Watanabe’s new anime Lazarus premieres on Adult Swim in 2025, but out of New York Comic Con he gave us an exclusive interview preview.
Everyone has had the same question for Shinichirō Watanabe since the late 1990s: When can we get more Cowboy Bebop? Or at least more sci-fi action anime resembling his work on Cowboy Bebop, a show that helped the entire anime industry cross over as a global industry? But after meeting up with the anime titan in the lead-up to the 2024 New York Comic Con, it seems there’s no quicker way to drive Watanabe away from a project than to tell him it’s what he should do. Which may be why it took over 25 years for him to return to the genre in earnest, with next year’s Lazarus.
The 13-episode series, which premieres on Adult Swim in 2025, is Watanabe’s grimmest look at the future. In Lazarus, it’s the year 2052, and the world is in an unfathomable era of peace thanks in major part to Hapna, a popular painkiller created by neuroscientist Dr. Skinner. When Skinner goes missing, no one really bats an eye — that’s the beauty of Hapna! — but three years into the drug’s rise, the scientist returns with an announcement: Hapna’s hidden side effect is that, three years after consumption, it’s fatal. The only cure is with Skinner at his unknown location. If humanity is truly worth saving, the maniacal scientist says, then someone will have to find him in the 30 days until Hapna’s lethal component takes effect.
Watanabe bristles anytime Cowboy Bebop comes up — at the end of the day, he “doesn’t appreciate” the comparisons he anticipates hearing — but the show’s DNA is all over Lazarus. At the center of the drama is Axel, an acrobatic master criminal recruited by a shadow organization to hunt down Skinner. In the premiere, Axel spends most of his time outrunning (and out-parkouring) his eventual employers, all to a jazzy soundtrack courtesy of Kamasi Washington, Bonobo, and Floating Points.
