Cells at Work!
a review by kadarakt
a review by kadarakt
Cells at Work is a show about the human cells in your body, where each cell is anthropomorphized into an anime girl or boy and their functions are explained like how one would explain human society and it's division of labor, in a weird reverse biological analogy kind of way. The concept is so ridiculous the show has been a huge meme inside the anime community ever since it's release, with the red blood cell, white blood cell and platelet being recognizable faces to pretty much everyone by now. However, after finally coming around to watching this show, I was pretty disappointed (for the most part...)
First of all the concept is not really novel. Once Upon a Time... Life was a French cartoon which had the exact same subject matter 40 years ago, just replace the anime art style with a blobby cartoon style. So Cells at Work is the first anime to do the concept then? Well that cartoon was done in collaboration with Eiken technically making it an anime as well. Oh well, a concept doesn't have to be novel to be interesting, and it's still a damn interesting concept for sure. But the execution is also very lackluster.
I was expecting a relatively chill slice of life show but it's not chill at all. The show mainly focuses on the immune system. As a result, every episode some sort of new antagonist is introduced, whether it be bacteria, cancer cells, or something else, and they are taken out in this generic battle shounen format which I found to be very uninteresting and repetitive. They all make some sinister villain speeches, belittle and threaten the innocent cells, and then some cells of the immune system arrive and take them out. Some chill moments were there, especially when it focused on the backstories of some of the characters, but I found myself wishing there was a general focus on all of the functions of the body and not just the immune system, it could have gone a long way to make the show more varied. The show was the most fun when the villain was not yet another biological organism making a mocking speech and the characters beating him up, but rather something less on the nose and less personal like a heat stroke or bleeding.
But I'm being silly right? After all this is a show geared to very young people, kids and early teens, to grab their attention and teach them some basic biology. That's why the general plot is so basic and lowkey braindead, it is edutainment, not entertainment, and should be judged as a way to grab people's attention to teach some things rather than tell some grandiose story. My answer to that would be, first of all the ending shows that the author can write a compelling story and doesn't have to rely on cheap things like that. Second of all the education part of the shows consists of a random narrator voice pausing the show way too often (like 10 times an episode I swear to god) to explain what some cell or function is in a very academic way, at times using a lot of jargon and terminology. It feels very hamfisted, and it is certainly not something a kid would easily understand, and even an adult who didn't study a field concerning biology or doesn't have an interest in such topics would have to google a few things if they wanted to get a good grasp. The entertainment hook part seems to be geared towards very young people, while the educational part seems to be targeting older people who already have an interest in the topic, and it ends up feeling disconnected. I wish the show explained what the different cells did with their actions, and not these forced explanations, because as far as the viewer can see all the different cells just beat the bad guys up and that's that. Show, don't tell, like you did once with spear girl, even though there was a lot of narrator pauses in that episode as well...
The characters are not really worth a mention one by one. They are all quite surface level with a few cliches relating to their roles as cells, and the little amount of conflict which is presented feels like a very amateurish shounen. Like a Naive T Cell doubting his abilities after being berated by his senpai, but then being shown a yearbook where his senpai were also weak like him, and getting a powerup due to that. Or the spear girl sucking against bacteria and people mocking her but then being great against parasites and people realizing she's also strong, just in a different way. As with the main plot, the characters are all left very basic and underdeveloped, with nothing deep to analyze. And that's fine to an extent, not every character needs to be Walter White, I myself enjoy a lot of CGDCT with pretty basic characters, but when the plot is basic battle shounen, the education part is boring hamfisted monologue, and the characters are uninteresting too, you're just relying on the novelty of the concept to carry the entire show, and as mentioned, it's not very novel of a concept in the first place. The relationships between the characters were a lot better though, and felt very cute, like red blood cell and her other red blood cell friend, red blood cell and white blood cell, Killer T and Helper T etc.
You'd think the worldbuilding would be the strong suit of a show like this, but it's sadly (and weirdly) underutilized. There is so much focus on the boring fights and the mundane details of each cell, the show hardly gets to focus on the body as a whole, how each small unit does their part to create this huge complicated organism. The ordinary cells might as well be leeches constantly ordering shit from the red blood cells and doing jack all, we never see them work. The landscape is repetitive concrete cities and roads. I wish we saw things in more detail, like the cells and bacteria in our gut "harvesting" the food like they're farmers, the kidney cells filtering the waste from the blood cells, maybe by cleaning and ironing their clothes, or cutting their hair and doing their makeup, the respiratory system "drilling" the air for oxygen and sending back out carbon dioxide. Not just food being put together to make sandwiches on assembly lines or oxygens being filled up by automatic machines, that's just boring, and shown for a few seconds at most. That's partly the result of putting the immune system as the central focus, but also just poor worldbuilding imo, a living body shouldn't feel this dead and artificial, and more like an ecosystem. Although some parts like the stomach and especially the sweat were definitely shown better, like there were actual cells behind those systems, making sure everything works.
As for the art and music, it's not impressive. The OST is completely forgettable and the sound was only notable in one part I will get to. The art, while not being bad, is not great either. It's serviceable, it relays a script and doesn't do much more. CGI is used for some background characters, and it's not pretty to look at even though I'm personally much more accepting of it compared to the average weeb. The backgrounds look dull and washed out, the character designs are alright, and a lot of shots just comprise of still images being slightly moved, panned in/out, and no movement other than lips. Above average at best.
I will make an exception for the final 3 episodes. The sweat episode showed the functions of the body quite well, despite the narrator spam. The low focus on action and the funny "the heavens have answered our call" bit definitely made it stand out a lot more. And the final two emergency episodes were amazing, and I lowkey wish the entire show was grim like that. The absolute chills I got when
Overall I'm conflicted. I expected this show to be very fun, but as the episodes went on my thoughts changed from "good and interesting" to "mid and too formulaic" to "HOLY SHIT THAT ENDING WAS AWESOME". Not enough to make me forget all of my gripes with the show but it was pretty good. I was going to give it a 4 or a 5 but those final 3 episodes made it a 6.5~ in my eyes, and I'll probably check out the spin-off, and maybe even the second season.
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