Gettin' My Eps In: Lazarus S1E7

It's another action-free episode, but at least it seems to have a purpose.

Lazarus
Season 1, Episode 7: “Almost Blue”
Written by Takahiro Ozawa
Directed by Ka Hee Im & Heihachiro Haitani
Streaming on Max

After the previous episode of Lazarus, I was worried that the show had taken a turn from something exciting and dynamic to being kind of boring and lacking in interesting ideas or character work. This episode does alleviate my concerns somewhat, but not as much as I would have liked. It has absolutely nothing in the way of action (which may be why it begins with a comedic moment in which a character accidentally sets off an explosion, just to give viewers something), but it does point toward some answers to ongoing mysteries while also indicating that we may get some philosophizing about the state of the world and where we’re headed.

Maybe it’s too much to ask for every episode of a series to have exciting, innovative action. That sort of thing is most likely pretty expensive and time-consuming for animators, so taking a break for a few episodes to provide something more contemplative may allow for more excitement in the latter half of the season. But as it is, I wish I didn’t have to wait entire episodes hoping for something cool, only to be denied and given the slightest of promises that things will heat up soon.

My predictions following the previous episode, in which I thought that the Lazarus team would interact with the remnants of an AI modeled on the brain of the series’ villain(?), Dr. Skinner, proved to be wrong; instead they’re only able to recover the AI’s final “thoughts,” which consist of a string of unintelligible characters. They eventually figure out that it’s a set of coordinates to remote locations around the world that seem to be related to Skinner, so the team splits up to go check them out.

Instead of jumping right into investigative mode, much of the episode is spent contemplating what Skinner is trying to do and whether he’s sending a message of some sort. We see some news stories about the melting of the last ice floes in the Arctic, which occurs exactly three years after Skinner gave a speech saying that this would happen within three years. This is causing people to start to see Skinner as some sort of prophet, but the increasing tension related to humanity’s impending death is also pushing the world to the brink of war.

The idea of prophecy is also raised when the team reviews Skinner’s message to the world where he announced his scheme to end humanity. They seize upon a comment he made in which he says that he is simply the angel blowing the seventh trumpet. The younger members of the team have no idea what he’s talking about, so the others have to explain that it’s a reference to the book of Revelation in the Bible. This being a series of Japanese origin, with viewers who aren’t likely to be familiar with Christian mythology, they have to spend some time describing that story and noting that the seventh trumpet came after fire and destruction had been rained down upon the Earth, and it signaled the final moments of the apocalypse.

So that ends up being the area of discussion and contemplation that the rest of the episode spends its time on. The four locations the team discovered are all former islands that are now underwater as sea levels have risen, so when they get there, there’s little for them to see but empty ocean and expansive blue skies. They note that in the cities where they spend most of their time, the skies are always cloudy, and they don’t get to experience much nature. These journeys have given them the opportunity to appreciate the beauty and serenity of the world and realize how much has been destroyed as people have continued to pump toxic substances into the air, water, and soil, raising the temperature of the planet to apocalyptic levels. It really does seem like the first six trumpets of the apocalypse have already sounded, and when Skinner’s scheme completes the destruction, maybe that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

That’s a pretty dark thought to contemplate, and it may reveal the ultimate purpose of this series: to demonstrate where our current world is heading. We’ve known about global climate change for decades now, and little has been done about it. There has been a lot of talk about reducing emissions levels or coming up with other plans to try to stop the planet’s temperature from increasing, but most of the people who make decisions, including the massive corporations that refuse to do anything that might reduce their profits and the governments who prefer to kowtow to billionaires rather than help the vast majority of the people who will be affected, simply aren’t willing to do what is necessary. We could very well reach the point at which large swathes of humanity will die off, if only due to a lack of food and other resources that will be available to keep them alive.

Rather than spend too much time staring into the abyss, the series does give us some indications that some plot movement may happen. The team finds that the locations they visited all featured populations with a genetic condition that prevented them from feeling pain, and when Skinner bought the land from the people, he required them to undergo genetic testing. This may provide something of an origin for the miracle drug/poison pill Hapna, while also opening up new avenues of investigation. We also learn that Dr. Hersch, the woman who put together the Lazarus team, has a history with Skinner, so clearly there’s something she has been keeping from them. While this might not provide any solutions to the ongoing mystery, it will at least lead to some drama as the characters question her motives and wonder what exactly they’re trying to accomplish.

So that’s where we are a little over halfway through the season: not too much forward progress on the ongoing quest, but a few revelations that point in potentially interesting directions, along with an increasing philosophical emphasis to make everyone wonder whose side of the conflict they should be on. This is the sort of non-action episode that I can handle, at least when it provides some food for thought and hints that we’ll get back to the more entertaining stuff soon. I just hope it doesn’t take too long before we return to the real meat of the series, because too many boring episodes in a row will make it difficult to maintain interest all the way through the rest of the season.