piece.
But if he got inspired by the song, then maybe it's irrelevant.
Oh, okay.
I didn't know that.
But when I first listened to the ending theme song, I felt nostalgic about music.
It's, they're not American, but music from like early 2000 or something like that.
It sounded like nostalgic.
From the OC.
Yeah.
Some, that kind of vibe.
Yeah.
Just like the alternative scene of the nineties.
Right.
All right.
Then why don't we talk about the opening theme song?
It's called Vortex by Kamoshi Washington.
I thought from the name, I thought it was a Japanese person, but it's not.
Is that also like a song that already existed or do they write it for this show?
I think they asked.
He's a great saxophone player.
The saxophone is the best part of that.
The opening theme song always reminds us of Cowboy Bebop because it's so jazzy,
but it's different from the tank from Cowboy Bebop.
The director is really into music.
So he really carefully choose which music to use in his animation.
Yeah.
Cowboy Bebop was different from animation because of like, not only because of music,
but music is definitely part of it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think that's an important part of both shows really.
Yeah.
And at this time, Yoko Kanno is not involved in making music.
Yeah.
I have to say like, I think the background BGM of Cowboy Bebop is better than this one.
Not that this one's bad in any way.
It just doesn't like stand out to me.
It sounds like, I guess like normal or whatever.
But the background music of Cowboy Bebop is like really, really, really good and like
very iconic and sort of stands out in a way that like, this one's good, but I just don't
know if it stands out in the same way.
So one of the things that really struck me about this anime is how many of the characters
キャラクターとストーリーの影響
feel sort of imported from Cowboy Bebop?
Like Axel is almost just Spike, right?
And I think the Russian girl, Kris, is kind of the Faye Valentine character of this show,
right?
Like a little bit of a femme fatale.
And then Elena is the Ed of this show.
Ed is a hacker in Cowboy Bebop and Elena is a hacker in this show.
Although like the characters are pretty different design-wise, like some of the same, and some
of the dynamic that emerges in Cowboy Bebop of like these three sort of misfits as a family
is also really at play in the show where you have these five totally different people who
manage to kind of bond with each other in the process of doing this mission.
Or six really, I guess.
Hirsch really feels like one of them.
So some elements of it also feel like, oh, this is really pulling from like the same
place or the same ideas as Cowboy Bebop.
And other parts feel pretty new.
Like the American setting and the sort of government shenanigans and machinations part
of it feels like a new thing.
It also still has these episodes that are like, let's investigate the backstory of this
character now.
And those are fine.
But this show also took a while, like given the stakes, given that they're looking for
a guy who is potentially going to kill all of humanity in 30 days.
Like they spend a lot of time doing like random side quests in the first half of the show.
And like, I don't think that's a bad thing per se, but it does feel like, is this really
the time to like, go be like, I don't know, we need to like, you know, find my old friend.
Like, no, it's not.
The earth's going to end.
You are not the earth.
Humanity is going to be over.
You have to like focus on the mission.
So that was one of the things that sort of struck me in the beginning.
Cowboy Bebop didn't have any big stakes like that.
So it made more sense that it was the sort of like episodic adventure.
And the last thing that I really, really liked about this show was the design of the
vehicles.
So Doug in particular has a car that just looks awesome.
That like, it's probably really expensive and I don't think I could own it, but it looks
just like dope.
Axel also drives a car around that looks like, kind of like a 50s, like Chevy.
That's like somehow also a low rider.
And like that car, it like, I wouldn't drive, but it looks really cool.
And Elena has like a little scooter that she rides on sometimes.
And there's definitely like a lot of like planes, like military planes and things that
also just like look very good in this show.
So I really liked the vehicles and I sort of wish there were more of them.
This animation was made for the worldwide, not only for Japan, not only for America.
I think you kind of see a lot of different countries and cultures, which you don't really
see in like, you know, Japan made animation.
And there was like a scene about like talking about Bapka, no, not Bapka, what do you call it?
Baklava?
Baklava, or like some going to like different countries and like containing some like
cultural elements in the show, which I kind of appreciated.
Yeah.
It felt, it felt more diverse than most anime for sure.
Yeah.
That's what I liked about.
Yeah.
I like all the characters and Chris and Leland.
Yeah.
Their voice actors are by the actual siblings.
Weird.
Yeah.
Siblings are voice actors and they happen to...
Both get cast?
Yeah.
That's kind of wild, actually.
That's so cool.
Yeah.
Good for them.
Yeah.
All right.
混沌の神
Let's do today's word of the day.
Okay.
Today's word of the day is konton.
Are you sure we didn't do that when we did the ending theme song by Konton Candy?
It might not be word of the day.
