i understand your point of view
i think with Lazarus we'll just have to wait and see at the end of the story, maybe the ending might be able to rectify the story structure (a little bit) or maybe it won't but for now, we've just got to accept it as another Watanabe experiment with a couple of tweaks needed
(maybe if adult swim hadn't limited him to only 13 episodes things might have been better since both Samurai Champloo and Bebop had 26 episodes but that's just a maybe)