Vibes >>> Story. Lazarus felt as if it wanted to be similar to Monster so bad. While the fight scenes, animation and music were impressive, everything else felt incredibly lackluster.

The Positives

I have a lot of negatives about this anime, so I'll start off with the positive factors: those being the animation and music. The animation was incredibly well-done. The fight scenes, especially. I saw somewhere that they used actual recordings of people fighting out the scenes and animated that, and you can really tell. The fight scenes look amazing, some of the best fight scenes I've seen. The movement was great, it looked natural and amazing. But it wasn't just the movement that looked great, the backgrounds were stunning as well. The art style was very immersive and fit the world/story perfectly. This is some of the best animation I think I've seen done by MAPPA.

As for the music, I really really like it. The opening and I think all the music, was done by Kamasi Washington and my goodness, he did a good job! So much so that I started listening to his music! I think listening to the music was my favorite part of this anime. So props to him.

Another aspect that's not animation or music that I liked was the diversity. I very rarely see anime with diversity and done in a respectful way, but Lazarus did that. So that was nice to see.

The Biblical references were also cool to see. Lazarus was a friend of Jesus who died. When Jesus came to heal him four days later, he faced a lot of doubt and anger for not saving Lazarus in the first place. But despite that, Jesus resurrected Lazarus. Another reference was the city's name, it being Babylonia references the Tower of Babel in the Bible which was humans' attempt at reaching God but ultimately led to disaster. Then there's the one that the anime even pointed out, which was the Seventh Trumpeteer which is spoken of in the Book of Revelation. That was pretty cool, if only the anime did more with these references and the entire story.

The Negatives (Dun dun duunnn)

Oh boy there's a lot.

Characters? What characters? Seriously, these characters felt like absolutely nothing, strangers at best. They were so lackluster I don't remember any of their names aside from Axel, and that's because he was constantly saying lines that made me cringe. Like oh my gosh dude, please shut up. The story made an attempt at making the viewer care about the characters with thrown-together backstories that were briefly shown, but they just felt so empty. Like sure, you can show me a tragic backstory, but that won't make me care for the character. The anime never gave me a reason to care about the character in the first place, so why should I care about their backstory? That's how all the characters felt. The best way to describe them is that they just felt like strangers.

The story. Oh my goodness, the story. It had potential! It really did! The characters have to hunt down Skinner, a man who created a miracle drug that's also going to end up killing everyone. The problem is, it is so boring watching them hunt down Skinner. Sure, the fight scenes are cool, but everything else was incredibly meh. If I don't care about the characters, why should I care about the story? There was nothing to latch onto. Nothing that brought forth any sort of emotion. I even ended up falling asleep during one of the episodes.

When I say it was trying to be like Monster, I say this because Skinner kind of reminds me of Johan but with less development. And the characters like Dr. Tenma also with less development. Monster gave me a reason to care about Dr. Tenma and a reason why Johan did what he did. There was reasons for the way Dr. Tenma and Johan acted along with emotional scenes tied to them. And that's what Lazarus lacks: emotion.

Do I recommend this? No. Not unless you want to watch some cool action scenes. Just listen to the opening and you should be good.