Cells at Work! (2023)
Director: Hideki Takeuchi
Starring: Mei Nagano, Takeru Satoh, Mana Ashida
Synopsis:
A clumsy red blood cell tries to find her place in the world and fulfill a childhood promise to live up to her role.
Impressions:
I'm generally not a big fan of live-action adaptations of anime, even Japanese ones, as they tend to be rather cheap-looking and corny. The corniness is definitely a factor here, the child actors being especially cringey, and it's got that particular schmatlzy and maudlin quality of a lot of Japanese cinema that must play well to native audiences but may not play as well to folks from other parts of the world. That being said, it was neat seeing the world of Cells at Work! being brought to life and I thought it was neat how they used the human characters Niko and her father to blend elements of the mainline series and the Code Black spinoff. Speaking of the human characters, you may or may not like having the external world running the B plot, but there is something to be said about juxtaposing everyday human experiences with the internal world of the cells, which may help make things more accessible to general audiences. As long as you come at this with a decent sense of humor, it's a fun little curiosity for fans of the franchise and might even make a decent watch for people who are new to the series. Give it a shot.
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