Anime Review: Hataraku Saibou / Cells At Work (Unique Addition to the Anime World)

I'm a bit late on this review since I was busy with exams, but before my exam period, I watched Hataraku Saibou (Cells at Work), since it gained a lot of traction during last season. Whilst the idea of anthropomorphized cells is not "original", it is still a unique idea in terms of anime (Yes there's Osmosis Jones, but that's a cartoon).  Nevertheless, who cares if the idea is not entirely original, what kind of idea nowadays is original when there's so many ideas that come into fruition. 

The anime adapts from the manga (from Volume 1 Chp 1 to Volume 4 Chp 18, I'm pretty sure some chapters were skipped though since I don't remember seeing an episode about pimples), and I think it was a good adaptation overall. There were many different scenarios depicted in this anime and all of it were extremely interesting to watch, and since I'm doing something biology/anatomy related, I sometimes chuckle when I see these scenarios. It initially shows the basics - what happens when you get a cut, influenza, common cold, cancer, heat stroke, etc, but my favourite episode was the one involving hypovolemic shock (essentially the person has lost 1/5 of their body's blood supply). I thought the anime was just gonna end there, since it would be an interesting ending, but we see the maturation of Red Blood Cell from a clumsy individual to someone courageous. It was pretty intense, but of course the person is saved by a blood transfusion. PogChamp.

The characters involved in this anime are your human cells. As everyone knows, the cutest one is Platelet and it was a beloved character of the series. Unfortunately, the platelet does not do much in our body, other than dealing with blood clots, so it's understandable why it wouldn't be frequently shown as the main character. Whilst there is a huge cast of characters, there wasn't anyone that I really see as someone unique, but maybe that's the point - every cell is unique in its own sense, and that's why no one stands out. My favourite is probably Eosinophil, since she's a tsundere LUL, but she wasn't shown much (only shown in the episode involving the parasite).

Did she forgot makeup? Lazy eye? :')

However, the animation quality was standard, nothing amazing, with some noticeable flaws that I just could not ignore. One of them was in Episode 6 at the 5-7 min mark, where there was inconsistent animation - one girl's eye was noticeably bigger than the other. I'm usually not picky about animation quality, but it was just too obvious to not point out. I'm sure there was more, but that was the most I remembered about. But overall quality is nothing too bad to make me displeased.

Overall, the anime is a unique addition to the database, and it even enticed me to buy the manga since it wasn't a series that released often. I got up to Volume 5 right now, and Volume 6 keeps getting delayed zzzzzzz. I want to read more, but looks like I'll just have to wait. The OP and ED are also very suitable for this anime and very pleasant to listen to. I would definitely recommend people to watch it, especially if you do biology-related subjects. It's not gonna be a resource that you get knowledge from, but it's always interesting to get boring biology concepts animated and presented in an interesting way. However, I sometimes feel that the animation gets dragged out a bit too much and it could be a little repetitive to see the cells do the same job over and over again, but the different scenarios are what makes it interesting to watch.

Overall Score: 8/10

Story: 8/10

Characters: 8/10

Art: 7/10

Sound: 8/10

Enjoyment: 7/10