Lazarus creator Shinichiro Watanabe talks about his new sci-fi show

After some time off, Shinichiro Watanabe returns to science fiction. Although each of the director’s original projects spoke of his artistic sensibilities, Cowboy Bebop solidified him as a science fiction writer whose style and eclectic taste in music set him apart. Almost 30 years later, Cowboy Bebop is still considered one of the most famous and influential anime series of the 20th century. But Watanabe’s desire to evolve by trying new things led him to abandon far-future narratives and direct projects such as historical action films. Samurai Champloo and Children on the slope.

The same feeling brought him back to his roots and inspired him to dream Lazarus — a new series premieres on Adult Swim in 2025 John Wick director Chad Stahelski for his action.

The events take place in the future, when the majority of the world’s population has begun to use a new miracle drug called Hapna. Lazarus tells the story of what happens when a painkiller turns out to be a delayed-action toxin guaranteed to kill. The revelation sets off a race to find the creator of Hapna in hopes of stopping his plan to punish humanity for its self-destructive sins against the planet. But this situation also causes a wave of panic and confusion, as people come to believe that the very thing that once seemed to be the key to their salvation will kill them.

When I sat down with Watanabe recently to talk about it Lazarushe told me that while he was excited about the return to hard sci-fi, he wanted the series to feel like a heightened reflection on our own modern reality. LazarusHe explained that it’s a kind of fantasy that tries to make you think about how the present shapes the future.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did the concept for Lazarus first came to you first? What was going through your mind when this story started gaining attention?

The image of Axel, our main character, was actually the first thing that came to mind, and I had an impression of his physicality—how I wanted him to move through the world. I also knew I wanted to create a story about humanity facing the end of the world. In the very first episode, our character Doe delivers a monologue that consists of a montage of images, and a lot of what he says is actually very close to how I imagined our world might fall apart.

What aspects of our own modern society did you want to explore or reveal through this particular vision of the future that you created for the show?

When people think of the end of the world in fiction, it’s usually some kind of war or maybe an alien invasion. But with this story, the collapse of everything begins with the creation of a new painkiller, Hapna. The overall real-life opioid crisis was one of the biggest sources for me to create this series, as well as the fact that many of the musicians I love to listen to have ended up dying of drug overdoses.

In the past you might have heard of musicians overdosing on illegal street drugs, but over the years you’ve seen more and more cases like Prince dying while taking prescription painkillers. Prince’s death still shocks me. I also love hip-hop culture and rap, and unfortunately you see more of that overdose among younger artists.

What made you want to return to science fiction after such a long absence from the genre?

After Cowboy BebopI wanted to try something different in terms of genre, which I eventually did Children on the slope and Carol and Tuesday. When I finished working on Blade Runner Black Out 2022it was so good to get back into sci-fi, but since it was only for a short time, I still felt like I needed to find an opportunity to flex those specific creative muscles.

I didn’t just want to repeat or paraphrase what I did Cowboy Bebopbut that’s partly why I first turned to Chad Stahelski, who was working on the John Wick movies I thought he was able to really refresh the action sequence in a new way, and I wanted to bring that energy to my next project.

Talk to me about working with Chad.

When I first mentioned Chad’s name, many people were skeptical that we would be able to find time to work with him because of how busy he is and how many people want to work with him. But I felt such a strong affinity for Chad’s approach to building action scenes that I reached out to him anyway. Turns out he saw it and was a big fan Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champlooand he immediately agreed to come Lazarus.

Chad’s team would do their own interpretation of the fight scene choreography and send us the video, and then we would study that footage to find different action elements that we wanted to incorporate into the Lazarus. Obviously, live action and animation are different mediums, so our process involved a lot of figuring out what aspects of the footage we could enhance and stylize.

What was that process like?

Different episodes have different ways of incorporating Chad’s choreography. As for the premiere, we were actually still in the early stages, and we weren’t able to benefit as much from Chad’s input. And for episodes two and three, we created very short action sequences specifically to incorporate the things we saw in the video from Chad’s team. But for the fourth episode, we went with a much bigger scene because we really found our rhythm at that point.

