Lazarus (Japanese TV series)

Lazarus

Members

• Axel Gilberto (アクセル・ギルベルト)
• A 23-year-old Brazilian man who was originally in jail for three years on a minor charge, but has since racked up several life sentences totaling 888 years due to his habit of finding ways to break out of whatever prison he is sent to. Incredibly agile and seemingly fearless, he can use his wits and his physical parkour abilities to escape almost any situation. He is a straightforward and friendly person, but he also exudes a somewhat solitary persona.
• Douglas "Doug" Hadine (ダグラス・"ダグ"・ハディン)
• A 23-year-old Nigerian man who is intellectual and the coordinator of the Lazarus team. He has great physical abilities and stays calm and collected under pressure. He is sensitive and delicate, paying attention to the small details. He also has a high level of pride. In college, he majored in physics as a student and once looked up to Dr. Skinner as a role model before the Hapna revelation. During his collaboration within Lazarus, he develops a friendly, playful relationship with Axel, even jokingly rejected him during one of the dialogues.
• Christine "Chris" Blake (クリスティン・"クリス"・ブレイク)
• A young Russian woman who is generally cheerful and frank, talking to anyone in a friendly manner. She is a gun specialist skilled in many kinds of firearms. Chris drinks a lot, is optimistic, and has a rough big-sister type personality that does not flatter men nor women. Her original name was Alexandra (アレクサンドラ), but she changed her identity after faking her death to escape a Russian special forces unit and to protect her former lover Inga from potential execution for betraying her homeland. Chris was affectionately referred to by Inga as Sashenka (サーシェンカ). In the second half of the show, it seems that Chris developed some feelings for Axel after he protected and saved her, giving him a kiss as a final wish when she and the other characters were almost resigned to the death of the world.
• Leland Astor (リーランド・アスター)
• A 16-year-old teenage boy from Canada who is skilled in piloting drones. He reads the situation and speaks accordingly, but he does not say what he really thinks. He also does not like to talk about his family due to his complicated background. One of his hobbies is egosurfing. He is the sole surviving male heir to the prominent Astor family estate.
• Eleina (エレイナ)
• A 15-year-old teenage girl from Hong Kong who has communication issues and has trouble joining in with people's conversations, but is also one of three world-famous covert hackers known as the Mad Screamer (マッドスクリーマー). As the story progresses, she becomes more open and bold, also developing a friendly rivalry with the Maldivian hacker Popcorn Wizard.

Associates

• Hersch Lindemann (ハーシュ・リンデマン)
• The commanding leader of the Lazarus team, an older woman who acts as their point of contact with the U.S. government. She has many connections with large corporations and national organizations. She is efficient and does her job without being swayed by emotions. She can be frightening when angry.
• Abel Anderson (アベル・アンダーソン)
• The current director of the National Security Agency (NSA) and founder of Lazarus. He is unfazed and always remains calm. His overly rational way of thinking has led to his colleagues spreading rumors that he is actually a human AI.
• Elizabeth "Liz" (エリザベス・"リズ")
• The current deputy director of the NSA. Liz assists Abel with the operations of Lazarus.

Key antagonists

• Dr. Deniz Skinner (デニズ・スキナー博士)
• A three-time Nobel Prize recipient neuroscientist from Turkey, who has deceived humanity with his seemingly cure-all wonder drug, Hapna, which is later revealed to be a deadly poison that will kill everyone who has taken it after three years. He claims that the first wave of people will die in approximately 30 days following his announcement, unless they can track him down.
• Schneider (シュナイダー)
• A lieutenant in the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), he is deeply involved in the development of Hapna for use as a bioweapon and is secretly planning to disrupt Lazarus' activities and eliminate Axel, a key figure in the project and the lone survivor of INSCOM's confidential Hapna clinical trial on inmates at an Arizona prison. He personally hires a ghost assassin known as Soryu to kill Axel.
• Soryu / HQ (双竜 / HQ)
• Soryu is an assassin known as the Ghost Assassin (幻の殺し屋), and HQ is his agent who negotiates with clients. In reality, they are actually the same person suffering from dissociative identity disorder due to the Hundun Program that was conducted on him back in his homeland of China. He accepts Schneider's murder-for-hire request of killing Axel for US$30 million. Some of the weapons he uses on the job are string, throwing knives, grenades and rocket launchers.

