English Dub Review: Lazarus “Unforgettable Fire”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Chris is kidnapped by some old associates, so the rest of Lazarus heads out to get her back.

OUR TAKE

We are on a collision course with the finale as we’re down to less than two weeks to go in-universe until that dang ol Hapna starts killing people from the side effects. And for some reason, the show decided this was the perfect time to have an episode focusing on Chris for once, where we learn that she was once part of a group of, but faked her death to escape, not just for her own sake, but also so her former handler and former lover Inga would not be killed if she failed. And this would be probably all be so fascinating if we had not spent more than half of this show so far dealing with some well animated cardboard cut outs in the guise of characters. Like maybe there was some hinting at this in previous episodes, but Chris was basically a cypher and the main personality traits that I could gleam off of her was that she was mostly friendly and liked to drink a lot. Now I know she used to go by Alexandra, worked for a bunch of Russian spies, and is into women, which does technically fill her out more as a character, but ironically I feel like I know her less now.

Now, don’t get me wrong, Bebop and Champloo were also selective and drip fed character background details as their shows ran, and they arguable took longer since they had more episodes, but Lazarus really has not done a good job at making me endeared to these characters. We’ve got five episodes left and Axel, Leland, and Doug all are pretty much still mysteries to me, which, in addition to the issues with Chris, makes scenes where they’re trying to act buddy buddy and saving each other like they’ve become best friends ring incredibly hollow. And at this point, I don’t really expect that problem to get fixed in any sufficient way, especially since we’re at a point where we gotta really lock in to resolving this ongoing mystery since they only have twelve days to do it. Maybe that’s the problem with this at the end of the day: too many characters, too much plot to juggle, not enough episodes. Or it could be a number of other things I haven’t noticed yet and won’t until we’re done, but regardless, that’s another episode in the books and I’ll see you next time.