English Dub Review: Lazarus “Don’t Stop the Dance”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Lazarus’ next task is tracking down Dr. 909, who is working with a rich investor who dropped all his Hapna stock before Skinner’s announcement, and who may have helped Skinner disappear right after.

OUR TAKE

This week, we get into more of the spy thriller side of Lazarus, as the majority of the main members get to infiltrate a night club to find yet another potential lead to Dr. Skinner, and it’s not Superintendent Chalmers. This time they have to meet up with Sam Stephenson, who throws lavish parties from how much he invested in Hapna right before it was revealed to be deadly. And given that most of them look like fashion models, it’s easy enough for them to get into one of his swanky parties, including Leland who has to dress up like a young girl because Stephenson is just that creepy. He is in fact so creepy that he would drug every woman there, including Chris who knows to be ready for something like that. Lazarus, the show, is a very adult story, so touching on these darker and more skeevy topics is going to be expected, though I do wish they hadn’t portrayed Stephenson as so cartoony while he was doing it. Yes, the point of this is to show he is an unrepentant sleazeball, but there’s still a specific tone to approach these sorts of actions with and it’s not this.

Otherwise, the show then leans more into the action as the identity of Dr. 909 is revealed to actually be the DJ playing at the party, Visionary, who tries to make a getaway with Stephenson and leads to a big chase with Axel hanging off the side of a helicopter and Leland sending a massive drone after them to intercept. I couldn’t help but think back to the action heavy parts of Cowboy Bebop, especially since Leland’s drone is suspiciously Swordfish shaped. That said, we’re a handful of episodes in now and a lot of these characters are not that well defined, personality wise. None of them like each other all that much yet, so a lot of their back and forth is kinda cynical and snarky, but I’m hoping that will change as the story goes on. Speaking of, we get a bit of a hint of what may happen to the people once those thirty days are up as we see some monkey test subjects drop dead, though while it may be messed up to say, I kinda hope it’s a bit more gross than that. I guess we’ll see as we enter the second third of the series next week.