First Impressions / Hataraku Saibou

“Scrape Wound”


「すり傷」 (Surikizu)

Budget Touma made an appearance, testing the waters before Index S3 makes a return next season. Red Blood Cell was as ditzy as ever, and HanaKana did an excellent job of conveying that. But she was merely a side character in this particular episode. While the neutrophils put up a brave fight on the front lines, against the invasion of foreign germs through the scrape wound, the platelets turned out to be true heroes this episode. Don’t let their innocent disposition fool you! Watching them work was thoroughly endearing and I constantly feared for their safety. But there’s actually a sinister context behind the task they carry out. They will build the bigliest barriers to enclose aliens that have made it across the border, so they can be wholesale massacred, while their brethren are holed out and forced to watch. I kid, but from the perspective of the bacteria, it must seem frightening to come up against the immune system. They’re organisms that just want to have a good life. It’s not their intention to harm or kill us, so much as make some sort of a living, which just so happens to clash against human interest. So for now, they’re caricatured as the bad guys, yet I’ll confess to holding a degree of sympathy towards them. Other than the blinding kawaii-ness of those platelets, the frontline action undertaken by the neutrophils would serve as a primary talking point for this episode. David Productions bring all their experience from JoJo to the table in ensuring that zany and fluid combat can be delivered to the table. While it’s a shame that they’re skipping out on adapting some chapters, I’m confident that they’ll be picking out the best ones. Also, I can’t imagine a studio that would be better-suited to picking up this source material, though I suspect that Trigger might give them a run for their money.

Seriously though, Hataraku Saibou is such a fun show that puts an unmistakably Japanese cultural twist on a subject many people thought they were familiar with, reinventing the wheel so to speak. Also, it utterly amazes me how the anime industry can always find a way to make things moe. While it can annoy the heck out of me for being unoriginal at times, this instance of its occurrence is proving to be a massive hit. And call me a hypocrite, as someone who usually calls out the industry for excessive reliance upon making things moe, but I certainly won’t be complaining this time around. If possible, I’d like to see what a gaping wound or an open heart surgery would look like in this world – a similar catastrophe to the scrape wound on a much larger scale? I fear these question might never be answered, but I still look forwards to seeing what the show has to offer, because I know it can continue to do things that go beyond my imagination regardless of what it chooses to cover.

Preview

26 Comments

  1. Budget Touma? Seems like many of the characters are strangely familiar. The MCs are Shirayuki from Akagami No Shirayukihime and Ginko from Mushishi, and control room guy is Kazuma from Noragami. I’m sure there must be at least one JoJo character in there too but I don’t know that franchise very well.

    (And Zaiden, did you make it to HyperJapan this year? I was in London but only had a few hours to spare so I went to the opening of the Japan Centre’s new branch Ichiba and had free sushi, sashimi and sake)

    Angelus
    Reply

  2. “It’s not their intention to harm or kill us”

    What is paved with good intentions?

    Thumbs up for the red ditzy cell for being grateful to the neutrophiles fighting and policing the body for them instead of dismissing them as violent freaks.

    Grahav
    Reply

  3. This series is ridiculous in so many good ways.

    As much as I’m loving this series, though, the darkness in me kinda wants to know how this world would depict something like a broken bone, a cut deep enough to need stitches, or even going through surgery. Maybe as a nightmare that White Blood Cell has or something, nothing real. I don’t think my heart could handle real…

    Aex
    Reply

  5. They are skipping the chapters around. Episode 1 adapts Chapter 1. Episode 2 adapts Chapter 4 (Scrape Abrasion), and Episode 3 is going back to Chapter 3 (Influenza). I supposed Chapter 2 (Cedar Pollins) is too expensive to adapt as it’s quite budget breaking in terms of pyrotechnics. I hope to be wrong. But they cannot avoid the flashback chapter and definitely the 2 parter from the second manga book.

    BigFire
    Reply

  7. Did anyone think they’d be watching a real blood, guts,
    and gore Anime and not even giving it a second thought?

    Like you said, the Anime industry can always find a way
    to make things moe. What a fun start of a series!

    mac65
    Reply

  8. Wow they actually went there with the blood cells contributing to the clot/scab. I was wondering how they would handle that. Technically the platelets would be stuck in there too IRC correctly. You all know what happens to scabs right?

    sealouse
    Reply

  10. This probably isn’t covered, but am I the only one wondering how they would represent what happens during an erection?

    “EVERYBODY GET OVER HERE NOW”

    “Why?”

    “NO QUESTIONS”

    Stranger
    Reply

    1. Following a way only sign:
      Red Blood Cell: What part of the body is that? I never had been here.
      White Blood Cell: …
      Red Blood Cell: Wow! There is so much of us here! And they continue comming! Is there a party of something?
      White Blood Cell: …
      Red Blood Cell: Ah! And earthquake (bodyquake?)
      White Blood Cell: … ^^U

      Kinai
      Reply

  12. I was somewhat disappointed with the constant exposition. Rather than good storytelling, it felt like they were running through powerpoint slides and reading off cue cards.

    It’s really a lost opportunity if they continue with this style of summarization, rather than folding interesting facts into the storyline, and revealing them in a fluent story as part of the plotline. Actually, I don’t know if it’s a “style”, or if they’re following source-material (if so, they should have re-imagined it), or if this is simply bad and unimaginative production and directing.

    Hopefully, this is only an introductory phase, and the style changes, because the narration and exposition just breaks up the immersion and the whole thing sounds disjointed and silly.

    Jerry
    Reply

  15. The sheer brutality of neutrophil kills cracks me up. It’s so over the top. Kinda like reverse Aliens: with aliens entering seemingly abandoned compound only for marines to suddenly jump out of ventilation ducts, murderize them brutally and devour their remains.

    puppygod
    Reply

  16. And unexpectedly, who winds up being this episode’s savor but the platelet lolis, who everyone thought wouldn’t be the focus of an entire climax and was just there for cuteness alone!! 😀 😀 Fans of the platelets will very much LOVE this ending!

    Also of note: this josses a theory we had earlier. Apparently, because we witness the formation and healing of a blood clot, it confirms that this anime is presented in human time, and isn’t slowed down, meaning we can hypothetically say that most of these characters will only have a life-span of several days and we may even witness THAT! :O Brings some haunting implications to it, but these characters must be very accustomed to it and have no issue. I mean, there has to be billions of red blood cells JUST like the one we follow, right?

    starss
    Reply

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