3 out of 5

Directed by: Kenichi Suzuki

Bursting with energy, Cells At Work! – a moderately educational, kooky, and hilariously bloody presentation of our bodies’ inner workings via color-coded factions of emotive anime characters (e.g. red-suited Red Blood Cells; black-suited T-Cells; fanged and gregariously-suited germs and infections…) – is, by dint of it subject matter, always working, always on, and as such… can get kinda exhausting.  It’s impressive as heck while getting to that point, though, stuffing each episode with dumps of text and narration that attempts to simplify, without dumbing down, the complex operations our bodies execute just to sweat, or sneeze, and more, but nonetheless, it can be a lot to take in.

David Production does a bang up job from front-to-back on this thing, giving the various divisions we meet (primarily Red and White blood cells, and primarily one or two ‘main characters’ from each bunch) a huge amount of individuality whilst sticking to the general character type – helpful, aggressive, etc. – the groups have to portray, and making our inner workings a bright, but believable functional locale.  Director Kenichi Suzuki takes advantage of DP’s quality work by trusting it, allowing our leads, a bumbling Red Blood Cell and an innocent but immensely helpful White Blood Cell, to develop personalities and relationships whilst a whole buncha crazy erupts around them.  From episode to episode, this craziness can mean various threats infection, or abrasions, or fainting, while everything will go on pause here and there so a voiceover can explain some of the science behind it.

While it’s nice that the abstraction of this kind of stuff wasn’t turned in to a relationship comedy – we stick to the “science” in that every cell needs to keep doing its job – this does mean nothing we see or hear really amounts to anything; we’re not necessarily supposed to care about who’s body we’re seeing the inner working of, but that’s at the cost of it really, really not mattering when things go awry.  And fair enough, the show just ups the ante on EVERYTHING in order to distract from this, the side effect is just as mentioned: it can be tiring to watch more than an episode in a row.

If you take it at that pace, though, Cells At Work! is wonderfully charming, and entertaining, and if you’re ready with the pause button to digest all the text, probably educational as well.

…As a last note, I mentioned it being bloody: Our White Blood Cells like to go on the attack with knives, and their foes bleed, baby.  All in good, slashin’, blood-pumpin’ fun.