For some episodes, we would give them information about what scene we wanted and they would just brainstorm. But in many cases, before getting detailed instructions from us, Chad’s team offered their ideas, and we used quite a few of them as well. This was an ongoing ongoing discussion between our teams and open communication was key to achieving the right tone for Lazarus‘ action For example, John Wick The fight scenes in the movies include a lot of headshot kills, but it was a little too much for us because Axel isn’t really a killer like John Wick himself.

You mentioned earlier that Axel was the first piece of this story that came to your attention. How did you imagine him?

I don’t want you to get it wrong when I say this, but Axel was somewhat inspired by Tom Cruise. Axel thrives on danger and at times seems almost addicted to it. Lazarus contains a lot of parkour because we wanted the action built around Axel to always feel like one wrong move could send him down. He risks his life, but that danger is what he goes for—it makes him feel alive.

You’ve always been known for populating your worlds with diverse people, but Babylonia City (one of the show’s important locations) has a pronounced multiculturalism that feels really distinct in the larger anime landscape. What did you think about building a story around such a culturally diverse group of characters?

Whenever I think of a specific environment that my characters will exist in, the most important thing is that the space feels real and like a place where people can move around in a realistic way. What I’ve always felt when looking at other sci-fi depictions of the future is that they often lack a real-life feel, and that’s exactly what I want to avoid. So for Babylon City, I thought that a big, busy cityscape would lend itself to character expression.

I think I always try to incorporate multicultural elements into my stories because they were such an important part Blade Runnerwhich was very memorable to me after I first saw it when I was young. Blade RunnerMulticulturalism—the mixing of cultures—was part of how the film showed how society would change in the future. I half expected the future to be more of the same, which is funny to say these days since the original movie is set in 2019.

People will be able to hear Lazarus“soundtrack for yourself, but what did the series sound like in your mind when you were thinking about the musical palettes you wanted to create for it?

with Cowboy Bebopwe used slightly older jazz music to contrast the futuristic feel of the story. But for LazarusI wanted to find a different sound and present more music that I’ve been listening to relatively recently.

Was there a particular song or songs that really crystallized the show for you?

It hasn’t been released yet, but The Boo Radleys song “Lazarus” is in the credits, which really inspired this series as a whole. I’m really interested to hear what they think of the show.

You talked about your collaborative process on the visuals, but what about the music?

There have also been many twists and turns in the process. Generally, for animation, you try to create and prepare all the music cues while the production is going on. We had a lot of discussions with our music colleagues about the show and the specific feel we wanted to evoke from scene to scene, and the challenge of that process is always that the visuals we’re creating the music for just aren’t quite finished. They have already partially achieved this, but the musician must imagine something more complete in order to create a composition. But then, when the bus there are completed, there may be requests for retakes or small adjustments that make the piece of music more cohesive.

There is an increasing focus on working conditions that make it harder and harder for illustrators and animators to develop and develop sustainable careers. What are you reading about the current state of the industry?

In a word, the problem is that there are too many shows, and there are not enough experienced animators. Even for Lazaruswe couldn’t get all the experienced animators we needed domestically, so we had to bring in quite a few from abroad. The first episode features a lot of non-Japanese animation, especially for the action scenes.

Big picture, what do you think needs to change so that animators can have this experience?

In order for an animator to really develop his skills, I believe he needs to work on a project and be able to focus solely on it. But more often than not, with the sheer number of shows and movies out there, many animators have to jump from one project to another and really struggle to get their work done, and this environment is not conducive to true artistic development.

Going back to the first episode, the action scenes in the first half were drawn by one animator, while another animator handled all the action in the second half. Each of them had 50 hits. In my opinion, this is the perfect way for someone who is already good at animation to focus on a large part of the scenes. That’s how you grow. But so often in other animation projects, you see experienced animators limit themselves to maybe two or three takes, and the end product just isn’t that good.