Shinichiro Watanabe’s first wholly original series since Cowboy Bebop drops us into 2052, when Nobel laureate neuroscientist Abel (Akio Otsuka) releases Hapna: a silver-bullet pharmaceutical that eradicates disease, then quietly murders every patient exactly 1,095 days later. With a quarter of humanity already dosed, the world’s governments cobble together Lazarus, a black-ops unit of terminal volunteers whose only qualification is that they’re already dying. Leading the squad are Mamoru Miyano’s Axel, a former rescue diver whose Hapna countdown sits at 72 days, and Makoto Furukawa’s Doug, a one-eyed combat medic who keeps their dwindling roster alive long enough to hunt Skinner (Koichi Yamadera), the pharma-terrorist who claims he can reverse the expiry date if the planet behaves.
The 13-episode run never pauses for technobabble. Instead, Watanabe and co-writer Dai Sato stage a sprint across lunar colonies, flooded Jakarta slums and decommissioned Siberian particle accelerators, letting Kamasi Washington’s brass-laden score and Sam Shepherd’s modular synth textures bleed through every firefight. Animation studio MAPPA renders chase scenes on magnetised highways that fold like origami, while background radios tally the global death toll in real time. Mid-series flashbacks reveal Lazarus members signed up less for salvation than for a licence to kill before their own organs liquefy, a twist that turns the final assault on Skinner’s orbital lab into a suicide parade set to a 7/4 jazz riff.
Amazon Prime Video’s 2025 British miniseries of the same name is unrelated.
Production Details
Adult Swim / 1 Season / 13 Episodes / 2025
Created by: Shinichiro Watanabe
Showrunner(s): Jason DeMarco
Writer(s): Takahiro Ozawa, Tsukasa Kondo, Shinichiro Watanabe
Producer(s): Cody DeMatteis, Joseph Chou
Cinematography: Takuma Sakamoto
Music: Kamasi Washington, Sam Shepherd
Main Cast
Mamoru Miyano as Axel (voice)
Makoto Furukawa as Doug (voice)
Maaya Uchida as Christine (voice)
Yuma Uchida as Leland (voice)
Manaka Iwami as Eleina (voice)
Megumi Hayashibara as Hersch (voice)
Volcano Ota as Officer A (voice)
Akio Otsuka as Abel (voice)
Hayato Fujii as INSCOM Soldier (voice)
Yuki Anando as Newscaster (voice)
Koichi Yamadera as Skinner (voice)
Aoi Tada as Liz (voice)
