Check out Hataraku Saibō (Cells at Work!)

The anime summer season has finished and the anime autumn has just begun. This means that the shows that started airing during the summer has aired their last episode and I can begin to binges some of the recent shows. One that I finished over the weekend and that I can recommend was Hataraku Saibō (Cells at Work! being the English title).

The first episode went out on July 8 and the 13th and final episode aired on September 30. The show features the anthropomorphized cells of a human body, with the two main protagonists being a red blood cell, and a neutrophil she frequently encounters. The episodes are mostly episodic in nature, themed around specific medical situations, from allergic reactions and heat stroke to cancer cells and massive blood loss. The animation isn’t the best, but the story is surprisingly bloody and very educational (while some of the narration can be somewhat repetitive over 13 episodes).  It’s edutainment at its best.

The main characters of the show, with the rest of the recurring cast in the background

The characters as they appear on the cover of volume 1 of the manga

The show is an adaptation of the running manga series by the same name, and is surprisingly accurate in its depicting of the various physiological activities, even getting some scientific praise.  The manga is written and illustratedby Akane Shimizu and began it serialization in 2015 (currently collected 5 volumes). Ith as also spawned a sort of spinoff,  Cells at Work! BLACK, which deal with adult themes like smoking, alcohol and sexually transferable diseases.

The theme itself is certainly not new, I remember fondly the show Il était une fois… La Vie (English title: Once upon a Time… Life) from 1987 which dealt with much the same, itself part of the Il était une fois-franchise that began with Il était une fois… la vie (English title: Once upon a Time… Life). And that show is probably a reason I moved Cells at Work! to the front of my binge-list.

 

This french classic (actually a co-production with several countries, among them Japan) from 1987 is in many ways the forefather to Cells at Work!

While Cells at Work! basically deals with the blood circulation the french show was much more a voyage through the different organs. And while Il était une fois… La Vie is a pure childrens show, Cells at Work is for a more adult audience with plenty of action and bloody combat scenes.