English Dub Review: Lazarus “Heaven Is a Place on Earth”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Lazarus’ next target is a religious cult that worships an AI named Naga, which used Skinner’s brain as a model, and whom Eleina has a connection to.

OUR TAKE

We’re about half way through the series now and this is the first episode where I feel like we’ve gotten the chance to really get to know even one of the main Lazarus team, specifically Eleina, the quiet hacker girl, whose backstory we finally get. Not that getting backstory is the only way for us to get to know a character better, but with six out of thirteen episodes down, I barely feel like I get any of these people in any significant way. If you’ve seen Watanabe’s most notable anime, Cowboy Bebop, you’ll know that backstory about the leads was basically drip fed to us every now and then, while the way the characters developed and showed more about themselves was how they acted in the conflicts they got roped into. Spike was eager to get into a fight, Faye tried to avoid fights with her wiles, Ed was…Ed. Yet despite there being more characters here, their differences have so far mostly amounted to their designs and how they engage in snarky dialogue. It’s only now that we’re getting Eleina doing something that feels like an Eleina thing to do, as well as learning more about this world and the life she left behind to be who we know now.

Obviously AI is a hot button topic in the real world at the moment, wherein you could argue that many worship it as a concept already. And there have been many sci fi stories that involve groups seeing technology as a god, so it’s hard to say if Naga and its cult are meant to be taking a swipe at modern attitudes like Hapna being a deadly painkiller seems to be towards pharmaceuticals. What I really care about anyway is, as mentioned, getting to know Eleina better as a character and seeing what the other characters do in the periphery. I actually found it pretty amusing that Axel, who is usually front and center in the action, feels so restless that he has to basically do the human equivalent of zoomies like a pet that doesn’t get to go out for a walk, even though his last interaction with Naga at the end feels kinda shallow and probably should’ve been with Eleina instead of him. Ah well, at least I finally have something genuinely good to talk about with this show now, hopefully that lasts for the remaining half of the series.