What does konton mean?
Chaos.
Why did you pick that for this show?
Because we are up to episode 11 and then this character kept saying Weiton or something in
Chinese.
It's pronounced konton in Japanese.
And so it sounded like an important keyword to me.
Okay.
That's not, this is only in the last episode and number 11 where, and it seems like it's
like a god, right?
I couldn't really tell.
Yeah.
I mean, it's like a supernatural being of some kind because it's got wings and it's
covered in like, I don't know, seals, right?
Okay.
Yeah.
I couldn't figure out what the hell that thing was.
I guess for context, we're watching this in Japanese and there are no English subtitles.
So I'm watching it subtitled in Japanese also.
And my kanji is not good enough to have realized that that was konton in Japanese.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Okay.
So that's like a chaos god of some kind.
Yeah.
I mean, konton means chaos.
Interesting.
Okay.
What did people call him?
Like the assassin you'll never see him see again or something.
Sure.
He's really good at killing people, but he was kept like saying about Weiton in his
mind himself and then talking to Axel about it, which I could really couldn't figure
out like what he means, like what kind of background he has.
Well, it seems like he was trained to be an assassin from birth, right?
キャラクターの運命の予測
And then he like killed all of the people he was training with and his teacher.
Right.
And he only eats meat.
He only eats steak.
Yeah.
Right.
But he also seems to go to the steakhouse in order to receive his assignments, right?
So like, yeah, he only eats steak.
And also he only like, you know, that's like where he gets his handoff of who to kill next.
Right.
He might be the last big boss.
I have a feeling because there are only two more episodes left and then I think it'll
end in 13 episodes.
Yeah.
I don't get the sense he's like a boss.
He's like a mini boss for sure.
Mini boss.
Like he's not like, I mean, he's, it seems like he's mentally unstable, right?
Like he starts losing it during his fight with Axel when he sees the little wing protection
thing that Axel has.
And so I get the sense that he's like, and you know, he's working for somebody else.
Like he's not his own agent.
He's like, he's told what to do by other people.
I think that the guy working for the army is the boss.
Schneider.
Schneider's the guy who sent him to go kill Axel.
Right, right, right, right.
Yeah.
He seems more like the boss.
Right.
So what do you think?
What's going to happen or how it's going to end?
So episode 11 really implied that Axel might be dead at the end.
And that seems like pretty unlikely, or maybe Axel really will be dead for like an episode
and then come back to life because that's what happens with Lazarus.
But I mean, Cowboy Bebop, the original, like not the Netflix show, but the original Cowboy
Bebop doesn't have a particularly happy ending.
Like people die and like, that's it.
So there's the possibility that this show will be sort of similarly like realist and
or dark.
It would be really dark if it ended with everyone dying.
They never find Skinner and then everyone just dies anyway, like the end, like that
would be like, whoa, okay.
And it would, it would sort of counteract the idea of the title a little bit.
So it seems like at some, at the last minute, they'll get a thing or it was just a bluff
or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, or something, right?
Like that they're not, everyone will die in the end.
And there'll be like, not necessarily a happy ending, but like an ending that involves
like things going on sort of as usual afterwards.
But it wouldn't surprise me a lot for some of the main characters to die because that's
a thing that this director sometimes does.
So I don't know, I'm not sure how it'll end.
Yeah.
Or maybe second season to be continued doing some like side quests over and over.
Yeah.
I kind of hope not actually, like just like with Cowboy Bebop, which like ended at the
end and was like a very good ending because it was over.
I sort of hope that they bring the story to a close one way or another, even if it's with
just everybody dying.
アニメのおすすめと特徴
So if there are listeners who haven't watched or who haven't heard about Lazarus, like
how would you recommend this anime to them?
I would say if you liked Cowboy Bebop, this is a pretty easy transition.
There are some things that are a little different about it, but overall it's got a lot of the
same vibes because of the director.
I think it's also like, I think it's a great anime for Americans actually, because it's
set in the United States.
I do think it would be something that most Americans would like in terms of the action
sequences, the different characters, the diversity of the cast.
And I mean, I'm going to withhold some judgment to see where they go with the opioid metaphor,
but potentially that too.
Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode.
If you liked this week's episode, please give us good reviews on Spotify and Apple
Podcasts or like and leave a comment on YouTube.
I was going to say my microphone doesn't sound very good because I forgot to bring my
microphone to Japan.
My microphone sounds okay because it's still here in America.
It's nice.
Like, yeah, I hope I can do something about this for the next show.
Otherwise it's been really hot in Japan.
Don't come to Japan in summer unless you want to suffer from heat.
Okay, good advice.
Yeah, yeah.
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Peace.
