Cells at Work! (Hataraku Saibou!)

Overall (Each chapter had its own contained plot, with some exceptions including the entirety of volume 5, which will be covered in this review).

This is likely one of the newest manga titles you will find on this site, so I find myself unaccustomed to more modern manga publications, that said I quite liked this series. Following a red blood cell and her adventures in the human body, Cells at Work is a creative manga with storylines which are often contained in one or two chapters and typically feature other recurring cells in each of them, namely a white blood cell, but also platelets, T-cells and macrophages appear more than once across the series. The art is decent, with expressive faces and clear action sequences, but nothing remarkable when it comes to newer series. The plots are solid though and through generally encompassing of both action and informational tidbits (what makes this manga stand out from many others). In the fifth volume there is an entire running plot arc involving bacteria (the good kind) and how they work in the body, this plot arc serves to be equally entertaining as the rest, showing that mangaka Akane Shimizu is competent in producing both short and long plots, without relying extremely heavily on tropes, unless when needed. Recommended for those looking for an all around shounen with a creative and informative spin.

As a side note, there are several spinoff stories in the Cells at Work! franchise, the most popular out of all of them being Cells at Work: Code Black. While I have not read any of them, I hope to do so in the (somewhat near) future. Stay tuned!

  • Back to The Manga Cafe
  • Home