Cells at Work is a franchise that literalizes the actions of the body. Everything must work in harmony for the body to survive: red blood cells must deliver oxygen to every body part, white blood cells and T cells must fight viral infections, and you need to keep producing new cells. In turn, if the body was a functioning society, red blood cells are delivery drivers, and the white blood cells and T cells are, seem, bodyguards and assassins. Like every functioning society has. After various manga and spinoffs and anime adaptations, it makes the jump to live action at last.
The story of this film is an original one set in this world that seeks to cover all the core ideas of the series inside two hours, introducing all the core bodily functions. This goes from the bone marrow producing new cells with the macrophage, adorable elementary schoolers as helpful platelets to cover up scars, the helper T cells that oversees any potential concerns. Even the more deadly NK cells. The body these cells reside in belongs to a young teenage girl named Niko dealing with a father, Shigeru, whose own bodily health is far-from-ideal while flirting with her own first love that brings DJ-fueled Rio Carnival-esque scenes that cause the body to jump into adrenaline-fueled parties.
It all seems great, as we even compare the clean body of health of Niko to the showa-era slums of her father, with the liver acting as its own Kabukicho. That is, until one white blood cell mutates into a leukemia virus that threatens to kill the body from within, fueling a desperate fight for survival the newbie ditsy red blood cell and self-serious white blood cell must win with the help of the rest of the body.
While it might seem an outlandish concept that works in the abstract of the hand-drawn image but feels unnatural in live-action, the shift in mediums embraces the unique eccentricities that live-action can bring to such an outlandish idea. Indeed, the film takes many cues from tokusatsu filmmaking and franchises like Super Sentai and Kamen Rider for much of its visual language, albeit with a more-mature yet still family-friendly execution.
Virus infections get grandiose costumes that would look perfectly in place in these series also, from the scorpion-like Streptococcus Pyogenes to the bright-yellow cackling villainess Staphylococcus Aureus. These designs are direct translations from the anime and manga, yet in live action are so outlandish they swing into cartoonishly evil in the best way possible, allowing for some incredibly fun portrayals by actors who clearly are loving their moment to shine.
It’s such a fun concept that it’s easy to be drawn in. Indeed, beyond the ingrained love for the series from its long-running adaptations and repeated use in health campaigns by the likes of the Japanese Red Cross, the idea of seeing this brought to life, and the strong cast brought together for the occasion, have helped propel it into becoming a hotly-anticipated film inescapable for months. While other countries have enjoyed a love-affair with Wicked which won’t release in Japan until March, those non-stop wall-to-wall PR campaigns of green and pink have been brushed over with a bloody shade of red for the Cells at Work.
Takeru Sato shows off his natural fit for big-budget action fare seen in the live-action Rurouni Kenshin and his own brush with Kamen Rider as the protagonist of Den-O by playing the lead White Blood Cell, with recent leading star Mei Nagano for films like My Broken Mariko and Motherhood bringing her to the Red Blood Cell lead. Shota Sometani (Kamishin in Belle, Sugitani in Lumberjack the Monster) is assured as the Helper T, and it’s a who’s who of famous faces up and down the roster clearly having fun in their roles. Fukase from SEKAI NO OWARI takes a rare acting role as the leukemia cell taking over the body, and stands his ground in a stacked cast.
It’s a grand production, with hundreds of extras in its largest scenes that truly makes this society feel like a microcosm of the human body and its millions of cells. For all these strengths and the clear joy experienced by the actors, evident in their performances and faces, embracing the chance to work on this more elaborate production that just about keeps the story rolling and entertaining to the credits, it’s a shame the film itself can’t live up to the clear positives it has on paper.
Much of this comes down to a story that gets distracted trying to introduce too many aspects of the franchise told over numerous story arcs and even entire spin-offs within a single film that doesn’t even clock two hours in length. Despite being established as a minefield, the father’s body drawing heavy inspiration from the grungy dangers of the Cells at Work: Black spin-off about an unhealthy body is basically entirely dropped after a few overly-long skits (although it deserves plaudits for making a 7-minute poop joke involving sumo a genuinely gut-wrenchingly hilarious sequence). Similarly, the fun of the viruses beyond leukemia is restricted to the opening 10 minutes, after which it never seems to entirely know what to do to bring all the different bodily cells into the society-threatening fight against leukemia whose own personified motivations are muddled.
The human body naturally undergoes mutations numerous times a day that create dangerous cancer and malignant cells, but in many cases these are immediately dealt with until they become a more serious illness we see Niko suffer from. To bring purpose to this typical function, the young white blood cell who transforms into the malignant leukemia is motivated by trauma. Once determined to get strong like the adult cells, he was suddenly taken away and told there was no further use for him, angering him to the point of mutation. Not only does this feel sudden, it never seems to go hand-in-hand with his desire to infect and destroy the body as a form of revenge, making it hard to engage even before we get lost in all the names and the sudden introduction of extra-bodily treatments like how chemotherapy and blood transfusions have their own effect on the fight for survival.
Indeed, the latter is basically unexplained and more feels like an excuse to bring some of the cells still motivated to fight from the father’s body to the increasingly-decimated daughter.
It’s never boring. The action sequences are a highlight, and the personification of the human body is engaging enough. But compared to how clearly it establishes its outlandish setting, it struggles the moment it has to move from broad strokes to the minutia of body health and bringing all these cells, as well as the jump from human and cell life, into a cohesive whole. The result is a film worse than the sum of its parts, never truly satisfying enough to leave us aching for more despite my affection for this universe.
That said, it’s a strong introduction to this world, and if it doesn’t encourage you to watch the anime or read the manga it feels assured enough that I doubt this will be the last we see of this live-action bent on the popular series that could deliver on the promise shown here. It’s just hard not to wish there was more going on in this first installment.
