After some time away, Shinichirō Watanabe returns to SF. Although each of the director’s original projects spoke to his artistic sensibilities, Cowboy Bebop cemented him as a sci-fi visionary whose style and eclectic taste in music set him apart. Almost 30 years later, Cowboy Bebop is still considered one of the most iconic and influential anime series of the 20th century. But Watanabe’s desire to grow by trying new things led him to move away from telling stories about distant futures and toward projects like the historical action series. Samurai Champloo and Children on the slopes.

That same feeling is what brought him back to his roots and inspired him to dream Lazare — a new series premiering on Adult Swim in 2025, which is enlisting John Wick to director Chad Stahelski for his action sequences.

Set in a future where most of the world’s population has started using a new wonder drug called Hapna, Lazare tells the story of what happens when the painkiller is revealed to be a delayed toxin guaranteed to kill. The revelation sparks a manhunt for Hapna’s creator in hopes of stopping his plan to punish humanity for its self-destructive sins against the planet. But the situation also sets off a wave of panic and confusion as people face the idea of ​​being killed by the very thing that once seemed to be the key to their salvation.

When I sat down with Watanabe recently to discuss this Lazarehe told me that as excited as he was to return to hard science-fi, he wanted the series to feel like a heightened rumination on our own reality today. Lazarehe explained, it’s a kind of fantasy—one that tries to make you think about how the present shapes the future.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How the concept for Lazare first come to you initially? What did you have in mind when this story came into focus?

The image of Axel, our main protagonist, was actually what came to me first, and I had an impression of his physique – how I wanted him to move through the world. I also knew I wanted to make a story about humanity facing the end of the world. In the first episode, our character Dough gives a monologue that’s set to a montage of images, and a lot of what he says is actually very close to what I imagined our world to be like. collapsed.

What aspects of our current society did you want to explore or unpack through this specific vision of the future that you created for the show?

When people think of the end of the world in fiction, usually the cause is some kind of war or maybe an alien invasion. But with this story, the collapse of everything begins with the creation of this new pain reliever, Hapna. The general opioid crisis in the real world was one of my biggest inspirations for this series, but also the fact that many of the musicians I enjoy listening to eventually died of drug overdoses.

Back in the day, you heard about musicians overdosing on illegal drugs, but over the years, you’ve seen more and more cases, like Prince for example, who end up dying while taking prescription painkillers. Prince’s death still shocks me. I also love hip-hop and rap culture, and unfortunately you see more of that kind of overdose with younger artists.

What made you want to return to sci-fi after being away from the genre for so long?

After Cowboy BebopI wanted to try something different genre-wise, which is what I ended up doing Children on the slopes and Carole & Tuesday. When I got to work at Blade Runner Black Out 2022it felt so good to get back into sci-fi, but because it was only a short, I still felt like I needed to find an opportunity to stretch those specific creative muscles.

I didn’t just want to repeat or repeat what I did Cowboy Bebophowever, and that’s part of the reason I initially reached out to Chad Stahelski, who worked on the John Wick movies. I thought he was able to update the action sequences in a new way and I wanted to bring that kind of energy to my next project.

Tell me about working with Chad.

When we first mentioned Chad’s name, many people were skeptical that we would be able to find time to collaborate because of how busy he is and how many people want to work with him. But I felt such a strong affinity for Chad’s approach to building action scenes that I reached out anyway. Turns out he saw it and was a big fan Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champlooand immediately said yes to come on Lazare.

Chad’s team would do their own take on the fight scene choreography and send us videos, then we’d study that footage to find different elements of the action that we wanted to incorporate into Lazare. Obviously, live action and animation are different mediums, so our process involved a lot of figuring out which aspects of the footage felt like things we could enhance and stylize.

How was that process?

Different episodes have different ways of incorporating Chad’s choreography. For the premiere, we were actually still in the early stages and couldn’t benefit as much from Chad’s input. And for episodes two and three, we created very short action sequences specifically to include things that we saw in Chad’s team videos. But for the fourth episode, we went with a much bigger set piece because that’s when we really found our rhythm.

