Hataraku Saibou (Cell at Work) Review







     Cells At Work is an educational series about how the human body functions on cellular level. Its source material was originally released in the Japanese science magazine called Gross Biological Stuff and Geeky Nerdy Shit Weekly, now made into an anime format to ensure the misinformation of this shonen comedy reaches a wider audience.





    I refuse to use the reddit meme phrase ""as a" biology major" to back up my rhetoric with titles -- moreover, majoring biology requires bit more than reading 3 wikipedia articles about cells -- so instead I will say this series has a pretty interesting take on something that could be called pseudo-science. I am still deeply disappointed that this wasn't like 'Moyashimon' -- the most accurate series about agriculture ever created, or like 'Once Upon a Time...Life' -- the French animation franchise produced in the 70's and 80's, "Life" being only one of the many parts of it. Instead, we have a comedy series that can be enjoyed the best by completely excluding its settings. However, I like comedy as well... unfortunately, that's where this show really flops.






     The opening song (lyrics and opening animation) alone are the perfect alarm to everyone who expected this to meet the shonen demographics as this is the most childish shit opening I recall ever seeing. Turns out the series is not much better.







     Our story centers around this female red blood cell who never finds her way to where she is supposed to go because she is retarded, and this white blood cell dude who is always at the right place at the 
right time like the hero he is. Reddo girl runs from place to another and discovers bacteria and whatever nasty shit, followed by mr. white rekking them like he is Saitama from One Punch Man. 



That's pretty much the entirety of the series as it is nothing but below average fighting tournament shonen disrespecting its settings with references that only appear smart to people who aren't -- and centering around 2 extremely uninteresting characters. None of this would be a problem if the series was clearly aimed for children, but unfortunately all of this is just childish: great many children shows are more mature than this, moreover, children series tend to have charm which this one is missing completely. I am personally huge fan of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, but after constantly witnessing barely mediocre series from David Production, I am starting to think they will be one franchise miracle and not much more. Cells at Work's biggest achievement is strengthening this thought. This is the seasonal anime series that I really wanted to like. Unfortunately that has proven to be hard because it sucks. I can recommend seasonal anime watchers to watch the first episode and decide after that if this is worth of it or not, but personally, I say it's not worth much.


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