‘Cowboy Bebop’ Creator Says His New Anime ‘Lazarus’ Originally Pitched As Being Similar To ‘Space Dandy’, But Adult Swim Wanted “Something More Serious”
According to Cowboy Bebop creator Shinichirō Watanabe, when he was first approached by Cartoon Network to produce a new project on their dime, he originally pitched the idea of creating something akin to his comedy sci-fi series Space Dandy but pivoted to developing his newly-launched Lazarus after being told by the Warner Bros. subsidiary to make “something more serious”.
Jointly animated by The God of High School team MAPPA and Sola Entertainment for the Adult Swim imprint‘s Toonami programming block, Lazarus introduces audiences to the not-too-far-flung-future of 2052, dropping them onto an idealistic version of the future Earth whose most notable discovery is the drug Hapna, a miracle painkiller capable of numbing any and all pain in a human’s body when taken.
However, three years after Hapna’s introduction to the world at large, its inventor, Dr. Skinner, suddenly emerges from an unexplained self-exile, in doing so uploading a video to the internet and revealing to the world that the drug’s short effectiveness period eventually gives way to immediate death – and time will soon be up for anyone who took it.
Enter Axel Gilberto, a young Brazilian prisoner who was originally given a short jail sentence on charges of petty crime but has since racked up a required total of 888 years behind bars due to his continual and often successful attempts at breaking out of whatever facility happens to house him.
Faced with an inability to locate Dr. Skinner and an ever-ticking timer to mass death, the U.S. government eventually taps Axel to track down the madman, placing him on the eponymous ‘Lazarus’ spec-ops team alongside a group of other specialists.
However, rather than a futuristic thriller, Watanabe recently told Japanese MANTANWEB that he originally floated the idea of using Adult Swim’s investment to fund a project similar in tone to his 2014 outing Space Dandy (stylized as Space☆Dandy), but network boss Jason DeMarco ultimately dismissed the prospect.
As translated via ChatGPT, reflecting on the series’ development process ahead of its American and Japanese broadcast premiere on April 6th, the esteemed anime director explained, “This is an original anime with no source material, so the staff, including myself, are creating it from scratch. Initially, we received an offer from Cartoon Network, the company that broadcasts anime in the U.S., saying, ‘We’ll fully fund it, but we want you to make an original anime'”
“The president, Jason DeMarco, is a big fan of Cowboy Bebop, and a huge music enthusiast,” Watanabe continued. “He said, ‘I can tell. The way you use music is unusual. I want you to make a show like that.’ He also said, ‘We’d like a sci-fi action series.’ When I asked if something like Space☆Dandy would work, he replied, ‘No, we want something more serious.'”
“They basically trusted me as a director, and there wasn’t much micromanagement of the content,” he added. “Typically, with American collaborations, there can be a lot of interference, but this time, I was able to create it more freely.”
To this end, the Cowboy Bebop legend then detailed how in light of both this request and both Adult Swim’s residence in Canada as well as hosting network Cartoon Network’s in the United States, he chose to theme Lazarus‘ story around North America’s ongoing opioid crisis.
“Although it may not be well-known in Japan, the opioid crisis is a major issue in the U.S. and other countries, and it inspired this story,” he said. “It’s a situation where people are dying from opioids, which are prescribed painkillers. For example, Michael Jackson’s death was reportedly caused by opioids, and many other musicians have also died because of it. As a music lover, this is a major issue for me. It’s strange that these drugs are legal, and I began to think, ‘Why are these drugs allowed? What if someone deliberately created and spread such a drug to kill many people?’ That’s where the inspiration for this story came from.”
Featuring overall direction by Watanabe and action coordination by John Wick franchise director Chad Stahelski, the four-episode run of Lazarus is now airing via Cartoon Network’s Saturday night Toonami block.
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