Other characters

• Kobayashi (小林)
• A businessman who owns survival bunkers in the U.S. state of Arizona and whose company, Kobayashi Shelter Sales, owes a lot of money.
• Jill (ジル)
• A transgender woman who was an acquaintance of Axel's during their time in prison. After her release, she adopted a female appearance and now runs a homeless village.
• Claude Klein (クロード・クライン)
• Doug's mentor in college. He collaborated with Skinner, but became jealous of Skinner's talent and fabricated research results, leading to his firing as a professor and his eventual homelessness.
• Billinda (ビリンダ)
• Skinner's grandmother who lives in Istanbul. She raised Skinner after he lost his parents. She is known for her baklava, a baked confectionery.
• Sam Stephenson (サム・スティーブンソン)
• A private investor who made a huge profits by selling off Delta Medicinal stock before they crashed during the Hapna scandal. A party animal who enjoys messing around with women at the nightclubs he owns.
• Donald McDonald / Visionary (ドナルド・マクドナルド / ヴィジョナリー)
• On the surface, he is a popular DJ known as Visionary, but his true identity is the big-time hacker Doctor 909 (ドクター909), who hacked and leaked insider information from Delta Medicinal to Sam so they could both make money. He later makes a plea deal with the NSA and cooperates in discovering the true identity of the mysterious assassin known as Soryu.
• Ahmed Rahman (アーメッド・ラフマン)
• The CEO of Delta Medicinal, which conducted clinical trials of Hapna on monkeys and humans. He has been suffering from sleep deprivation since Skinner revealed the true nature of Hapna to the world. He cooperates with Lazarus in orchestrating a fake Hapna vaccine launch at an emergency conference in an attempt to lure Skinner out.
• Lynn (リン)
• A big-time hacker who calls herself Popcorn Wizard (ポップコーン・ウィザード). She infiltrates Delta Medicinal's internal network and engages in a hacking battle with Eleina, with whom she eventually befriends by the end of the series. She is originally from the Maldives, which is now submerged due to rising sea levels caused by global warming, and suffers from analgesia along with some other former Maldives residents. Lynn feels indebted to help Skinner in any way possible due to him buying up all the islands so that its local residents, including herself, could afford relocating.
• Billy (ビリー)
• Head representative of the new age religion known as the Tower of Truth, which worships Naga as a deity. He was an associate professor at MIT, but was so fascinated with Naga that he stole him from the lab and founded the Tower of Truth commune.
• Hanna (ハンナ)
• A childhood friend of Eleina, who was born and raised within the Tower of Truth commune. She secretly envied Eleina, who ventured out all on her own into the outside world at a young age.
• Naga (ナーガ)
• An artificial intelligence beyond the singularity and supreme deity of the Tower of Truth commune. Developed at MIT and based on Skinner's neural network, it is programmed with a desire for dominance and recognition.
• Inga (インガ)
• The leader of a Russian special forces unit. Alexandra (Chris), a former comrade, was her same-sex lover. When she recognizes Chris in Fiji, she kidnaps her and takes her hostage to a Russian oil rig in the Arctic Ocean.
• Sergei (セルゲイ)
• Inga's subordinate who physically assaults Chris in anger due to her abandonment of the Russian motherland at the oil rig hideout in the Arctic Ocean.
• Hayes (ヘイズ)
• A captain at INSCOM and fellow Green Beret of Abel's. He was involved in concealing the secrets of the development of the Hapna bioweapon together with Schneider, but was killed by Schneider after he was about to snitch him out to the colonel due to Soryu failing in his mission to eliminate Axel.
• Isabella (イザベラ)
• Leland's older sister and member of the Astor family. She has mixed feelings towards Leland, who left the Astor household due to being an illegitimate heir born from his father's mistress. She could not inherit the Astor family's estate due to being a woman.
• Millie (ミリー)
• A physician who works for a private medical society for the privileged and wealthy. She once performed artificial heart surgery on Skinner.

Episodes

Accolades

On July 16, 2025, Lazarus was nominated at the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards for "Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music".[27] In 2026, the series has been nominated at the 10th Crunchyroll Anime Awards for "Best Original Anime".[28]