Ron Does Stuff

I got into Cells at Work! the anime during the pandemic and it was such an enjoyable and educational watch that when it was announced that there was going to be a live action movie, there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to watch it.

In case you’re one of those people who still haven’t seen Cells at Work!, it’s basically edutainment anime that features the adventures and misadventures of Red Blood Cell AE3803 as she goes about her job delivering oxygen to different parts of the body, the anime doesn’t really show which body she’s in, only that it’s relatively healthy in the early episodes until it deals with a cancer scare in episode 7. The series mostly maintains a light and humorous tone throughout its two season, even if there are two finales that really push the body the cells are in to the limit.

For the movie version of Cells at Work!, we get to see which body the cells are in. Red Blood Cell AE3803 is in the body of a young woman named Niko Urushizaki, who has to take care of her father who isn’t taking the best care of his health. However, Red Blood Cell AE3803 and the rest of the cells in Niko’s body face their toughest challenge when Niko gets a heartbreaking diagnosis — she’s suffering from leukemia.

Anyone who’s watched the original Cells at Work! anime knows that cancer is just one of the many diseases/medical conditions that the show tackles throughout its two seasons and might think that the live-action movie will deal with it the same way that the anime does. It’s a reasonable assumption to make, since most of the first third of the movie follows the first few episodes of the anime. Even the Cells at Work! Code Black-inspired scenes are given a humorous twist, which is different from how they are in the anime.

This is why I was caught a little off-guard when the movie finally got to the cancer episode and took a much more intense direction than it did in the anime. While cancer only took up one episode of the anime and was dealt with just by the cells, the movie goes into excruciating detail about what cancer and cancer treatments do to the human body. If you’ve ever seen friends or family undergo treatment, I suggest that you steel yourself for this part of the movie because it may be a little heavy to take on.

But even with that unexpected heaviness, I really enjoyed the movie and appreciated some of the beautiful and haunting images that they came up with. Making the radiotherapy look like aurora borealis and then making it slowly creep along the “hills” of the body, burning everything in its path? Beautiful to look at and heartbreaking as well. And the final fate of the characters — logical and expected if you think about it — really got me to tear up.

I may be a little biased here because I loved Takeru Satoh in the Samurai X films but I thought he did a good job here, even if the character is mostly one-note. I was expecting a lot more action, but there isn’t as much here and the choreography definitely isn’t as watchable as it was in the Samurai X films.

Aside from the action, I do wish that there was enough time for audiences who didn’t watch the anime to get to know the other characters so that their fates hit harder. The film kind of takes it for granted that you’ve at least watched the anime and is expecting the viewers to come into the theaters with an already established connection to the characters, which I don’t think was the case for some of the people in the theater when I was watching.

Other than that, I think the movie is a good watch, especially if you’re a fan of the anime or the manga. Just be prepared for the turn it takes once the cancer cell is introduced, because it’s definitely much more intense than it was in the anime.