While normally I would say characters and story are my main priority in watching, episode 9 of Cells at Work may have clearly made my motive for watching the show apparent. Despite a fairly decent story presented about two characters who have been involved since the beginning, I had absolutely zero interest with my only moment where I felt myself getting that little boost of joy came from a platelet appearance right before the closing credits.
I think my usual viewing preferences are getting messed up by Cells at Work. I only like this show when if focuses on Red Blood Cell, White Blood Cell or Platelets. I genuinely don’t care what those characters are doing. Watching Red and White sip tea together, repeating the same gag of Red getting lost and White helping her out, or literally anything else is fine. And the platelets can just stand on screen for all I care as long as they are visible in the episode. The previous episode that focused on the T Cells was a low point for me despite being interested in the whole zombie horde thing and a return to those characters was more of less unappreciated by me.
Now, that isn’t the same thing as saying this episode was bad. It follows more or less the same formula they used when they did the flash back for the Red Blood Cell. We start with the Killer T Cell training some Naive T Cells and the Helper T Cell sipping tea and mostly criticising the idiocy of the meat head ranting and raving outside. After some comedic shenanigans we go to the photo album and get to see the two cells as children back in their training days. It is a perfectly sensible plot and there’s nothing wrong at all with how it is presented (except the whole subtitles off the screen thing that happened mid-episode, thanks for that Crunchyroll).
However, I didn’t find anything to care about in the episode. I wasn’t interested in those characters, watching the military training sequence I found it emotionally flat, even when the future Helper T Cell gave our future Killer T Cell some advice in what I guess was meant to be a touching moment, I just kind of shrugged.
Now I don’t really get why this show has thrown my usual preferences over so much. What I do know, is that what I am watching this show or is the cute factor and without it, I find it hard to stay invested.
Previous Reviews:
- Episode 1: The Adorable Edutainment Entry
- Episode 2: The Adventures of a Directionally Challenged Red-Blood Cell Continue
- Episode 3: The Zombie Horde of Flu-Ridden Cells
- Episode 4: Everyone Has Their Own Job
- Episode 5: Maybe They Should Rewrite The Manual?
- Episode 6: The Cute Before The Storm
- Episode 7: Born To Die
- Episode 8: Be Your Best You
Thanks for reading.
Karandi James
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I guess I’m the only one who enjoyed this episode and is still enjoying the show as a whole. :-/
The educational value remains rewarding for me, thus I find it nice to explore some of the other characters to keep the plots fresh and not just a costant rehash of Red getting lost and White saving her – although last week’s episode showed they can still make it entertaining. 🙂
And this episode was fine. Narrative structure and everything else was much the same as any other episode in terms of quality. I think for me though, so much of the appeal comes from the characters themselves when focused on characters I’m not that interested in, it just doesn’t click.
Glad you enjoyed the episode though.
But surely the only way to become interested in the other characters is if they focus on them and develop them rather than leave them in the background? Bit of a Catch 22 situation there it seems… 😉 🙂
I don’t really think these two characters were ever going to engage me. If the whole show had been about them, I’d have dropped it.
I was trying to figure out why this episode felt… HOLLOW… like it brought my mood down when I realized I wasn’t enjoying this show I was supposed to enjoy. Animation felt kinda stiff…
You’re right though, no red blood cell? No white blood cell? BLEH.
I seriously think I would happily watch Red and White sit on that bench with their cup of tea talking for the rest of the season and if a platelet walked by every now and then I’d be more or less happy with that. I would almost never say that about a show because normally I find the plot and where it is going so important to my enjoyment. Here, I know my enjoyment is almost entirely based on how cute those characters are (and yes, White Blood Cell is cute even when he’s killing germs).
Sounds like Spice and Wolf. The characters are so nice, the visuals so pretty, and the music so pleasant you don’t notice there really isn’t a plot 🙂
Yah, true for me too… It’s the cute factor that keeps me coming back.
So how’d you feel about this episode?
That it was mostly a waste of time… We’ve already had one ep dedicated mostly to T-cells having problems growing up, this one didn’t cover any new ground in that respect. (We already knew that about Killer-T.)
Yes, about all it did was give the Helper T Cell more background, and I wasn’t that interested.
I’m still coming to terms with the fact that this show tried to make me feel bad for Cancer…
This episode of Cells at Work! does Naruto was fine though.
I know. This show did such a great job of making you feel bad for individual cells, including the cancer one. And yeah, there was nothing wrong with this episode, it just didn’t grab me.
To be fair I watch ~most~ shows “just for the cute” so it’s no big deal if you have one like that too!
I don’t think before How to Keep a Mummy I ever watched a show just for the cute (or at least none that I would admit to). Still, given how flat I found this episode but I can’t think of any thing else that was notably different about it other than the character focus, I probably should just accept that I’m watching this only for the cute characters.
It is hard to describe why I stick with it too. I have to admit if this were any other series I might even have dropped it already because of similar situations cropping up in nearly ecery episode. But…that said: the worldbuilding, the original concept and admittedly tge cuteness of it all keeps me coming back. As I said over on Cactus Matt’s blog..it will be interesting to see how this series is going to end. What will they do? Leave the body to die?
Realistically most of the cells should have died by now, but that would make for slightly depressing viewing. I’m hoping they all have a picnic. It would make no sense, but it would be adorable.
Hahaha: I’m so going to laugh if that will be the ending of it all 😂😂😂
Do you know how many tears I will shed if anything happens to Red Blood Cell? Poor thing. She’s been directionally challenged her whole life, tormented by germs… She must live forever even if that is an entirely unrealistic statement.
Lol…Okay, we should definitely hold a petition now not to kill off Red Blood Cell, before it’s too late 😂😂😊😊