Jazz legend Kamasi Washington was influenced by anime, and now he’s making music for one

is a reporter focusing on film, TV, and pop culture. Before The Verge, he wrote about comic books, labor, race, and more at io9 and Gizmodo for almost five years. Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo, the shows Watanabe’s most well known for, are testaments to his own love of jazz and hip-hop. Both series used their soundtracks to amplify the emotional and visual strength of Watanabe’s storytelling. And even though it’s a very different kind of narrative, the same is true of Lazarus. In each of Washington’s tracks you can feel the existential dread baked into Watanabe’s latest vision of the future. Lazarus chronicles a misfit team’s fight to save the world after the whole of humanity learns that it has been poisoned with a lethal toxin disguised as a painkiller. With extinction appearing imminent, society starts to unravel and people’s lives begin to fray. But as much as the idea of dying terrifies Lazarus’ characters, their predicament also inspires a twisted kind of exhilaration — one ... Read full article.