The Winter 2021 Manga Guide

Cells at Work!: Neo Bacteria!

What's It About? 

Bacteria are in all our bodies...good bacteria, bad bacteria, and everything in between! But this time, the bacteria are on a mission...to help their teenage host confess to her crush! Will they be able to protect her health?

Cells at Work!: Neo Bacteria! is Haruyuki Yoshida's spinoff of Akane Shimizu's Cells at Work! manga. Kodansha has released the digital version of the first volume for $10.99

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Is It Worth Reading?

Christopher Farris

Rating:

Cells at Work! is a fortunate franchise: A popular series whose premise allows for basically infinite spin-offs. And as a distinction from the foundational cellular adventures, focusing on bacteria makes for an interesting enough pitch—so much so that they've done it twice now! Haruyuki Yoshida's Neo Bacteria presents its own unique spin on the usual Cells at Work! formula, letting us spend almost as much time with the 'host' body as we do the anthropomorphized bacteria inhabiting her guts. The main idea here seems to be to present a much more direct, relatable example of the kinds of health effects Cells at Work! has always thrived on describing, contextualized here within the familiar experience of how our struggles with our own bodies can impact those formative days of teenage romance.

The main framework of medical advice interspersed around cute cartoon adventures is appreciable enough, but all we actually end up getting are a couple basic bullet points about healthy eating and skin care. Obviously I don't expect a one-shot manga volume to be any substitute for genuine medical guidance, but while the biological factoids on the bacteria and their effects on the body can be interesting as ever, the actual relatable mission statement comes off that much thinner. It doesn't help that the framing story is padded out with some of the most basic shojo school romance setup I've seen in a minute. There are flashes of more distinctive inspiration, like one point where it seems Ayumu and her crush are actually going to bond over discussions of the health issues central to this story, but then they don't really go anywhere with that after those too-brief panels.

With neither the framing device nor the story it's presenting being all that substantial, we're left with material that feels as empty as Ayumu's malnourished stomach at the beginning of this book. The anthropomorphized inner-body characters are all cute as you'd expect from Cells at Work!, with the overall adorable presentation being an even meaner feat considering how much of the story necessarily focuses on poop. But even those portions feel underutilized across the story's three extra-long chapters (the skin bacteria only factor into one of them and even then are barely seen there). Trying to focus on inter-bacteria drama as well as resolving the framing romance story in the last chapter (in lieu of any actual medical advice that doesn't boil down to 'Hope you'd been taking good care of your internal bacteria before you got sick!') just makes the exercise feel even more ultimately inconsequential. I can see being interested in this if your stomach was seriously rumbling for more cute Cells at Work! adventures, but I'm gonna go with my gut and say this one can be safely passed.

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Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

Cells at Work!: Neo Bacteria! is markedly different from all of the other franchise entries I've read in one very specific way: the cells in question share the story with the host body much more overtly. That doesn't actually do much for me in terms of the way the book is presented; it feels a bit too much like a heavy-handed attempt to educate teen girls on the importance of eating right and clean skin by using the “prize” of a mutual crush with a cute boy. Not only does that raise my hackles by suggesting that that's what all teen girls want, but it more importantly just doesn't make the book as fun and appealing as other iterations. It's leaning too hard into the “edu” part of the portmanteau “edutainment.”

The story takes place both inside and outside of a high school third-year's body. Ayumu is crushing hard on Aoi, a boy from her club, and when he blurts out that he likes “healthy girls” (whatever that means), she realizes that she's many things, but “healthy” isn't one of them. So she promptly begins to do all the wrong things to try to improve her health. I do like that those things are what are promoted in the media without most of the caveats that Ayumu discovers all on her own: things like “not eating” is better than eating too much or eating junk or thinking that “washing your face” is code for “scrub like you're cleaning a crusty pot.” Attempting these things only lands Ayumu in more trouble, something the bacterium inside of her intestinal tract and on her skin can't do anything about.

I will give the story credit for being the only manga for teen girls I can think of that talks about poop a lot. And not even as a gag – Ayumu's fecal situation is even more openly discussed than in Reina Telgemeier's autobiographical middle-grade graphic novel about her IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), Guts. It does get a little too cutesy with the “fecal express” being code for anything more prosaic, but bowel movements are important, and we put way too many taboos on discussing them, especially for girls. In fact, two of the three chapters in this very slim volume are about pooping. The third is about over-washing your face and then continually touching it; a little less unusual, especially in the time of COVID.

