Shinichiro Watanabe’s Lazarus to Share First Look at SDCC 2024

Lazarus, a new anime in development from director Shinichiro Watanabe for Adult Swim, will be sharing its first look at part of Adult Swim’s plans for San Diego Comic-Con 2024 this year! Shinichiro Watanabe has helmed some of the most notable anime projects that fans will likely recognize such as Cowboy Bebop, Carole & Tuesday, and more, and the director has been in the works on an original new series together with Adult Swim. Announced to be in the works last year with the first promotional footage revealed towards the end of 2023, it seems we’ll be getting a much fuller look soon. 

Adult Swim has announced that they will be livestreaming the premiere episodes for many of their new series such as Rick and Morty: The Anime, Common Side Effects and more on Friday, July 26th at 7:30PM on their official YouTube channel as part of San Diego Comic-Con 2024. While this will include these full-length premieres, there will also be the first looks at some of their other projects such as the now in the works Uzumaki and Lazarus. So while it won’t be a full premiere, it’s likely going to be a full trailer or at least a full clip to showcase what type of anime Lazarus will be when it premieres. 

What Is Lazarus? 

Lazarus is a new original anime series directed by Shinichiro Watanabe for Studio MAPPA. It has yet to be confirmed when this new anime will actually premiere (so a release window announcement would definitely be welcome), but what has been confirmed that it will feature John Wick director Chad Stahelski designing action sequences, and Sola Entertainment producing for a release with Adult Swim’s Toonami block when it finally does start its broadcast. 

Adult Swim begins to tease Lazarus as such, “The year is 2052 – an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity prevails across the globe. The reason for this: mankind has been freed from sickness and pain. Nobel Prize winning neuroscientist Dr. Skinner has developed a miracle cure-all drug with no apparent drawbacks called Hapuna. Hapuna soon becomes ubiquitous… and essential. However, soon after Hapuna is officially introduced, Dr. Skinner vanishes. Three years later, the world has moved on. But Dr. Skinner has returned – this time, as a harbinger of doom.” 

The synopsis continues with, “Skinner announces that Hapuna has a short half-life. Everyone who has taken it will die approximately three years later. Death is coming for this sinful world – and coming soon. As a response to this threat, a special task force of 5 agents is gathered from across the world to save humanity from Skinner’s plan. This group is called ‘Lazarus.’ Can they find Skinner and develop a vaccine before time runs out?”