The creator of ‘Cowboy Bebop’ has advice for the anime industry

“Lazarus” is Shinichiro Watanabe’s most stylized show yet.

That may sound like hyperbole for the veteran anime director known for fusing space-opera grandeur with jazzy rhythms in “Cowboy Bebop” and a samurai storyline with hip-hop aesthetics in “Samurai Champloo” — but in this case, it’s objectively true.

Released in 2025, “Lazarus” features immaculately coordinated fight scenes supervised by the action choreography team for the “John Wick” franchise; a dizzyingly funky soundtrack crafted by Kamasi Washington, Bonobo and Floating Points; and a colorful cast of characters that includes an adrenaline-junkie parkour master, a Russian firearms specialist and a hacker extraordinaire who just happens to be a 15-year-old girl.