English Dub Review: Lazarus “Long Way from Home”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

The Lazarus team follow a lead about Dr. Skinner back to Istanbul, where he sometimes mentioned getting Baklava from his grandmother Belinda. While she hasn’t had much contact with him since he became famous, they plant a hidden camera in her house, assuming he would return to keep her safe at some point.

OUR TAKE

We’re three episodes into this now and I think it may be safe to say that the pacing is not exactly the best. It just doesn’t feel like a lot of significant progress has really been made yet, with the only actual steps forward in the investigation being triggering some sort of holographic puzzle and finding Skinner’s grandmother. And I realize that not everything is supposed to be figured out by just the third episode, but if we’re a little under a quarter through, it kind of feels like we need to be a little further, like maybe some aspect of Hapna’s ingredients or a major deal that was made which may reveal some aspect of its manufacturing that goes into why it was made that way that is now leading to it becoming a major blow to life on earth. Just…some sort of milestone that we just haven’t gotten yet. But that’s not to say we haven’t gotten anything, as we do get a little more character development for most of the characters, like a visit with one of Klein’s old associates who gives them the lead on the baklava thing, and Axel meeting up with a homeless friend of his who has since come out as a transgender woman. It doesn’t have much to do with the situation, but it’s actually kind of bold to have an openly transgender character in media right now, so hey, points to them on that.

In terms of character development, we also learn a bit about some of the cast, with Axel being someone who makes himself at home just about anywhere, Chris being good with weapons, and Doug being a former researcher who studied physics and once looked up to Skinner before all of this stuff happened. Those are all pretty surface level traits though, or at least thereabouts, so I’m not exactly feeling like I know any of these people that much more than I did before. But hey, we’ve still got ten more episodes to go, so there’s plenty of time to better flesh out this mystery and these characters at least a little bit. Plus, of the other Shinichiro Watanabe shows I’ve seen, characters being a bit flat is usually fine as long as the situation they’re interacting with and how they bounce off each other is flavorful enough. Problem is, I’m not sure they really are at this point either. I guess we’ll see if that improves as we carry on.