Lazarus – Episode 08

Episode Synopsis:

Chris has been captured by her former comrades, and her friends are desperate to find her before her bracelet activates and kills her. The team mounts a daring rescue attempt as we learn more of Chris’s background and what she left behind before joining Lazarus.

Review:

I’m a bit torn on this episode, honestly. There’s strong action, and I appreciate the insight into Chris’s life. Some elements remind me of Watanabe’s past work with Cowboy Bebop, hearkening back to the excellent Ganymede Elegy and Jupiter Jazz sessions. However, the character building feels slight by comparison and doesn’t provide the same level of pathos as those classics. Despite that, I quite enjoyed how the tension and explosiveness contrasts with the more meditative style of episode 7.

The focus of this episode bounces back and forth between the captive Chris and her teammates as they try to reach her before the 3-day timer in her bracelet reaches zero and the mechanism cuts off her blood supply. Before that, Doug and Eleina reveal to the rest of the team that their handler, Hersch, previously worked with Dr. Skinner on the Hapna trials. It’s not really a shocking revelation, but it puts everyone on a much more level playing field and contextualizes her part in the hunt. She’s not just in it to save humanity – she feels personally betrayed. There’s certainly more to be revealed, and some shots hint at the kind of relationship she and Skinner may have had.

Soon, we refocus on Chris, tied to a chair on an oil rig in the Arctic. She’s attacked by a brute named Sergei, who only stops abusing her when Inga – the woman that stunned Chris previously – orders him to halt. Inga is looking for revenge on Chris (AKA Alexandra) for faking her death and abandoning her several years ago. Despite being a masterful operative, Chris seems to accept her fate, unwilling to fight against Inga at all.

Eventually it’s revealed that Chris and Inga were deeply in love, and that Chris faked her death to save Inga from the consequences of her defection – an act that required her to sacrifice that very love. It’s a touching flashback, and I genuinely wish there had been more of it. However, it shares space with the most elaborate action setpiece yet, and it feels like the drama doesn’t quite get the space it deserves as the oil rig bursts into flames around it.

While I would’ve liked more time to sit with Chris’s backstory, Lazarus’s rescue mission is a pretty spectacular operation once it takes center stage. Each team member gets to shine through their own specialty, and even if their success isn’t really in doubt, there are setbacks and twists that keep things tense. Despite being the one in need of rescue, Chris isn’t helpless; she manages to fight her captors even while tied to a chair, and the scenes where she struggles against Sergei have great visual weight and impact. It’s a testament to the animation team whenever someone gets slammed into a wall and the viewer goes, “Oof!”.

Taken as a whole, episode 8 is one of the best so far, leveraging the creative team’s knack for character drama and explosive action. It just feels a little cramped, especially when the first few minutes are focused on revelations about Skinner and Hersch that might’ve worked better in a later episode, though I’ll need to consider it in the full context of the show.

Summary:

I had a lot of fun with this episode, so I’m still trying to puzzle out why I felt a bit lukewarm on it on my first viewing. I think it’s an issue I’ve had throughout the show – that I’m always subconsciously comparing it to Watanabe’s past work on Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, and (to a lesser extent) Macross Plus. These were all formative anime experiences for me in the past, and Bebop in particular was lightning in a bottle. I don’t think anything has quite captured that same feeling, and seeing bits of it that don’t hit quite as hard makes me judge it more harshly than I would if it was a completely unrelated work.

My subjective hangups aside, it’s a strong episode that continues to push the series deeper into its second half, with less than two weeks remaining before Hapna begins killing off humans. Even if a cure is found in that time, the chances of distributing it to everyone in need are becoming slim. We’ll see if our heroes manage to pull of an incredible turnaround, or if there is more going on behind the scenes.