Shiniciro Watanabe is a legendary anime director for a good reason: he creates successful series virtually every time he drives. It seems that your latest series, Lazarus , is no exception! Since the science fiction thriller focused on the consequences of a drug exchange has had great performance, at least in the streaming Max.
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According to Flixpatrol , Lazarus was in 8th place in the “Top 10 of HBO series on April 23, 2025”. And in 7th place on the same list the day before. Although some of the first reviews of the series have been median, it seems that Lazarus found his place among the general public! Continuing to perform well on streaming, even after their debut episodes were shown on Adult Swim.
Lazarus - It is a big hit in streaming
With Watanabe in charge, this strong performance was probably expected. Well, Carole & Tuesday , 2019, was Watanabe's last great work and also had a great performance on Netflix. Receiving criticism praise for many aspects of production, but especially for music. Also, of course Carole & Tuesday was just the latest work of a long series of critics acclaimed. Including Zankyō on Terror, Space Dandy , Kids on the Slope , Samurai Champloo and of course cowboy bebop .
Lazarus and Cowboy Bebop
Most Watanabe works apparently have little in common, besides good direction and strong sense of style. However, Lazarus cowboy drink DNA that it is difficult not to notice. The overall look of the new series greatly resembles the classic 1998, including visual style and fluid animation. Even the way the main cast of characters is made up of a disorganized group of disparate personalities resembles a lot of bebop .
Another obvious resemblance is the musical core of the series. Music and sound landscape created for Watanabe's work are an integral part of all its titles, with each of its main works having a strong musical identity. Lazarus is no different, with several artists contributing to the general soundtrack of the series, giving him a unique identity. Although this same identity is still directly compared to cowboy bebop.
Watanabe Comment
However, Watanabe said on more than one occasion that I would like fans to see the two series as completely separated entities. " Lazarus is made up of elements I created in the past, but I'm not reliving them. I'm doing something new ," he said during an interview in early April. He later approached the comparisons, saying that at first he thought it would be good to help in advertising, but no longer seems like that.
Watanabe continued to talk about various comparisons that continue to be made by fans, such as the use of the monotonous colorful visuals used in the opening sequence of Cowboy Bebop, also being used on the main visuals of Lazarus . "In terms of graphic design, the style of using simple and monotonous colors and turning people into silhouettes in the style worn by old movie titles like Saul Bass… I've always tried this kind of style, so I tried again after a long time ... Please don't be so critical. Even if there are some similarities, Lazarus is still Lazarus ," he said.
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