Cells at Work!! is the second season based upon the manga series. It is a short season with only eight episodes. It has the unique premise of being an educational anime where it shows off how the body works in a fun way. It is supposed to be entertaining so that you don’t realize that you are learning. Knowing this, there are some awkward moments in its pacing. Given that no one part of the body looks after everything, you might think it will struggle to have an anchoring protagonist that will consistently be the focus. However, it does manage a good job at having a lot of screentime for White Blood Cell (U-1146).
The cells within the body are portrayed as normal looking humans (or as normal as you can get in an anime). The immune system and various parts of the body are shown as buildings and other familiar structures. The invasive germs, bacteria and viruses have a much more alien design. This gives it familiarity and you can tell at a glance what something is supposed to do without a huge chunk of additional exposition. There are still a lot of explanations via voiceovers, but the text has been reduced to a minimum so it is not as heavy as the first season.
Each episode deals with a particular event but most of the early story arcs only take up half the episode. This can make the events zip by too quickly. You tend to have to be already familiar with the symptoms for that particular story arc as it doesn’t give much explanation in that area. The story arcs usually boil down to having a foreign entity invade an organ, which triggers the immune system and the cells come in as reinforcements to expel the invaders. During the process, the viewers will probably learn something new about how the body reacts.
It is interesting to see from the “inside” perspective on how something we normally take for granted actually works. Things like vaccination, or a mosquito biting into the body to suck blood, all feel completely different when viewed from the other side. The anime retains the bright, vibrant, and colorful animation, where it makes everything look cute (particularly the platelets). It contrasts this with cute, happy, almost idealistic characters, giving them crazy weapons and personalities as they destroy invaders. There are violent bloody scenes where blood splatters everywhere as the characters madly hack into their enemies.
One thing that constantly strikes you during the season is how amazing it is with the many things that happen within the human body. So much work is involved to keep it running, and these processes run independently and autonomously. There are many external threats that attack the body and even just the simple act of eating something can cause such a big drama as the immune reacts to it. The second half of the season manages to have overarching events that span multiple episodes. It touches on both newer content, such as looking at the more beneficial bacteria that coexists and helps the body, to more familiar enemies like influenza that poses a significant threat to the characters.
The anime portrays the body’s successful immune responses that manage to extinguish the vast majority of threats without external help. Throughout some of the scenarios, you would expect external assistance given that things like cancer may not be successfully treated even with modern day treatments. It would have been interesting to see how external treatments work and the side effects that they would have on the body. This isn’t a huge deal as the anime currently is, it gives you hope that our bodies can handle things on their own.
Overall, despite having a short second season, Cells at Work!! is fun and very educational. The downside is that it can feel episodic at times with a lack of an anchoring protagonist. Red Blood Cell doesn’t have much presence this season, so it mostly focuses on White Blood Cell. This isn’t a bad thing, but he can have a one-track mind whose only goal is to kill all foreign organisms. The season is not as iconic or surprisingly good as the first season now that we know what to expect, but it is still a worthwhile watch.