English Dub Review: Lazarus “Runnin’ With the Devil”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Axel faces Soryu to settle things, while Doug and Eleina travel to Pakistan to track Skinner’s artificial heart and find Popcorn Wizard, the hacker they met before.

OUR TAKE

Down to the final three episodes and only five in-story days, so that means it’s time for Axel to get some backstory! Sorry Doug, you might finish this series with the least amount of character development or backstory if this keeps up. But Axel isn’t all that fascinating as a person himself, even if he is more agile and his fights are…well, not boring to watch, at least. Unfortunately he draws comparisons to the other scrappy fighter protagonists in Watanabe’s previous work, specifically Spike and Mugen, which are comparisons that do him no favors. While they could both be hot tempered and meat headed at times, both of them had their pathos moments. Axel, however, ends up feeling pretty shallow, even as we learn this week that he was experimented on while in prison, apparently with a more unstable prototype of Hapna. Like that is definitely sad, but I wouldn’t say I know him all that much more as a person by the end of that fight. I was a bit surprised when he got impaled by that spear and did believe for a second that he may die and leave his team with two episodes to stop things without him, so points there. But he doesn’t, so so much for that scare, although I suppose there’s always time.

The other main development is, as mentioned, Doug and Eleina following what may be their last shot at tracking down Skinner, which is good because they’re down to less than a week. And even less considering the next episode preview shows Axel waking up to less than a day left. AND their resources will probably be lessened since Hersch, the one they report to, has basically been arrested for confronting her higher ups about things not smelling right about this operation. But the duo probably won’t be entirely on their own since they’re also on their way to find Popcorn Wizard, who I guess you could say is Eleina’s friend now since they kinda bonded over hacker stuff. And she’s a fun enough character that I wouldn’t mind having her back before the end. As for where these last two episodes are heading, I’d say there’s about a 30 to 70 chance we do meet Skinner in the flesh next week, though how much he’ll be around is even harder to nail down. He could show up at the very end and make his grand proclamations about life to…Eleina? And then if I had to guess, she’ll have to have some big thematic test of character to get the cure. Or maybe it won’t be that predictable and my mind will be completely blown, unlike all of the other times these Toonami originals have ended in the most obvious ways based on their format. I guess we’ll see next week for the penultimate Lazarus.