For some episodes, we gave them input on what kind of scene we wanted and they would just go and brainstorm. But in many cases, before getting detailed instructions from us, Chad’s team offered their ideas and we used quite a few of them. It was an ongoing discussion between our teams and open communication was key to getting the tone right Lazare‘ action. For example, the John Wick The films fight scenes involve a lot of head killing, but that was a little too much for us as Axel isn’t really a killer the way John Wick himself is.

You mentioned earlier that Axel was the first part of this story to come into focus for you. How did you imagine it?

I don’t want you to get the wrong idea when I say this, but Axel was somewhat inspired by Tom Cruise. Axel enjoys danger and at times seems almost addicted to it. Lazare features a lot of parkour, as we wanted the action built around Axel to always feel like one wrong move could send him down. He risks his life, but that danger is something he escapes – it makes him feel alive.

You’ve always been known for populating your worlds with a variety of people, but there’s a pronounced multiculturalism to Babylonia City (one of the show’s major locations) that feels really distinct in the wider anime landscape. What was your thinking behind building a story around such a culturally diverse cast of characters?

Whenever I think about the specific environments my characters will exist in, the most important thing is that the space feels real and like a place where people can move in a realistic way. What I’ve always felt about other sci-fi depictions of the future is that they often don’t feel really lived in, and that’s what I want to avoid. So for Babylonia City, my thinking was that a large, busy cityscape would lend itself to the characters expressing their personalities.

I always try to incorporate multicultural elements into my stories, I think, because they were such an important part of Blade Runnerthat really stuck with me after I first saw it when I was young. Blade RunnerHis multiculturalism – cultural mixing – was part of how the film illustrated how society changed in the future. I was half expecting the future to be more like this, which is funny to say today since the original movie is set in 2019.

People will be able to hear Lazaresoundtrack for themselves, but what did the show sound like in your head when you were thinking about the musical palettes you wanted to build?

With Cowboy BebopI used slightly older jazz music to contrast the futuristic feel of the story. But for LazareI wanted to find a different kind of sound and showcase more of the relatively recent music I’ve been listening to.

Was there a specific song or songs that really crystallized the show for you?

This hasn’t been made public yet, but the end credit sequence features The Boo Radleys song “Lazarus”, which was really a big inspiration for this series as a whole. I’m very interested to hear what they think of the show.

You talked about your collaborative process on the visuals, but what about the music?

There was a lot of back and forth with that process as well. Typically, for animation, you try to have all the musical cues created and prepared while the production is underway. We had a lot of discussions with our musical collaborators about the show and the specific kind of feeling we wanted to evoke from scene to scene, and the challenging thing about that process is always that the images we’re creating music for are just not completely finished. They are partly there, but the musician must imagine something more complete in order to compose. But then when the images i am finished, there might be requests for retakes or small tweaks that make the piece of music fit more cohesively.

There has been an increase in attention to the working conditions that make it increasingly difficult for illustrators and animators to thrive and cultivate sustainable careers. What are you reading about the current state of the industry?

In short, the problem is that there are too many shows being made and not enough experienced entertainers to go around. Even for Lazarewe couldn’t get all the experienced animators we needed domestically, so we had to bring in quite a few from overseas. With the first episode, there are many non-Japanese animators, especially for the action scenes.

Big picture, what do you think really needs to change for animators to achieve this kind of experience?

For an animator to really develop their skills, I think they need to work on a project and be able to focus solely on it. But more often than not, due to the sheer number of shows and movies, many animators have to jump from project to project and struggle to finish their work, and it’s not an environment conducive to genuine artistic growth .

Going back to that first episode, the action scenes in the first half were drawn by a single animator, and another animator handled all the action in the second half. They each had 50 photos to work on. To me, this is the ideal way – for someone who is already good at action animation to be able to focus on a substantial chunk of scenes. That’s how you grow. But so often in other animated projects, you see experienced animators limiting themselves to working on two or three frames at most, and the end product isn’t as good.