English Dub Review: Lazarus “Pretty Vacant”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Lazarus decides to try luring Skinner in, to disastrous results.

OUR TAKE

We’re getting near the halfway point now, so it’s probably long overdue to bring up that every episode begins with the same imagery with a monologue narrated by one of the main Lazarus team. They haven’t been the most insightful or interesting monologues, just everyone talking about some bit of their past and how it involves Hapna in some way, so they have to stay on this mission to stop everyone from dying or something. Kinda weird how these things are seemingly meant to make us feel more connected to these characters and their motivations but it just sort of ends up being an annoyance. Also, as a Jewish person, I do appreciate the use of a dreidel in that cold open animation, though I am curious if it landing on Hei, one of the four sides in the game, is significant in some way. By the rules of Dreidel, landing on that side means that the player gets half of the pot of gold (or typically chocolate) in the game at the time, so…maybe Hapna only ends up killing half of the population instead of the whole? Might just need to chalk it up to Watanabe just wanting to use a neat looking visual for gambling, but we’ll see.

Anyway, as for the episode itself, it’s nice to see Lazarus changing up tactics and trying to lure Skinner to them for a change, even if it doesn’t end up accomplishing much. They first notice that someone is sending files on Hapna clinical through soundcloud to Skinner and quickly find the guy who’s sending them, a CEO named Ahmed, and apparently a symptom of dying from Hapna is gaining eyes that are full of stars. There’s probably a song reference in there somewhere since every episode has a song for a title. Also interesting is that Skinner remains a very enigmatic figure even this far in, with everyone having things to say about him and what he is supposedly doing, but since that announcement, he’s never had much to say for himself. I wonder if this is meant to say something with how the specter of Skinner has presence and is on so many people’s minds, even when he’s not there. Also there’s a new hacker character named Popcorn Wizard who kinda makes friends with Eleina but not really. Probably gonna be more important later, or maybe she just won’t show up again. We’ll see.