Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Cells at Work!
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yuna49
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Just yesterday I heard about a project called the Human Cell Atlas. Modeled on the Human Genome Project, the Atlas plans to create a complete inventory of cells. It turns out we don't even really know how many types of cells there are, much less what they all do.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/...n-body/504002/ http://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/201...ell-atlas-lung I thought the manga-ka for Cells at Work! would smile upon hearing this comment from one of the researchers:
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meiam
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So as someone who was asking for something else than the "monster of the week"... if that's what I'm gonna get, can we go back to the monster of the week?
When I ask for something else, I mean "something else that takes advantages of the unique setting" not "something else that's extremely cliche and present in almost every single anime"... The body is crazy complex and has so much more going on than just the immune system, so focusing solely on white cell fighting bacteria is barely scratching the surface of the setting potential. I'm just really disappointed that's all we get. But an uninteresting shipping/fate things that we know full well is gonna go nowhere is wasting the setting even more (plus it still feature a monster anyway, so it wasn't that big a change). How about 2-3 episode of who the brain work, talk about the blood-brain barrier, the way a large part of our brain is actually outside our skull, the way reflex differ from active thinking, anything! There's so much there, you don't need a random monster to just show up randomly. I really wish the show had gone for a slightly differ approach, I think it would have been better if you had some scene of the person all the action is happening in. Maybe make that person a biology major or something along that line and have them learn about w/e the topic of the week is in class/textbook or something like that (take care of the awkward narration) and this way they could also have included the apparently obligatory relationship stuff. |
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mangaka-chan
 Posts: 283 |
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To be honest, after I saw macrophages as maids, the scientist in me just imagines the mouse macrophage-like cell line I use as mice in maid costumes. 
Re: NK cell, I was kind of disappointed that her character design wasn't more interesting, especially compared to the other cells. I was hoping for more of a SWAT or special ops look, given that NK cells are in-universe anti-personnel cell types. I also don't quite get why she has such a rivalry with T cell. It's funny yeah, but there's no biological bases that I know of for them to have an antagonistic relationship (though I do acknowledge my knowledge of NK cell biology is paltry compared to other innate immune cells). |
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gedata
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I don't really see how a romantic subplot would fit a series about asexual single cell organisms.
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JaffaOrange
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The recent episode drops foreshadowing about cancer's return so perhaps the final message will be that if you go easy on cancer it'll mess you up. Or perhaps it's an allusion to how cancer can often "trick" immune cells to help it progress and spread.
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meiam
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This episode was such a waste. Cancer could have been an awesome multi story arc. Ultimately cancer is not like every other disease, its your own cell going against there natural function and limit. It would have been far better to use this as some sort of multi story arc, maybe depicting it as some long standing rebellion (some cancer spends long time without aggressively growing), maybe some sort of shadowy organisation/conspiracy stuff or the cancerous part could have been some crazy disorganized slum (why was it represented as an abandoned neighborhood, that's literally the opposite of what it is).
But what do we get instead? Another big bad monster, cause nothing can possibly go against the shonen formula. This is completely off, cancer isn't dangerous and hard to deal with because the individual cell are super strong, it's hard to deal with because your body as a really hard time figuring out which is a normal cell and which is cancerous. Yet in this episode that's the easy part (somehow NK saw it right away) and the hard part is beating it. I don't think anyone would be more educated about cancer from watching this episode and it wasn't really interesting as far as just entertainment goes (another week, another monster, yawn). Just a waste. |
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Shay Guy
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I don't think I've ever met anybody who wanted to be referred to as "differently abled". It has always struck me as something non-disabled people came up with so they could pat themselves on the back.
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Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 2652 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
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^ I always check with my friend, and that's what they prefer.
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Sulfy
 Posts: 77 |
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I've met a few people that do refer to themselves like that because it's one way for them to take a point of their lives and make it moreso their own. I actually liked that the show tried to make the cancer cell more sympathetic because like the review said, cancer cells grow and are destroyed quite regularly in the human body. Maybe it wasn't a metaphor for persecution but I found it more like "remember that your enemy has a life of their own as well". NK cell was definitely given the short end of the stick though... |
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JaffaOrange
Posts: 254 |
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The show hasn't been any attempt to make the pathogens sympathetic though, even though they're just doing what they do. Nor has their been any hesitation on killing cells infected by viruses. Like, when they thought the cancel cell was just a cell compromised by a virus, they rushed it down immediately. I hope the show brings back Cancel Cell to flip its message to be more like the parable of the Scorpion and the Frog. |
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Chrono1000
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I think one issue is that up until now the various bacteria have been portrayed as straight up villains. Going with a sob story for a cancer cell is a baffling decision and the closest real world analogy to cancer would be a terrorist trying to burn civilization to the ground. I get that the author wanted to have a story with more nuance but I think something like gut bacteria would have been a better choice.
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Sulfy
Posts: 77 |
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To be fair, this was one time the show was (within some reason) mildly true to life - cells will do what they're programmed to do. Furthermore, in the case of other pathogens, they're very much foreign bodies, whereas the cancer was originally one of the other body cells (though the villain in question was offspring, I guess). What can I say, I just liked that the show tried to do something mildly different. I'm definitely approaching this as more edu-tainment than anything else though, so the message that "cancer arises and dies out quite frequently in the body" was good to me. However, was the episode entirely successful? No, I found the backstory excessive (though that's mostly because it's bloody cancer, of course it needs to be gotten rid of) and felt that if the show stuck to cancer simply wanting to survive, then it would've been a bit easier to swallow. I agree with Chrono1000 though, that if the show chose gut bacteria instead, it would've probably been better. |
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gedata
Posts: 617 |
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They did hint at the very end that it could very well come back, though a prolonged battle spanning more than 2 episodes would've made more sense. As for the whole "not being educated" part, it did an OK enough job of conveying how cancer cells originate, at least factually. But I for one don't mind using that explanation to paint it in a more sympathetic light at all since it's always more fair to try and understand character from their own perspective and not my one.I'm not looking to see villains be absolved of their crimes, I just want to get why they'd do them and this abstraction of the of cancer at least that much. |
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Gina Szanboti
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Hmmm, now that they've done Cancer as just a poor cell who wanted to survive and leave a mark on its world, but had to be killed for the common good, I wonder if they'll show the flip side of the coin with apoptosis, showing cells committing suicide for the good of their world. Will they be kamikaze cells, bravely choosing death, or Manchurian Candidate cells, programmed to kill themselves at a specific time and place regardless of their own choices? If Cancer returns, that could also be an interesting interaction.
Heh, metaphorically, just those two cell types have about a hundred different competing messages about life and death and community. 
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gedata
Posts: 617 |
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The difference is the cancer cells are monsters of the bodies own creation and should have been healthy contributors to the body, while the antigens were always meant to act only for the sake of their own proliferation. The tragedy comes from the fact that through the bodies own, someone needs to die to everyone's survival. |
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