Anone anone, please keep clear of underwhelming anime

I'm going to start out by saying I was extremely disappointed in Hataraku Saibou in pretty much every department. I wasn't expecting anything groundbreaking or the next big thing, but I wasn't expecting it to be so dull.

As with most anime I watch, I tend to have very little exposure to it, beyond whatever images find their way onto my dashboard on Tumblr, so I generally go by artwork and synopsis when choosing what to watch. If something looks or sounds interesting, I'll add it to my queue, and Hataraku Saibou did both of these. From the cutest lil' platelets you ever did see, to the white blood cells which will ruin the day of any germ that enters the body, it sounds like an anime which will be full of action and learning. Learning isn't boring, shut up!

Whilst that sounds all fine and dandy, it just isn't fun to watch in the slightest. I may not be big on my biology, but I definitely don't hate it, and learning about the human body is definitely interesting. However, learning the same fact multiple times over the course of the series, e.g. what a macrophage's job is, is a little boring.

On top of this there's the many issues with seeing this as an educational anime, not least being the main character, red blood cell, continuing to circulate the body after being used to make a scab.

English Name:

Cells at Work!

Japanese Name:

はたらく細胞

Studio:

David Production

Episodes Watched:

13/13

Posted on:

05/Nov/2018 at 19:20

I really don't have much nice to say about Hataraku Saibou, and this upsets me

I expected that I would watch through this, and either want to go off and read the manga, or at least have thoughts along the lines of "this was a good anime, nothing special, but not bad". But holy sweet mother of god, was I wrong. 

I honestly wasn't a fan of the artwork, but I can't knock them for trying

Apart from the designs of the white blood cells, platelets, and killer T cell family of cells, I think all of the designs were quite unique for all the characters, and very well thought out. The red blood cell style hat for the red blood cells, the macrophage's being maids, and the "basic" cells being quite plain.

Although the designs for the cells seems to be well thought out, and executed pretty decently, the pathogens on the other hand don't sit as well with me. I feel like their designs don't fit well within the anime at all, in terms of colour and art style. I understand that they should stand out obviously as foreign invaders, but they just don't seem to fit in with the rest of the anime's artwork. The only exception is the cedar pollen, which I thought looked pretty good, and worked quite well as a visual representation of the harmless pollen being seen as a deadly invader.

Also, I should probably mention that the platelets being so cute is the only thing pushing the art score into a 6. Because without them, I feel this anime would scored even lower across the board.

There was a story, but there really should have been one

The life of a cell is short. As a matter of fact white blood cells shouldn't last more than a month, so please tell me how 1 red blood cell, and 1 white blood cell are able to bump into each other so many times, and always find danger, amongst the 37.2 trillion other cells that you are always reminded of in the intro?

It just doesn't make sense. I can understand the clumsy red blood cell being a main character, I could understand her always bumping into different white blood cells. But the same one, every time? It just seems wrong. 

And then there's the pathogens. How can the strep. virus in the final episode have known about the goings on of a different viral infection which happened near the start of the series, and what fate became of those pathogens? There's way too many plot holes for what little story there is to be worth it.

Unfortunately, the platelets get so little screen time, that they don't really contribute to the story, so they couldn't boost the score here.

The characters are just bland

Even the platelets! As adorable as they are, they are just like every other character. Bland, boring, and underdeveloped. There was pretty much an entire episode dedicated to the T cell training, and they are side characters, and also pretty boring. Yet that episode was more engaging than the backstory episode of the red blood cell, which almost put me back to sleep.

The sound is just as bland, with very little worth mentioning. Apart from the sound of the heartbeat being pretty good, especially when the body is trying to pump more blood to stay alive, and the sound of the lungs, there is nothing else, sound-wise, that is even worth mentioning. 

Because of these, both get a 4... But cute platelets, and the adorable noises they make push it up to a 5.


And that's it for today. I was kind of shocked when putting the scores in, when considering what I expected I'd be scoring it before I started watching it. However, not all anime is good, and when the only thing keeping your scores going into the "bad" side of the spectrum is a small set of side characters, you know the anime wasn't that great. Now, I'm off to figure out what to watch next... hopefully something not as bad. But until then, じゃね!see ya