Cells at Work!: Neo Bacteria! really tries. Does it need the fancy outfits on the Bifidum bacteria? Given that they're all about stool, no, not really. Does Bifi's crush on her bacteria leader actually add anything to the story? Nothing subtle; it's a fairly heavy-handed way to show that Ayumu's bacteria are part of her in more than a physical sense. But I appreciate that it tried something different, because with so many titles under the Cells at Work! umbrella, it's not a bad thing to take a risk, even if it doesn't quite pan out here.

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Caitlin Moore

Rating:

When I watched the original Cells at Work! anime, I wondered who exactly this person was that kept making decisions that led to their body fighting off such potentially grievous illnesses or recovering from terrible injuries. Cells at Work!: Neo Bacteria! actually answers the question of whose body the story is taking place in: a teenage girl who wants to impress her crush, a boy who said he likes energetic girls.

You see, Neo Bacteria runs in Nakayoshi, a long-lived shojo manga magazine that runs series mostly aimed at younger teens. It's the magazine that ran Card Captor Sakura and Ojamajo Doremi. And so, more than just interesting biology facts, Cells at Work!: Neo Bacteria! aims to teach its young audience about things like proper hygiene and diet, as the good bacteria in the heroine's guts struggle to keep her regular as she eats poorly, and can't fight off the bad bacteria that cause acne when she washes her face too much in the winter. Has Nakayoshi ever run a manga that had so much of its plot revolve around how well the main character is shitting? It's hard to say for sure, but I suspect not. And you know what? I applaud them for this. After all, digestive health is important and everybody poops. We shouldn't be so afraid to talk about it when it comes to monitoring how our body is functioning.

As amusing as the toilet troubles are, the actual story is rather dull, both inside and out. Both Bifi, the main bacterium character, and the host are going through the extremely typical shojo scenario of wanting to confess to their crushes. They're cute and clumsy and try their hardest, but it's just so hard to confess! How can they possibly get their courage up! I can't really see it as much more than a framing device for the hygiene tips which, as an adult woman, just weren't enthralling.

Plus, Kodansha's translation via the poorly-paying translation service Amimaru is startlingly subpar. The dialogue is stilted and unnatural, often retaining Japanese sentence structure without rearranging clauses to make sense in English. Most hilariously, they ended up choosing he/him pronouns for Bifi's commander, who very clearly has boobs. And you know, I get it, not everyone who has boobs is a girl and you can't tell a person's pronouns just by looking at them, but if I were going by context clues, I'd probably go with she/her. But that's what you get when you pay your translators a dollar per page!

Cells at Work!: Neo Bacteria! is probably one of the lesser Cells at Work! spinoffs, but that doesn't mean it's without merit. If you have a teenage girl in your life, it wouldn't make a bad present. Just keep in mind she might think you're a bit too concerned about her poops.

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MrAJCosplay

Rating:

I am continuously surprised at how many of these education series have come out in the past few years – almost as much as I am impressed with how distinct all of them still feel from each other despite having the same goal. Neo Bacteria feels like the most unique of the Cells at Work! spinoffs since the original given its style and framing of inner body transgressions. The artwork is very distinctly shojo in the way that the bacteria dress up. A lot of overlays and flourishes make it almost feel like I'm reading a more aristocratic, high-end type of series where love and honor are on the line. Lessons about microbes get interlaced with a very cute romance that the host body is trying to foster. In fact, I was surprised at how much of an even split it seems between what goes on inside the host body versus what happens outside of it.

All of this acts as an amazing contrast to what is actually being discussed when you consider the fact that these noble characters are bacteria trying their best to make sure that their host body has proper bowel movements! It's the type of serious humor that I personally resonate more with and if you're a fan of shows that play everything straight when the subject at hand doesn't match, then I definitely think this will be up your alley. However, the series doesn't deviate too far from its roots as the overall style and presentation still lends itself to properly explaining to unsuspecting readers what all of these different types of bacteria are and their functions. I was originally worried that this series would be trying to do too much at once after the first chapter, but by the end of the volume, I walked away laughing, smiling and learning something along the way. I'd say give this volume a shot if only because I can see this serving at least one of those functions for other readers out there