Premiere Date
21-06-2025
It’s only a little over a month until the newest show from Shinichiro Watanabe,Lazarus, premieres on Toonami, the late-night block synonymous with several of the director’s cult classics. With the date fast approaching,Adult Swimfinally released a new trailer, but if you’re feeling a bit underwhelmed by it, the Japanese trailer posted by MAPPA is a way more exciting tease.
Announced way back in July 2023,Lazaruswas pitched as a globe-trotting science fiction series about a task force in a race against time to find the scientist who has doomed humankind. Not only did Jason DeMarco of Adult Swim confirm Watanabe would be directing every episode, butJohn Wickdirector Chad Stahelskiwas even tapped to design the action sequences for the anime.
The U.S. Trailer Gets The Job Done
After only a teaser trailer following the announcement in 2023 and a short clip four months ago, Adult Swim’s YouTube channel dropped the first legit trailer on February 27. In typical Adult Swim/Toonami trailer fashion, it leads front and center with its premise and then expounds upon it through a dazzling salvo of exciting footage, one-liners, and great music. They even put the track names in the description, knowing Watanabe’s key demographic all too well.
Lazarusis set in 2052, when a Nobel Prize-winning scientist reveals that the miracle cure he released upon the world three years prior, named Hapuna, will soon kill everyone who took it. With only 30 days until humanity ends, the task force “Lazarus” needs to find Skinner and develop a vaccine. It’s a bold premise that raises a few questions, but for the moment, it’s the perfect hook.
Where the Trailer Falls Short
The rest of the trailer presents a fun spy adventure with the jazzy charm one would expect of a Watanabe series, but a few things are holding the trailer back, not the least of which is some of the voice acting. Perhaps it’s the way some of the lines are cut together to weave the narrative the trailer is selling, but lines like Jack Stansbury’s “We’re superheroes” come off a bit stiff when isolated from the larger context of which they’re a part.
Furthermore,the trailer feels like it’s throwing everythingat the wall to appeal to as many demographics as possible. Spies, hacking, shooting, martial arts, explosions, car chases, and the aforementioned superhero line, which itself is the second half of a set-and-spike queued up earlier, because superheroes sell. Adult Swim is casting a wide net, and that’s not inherently bad. It’s efficient marketing, but you start to feel what’s missing when you see what could have been.
Lazarus Needs to Sell a Vibe
It shouldn’t be too controversial to say that Shinichiro Watanabe’s best works didn’t capture their audiences through an enticing premise but rather a peculiar, attractive, and eclectic vibe.Cowboy Bebopwasn’t just cool because it was about bounty hunters in space. It was cool because its music, art, and performances created an atmosphere that sucked people in, right before the script peeled back the layers of its characters to reveal their beating, imperfect, utterly human hearts.
Even Watanabe’s more divisive projects likeTerror in Resonanceare still remembered somewhat fondly because of their aesthetic strengths. And the Japanese trailer forLazarusis nothing if not an aesthetic trip. The editing and music choices pull the viewer into this sometimes dreary, sometimes sun-bleached, but otherwise beautiful vision of the future.
How One Succeeds Where the Other Fails
It retreads the premise presented in the English trailer but puts a greater emphasis on the world affected by this revelation: the places that may soon become mass graves. Additionally, we get very intentional shots of all the main characters - including a particularly beautiful slow-motion shot of Doug. All the shots are prettier and more striking and contribute to the vibe as much as they inform the narrative.
you’re able to hear the chorus chanting beneath the instrumental, and the climax of the trailer evokes the final notes of “Tank”, the legendary opening toBebop.
Like its English-language counterpart, the second half of the trailer takes ona more fun, jazzy tone, but its bombardment of audio/visual stimuli feels more calculated. The title track, “Lazarus” by Kamasi Washington, hits harder, not only because of how it’s edited to match what’s on the screen but because the arrangement itself feels much more massive. You can hear the chorus chanting beneath the instrumental, and the climax of the trailer evokes the final notes of “Tank”, the legendary opening toBebop.
Why Fuss Over A Single Trailer?
This might seem like a harsh critique of the U.S. trailer, but to reiterate, it’s not terrible. It’s simply the case that the Japanese one is composed in such a way that it feels far more impressive and engaging by comparison. That being said, this project is a pretty big deal, and it’s not as if Toonami’s other co-produced anime projects have knocked it out of the park.Ninja Kamuiended up being quite divisive, andUzumakiwas regarded as a complete disaster.
A futuristic action show by Shinichiro Watanabe on Adult Swimshouldbe a recipe for success (it sure seemed to work before), but name recognition will only go so far. Fans need to see thatLazarusis worth the hype, and that demands more careful consideration of how they sell the “vibe”. If Toonami needs help, they only need to look at how they marketedCowboy Bebopback in the day; it was nothing but vibes.
