Cowboy Bebop's Shinichiro Watanabe teams up with John Wick's director for a new anime project

Cowboy Bebop director Shinichiro Watanabe is working on a new anime series with MAPPA Studios, called Lazarus, and it has been confirmed that John Wick director Chad Stahelski is going to participate by helping with the fight scenes. More details about the collaboration have not been confirmed.

The announcement of this collaboration has received a lot of hype in the anime community. Considering the level of cultural impact and commercial success that the Keanu Reeves-led franchise has had and how Western creators don't have a lot of opportunities in the anime industry, the Lazarus project is already having a lot of expectations from the fans.

Disclaimer: This article contains spoilers for the Cowboy Bebop and John Wick series.

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More details about the John Wick director working with Shinichiro Watanabe of Cowboy Bebop fame

The logo for the Lazarus series (Image via MAPPA).

As mentioned earlier, it has been announced that the legendary director Shinichiro Watanabe is going to direct an anime in collaboration with MAPPA Studios. This news alone has generated a lot of hype—Watanabe was the director of Cowboy Bebop, and MAPPA is widely regarded as one of the finest animation studios in the anime industry these days.

However, it was also announced that Chad Stahelski, director of the John Wick franchise, is going to collaborate for the fight scenes in the anime. Stahelski has been vocal about how the Cowboy Bebop series influenced the famous movie franchise starring Keanu Reeves, so there is probably a lot of admiration on his part for Watanabe's work.

As of this writing, there isn't any information regarding a possible trailer or teaser. Likewise, there is no information about when the anime is going to be released and the only visuals so far has been the logo of the Lazarus project.

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More about the project

Spike and John, the protagonists of Cowboy Bebop and John Wick, respectively (Image via Sunrise and Summit Entertainment).

The Lazarus story is set in the year 2052, when humanity is enjoying unprecedented prosperity. The reason for this is that a Nobel Prizer winner called Dr. Skinner managed to create a medicine named Hapuna that could cure any disease. After such a marvelous success, Dr. Skinner decided to leave the spotlight and move on with his life.

However, it was later revealed that the medicine had a deadly side effect, and the people who had taken it were going to die three years after the consumption. Therefore, Skinner decides to gather a group of five specialists to keep this from happening or humanity is going to face millions of deaths across the world.

Director Shinichiro Watanabe is a legend of the anime industry, not simply because of his iconic production, Cowboy Bebop. His work with Space Dandy and Samurai Champloo has made him one of the highest regarded auteurs in the medium, who is often trying to push the borders and go for more artistic approaches to storytelling. Lazarus seems to head towards that direction as well.