"Cells at Work": Muscular Blood Cells Fight Bacilium Monsters

While browsing on Pixiv, I came across a lot of fan art (most too graphic for this site) starring a muscular blond guy with a baseball cap reading "Kill."  

Sometimes he was making out with, rescuing, or being rescued by a guy dressed all in white, with Japanese writing on his baseball cap (all fan art copyrighted by the artists).

A little more research, and I found out that his name was "Killer T-Cell."

And a manga series called Cells at Work (2015-), which has been adapted into an anime (now playing on Netflix).

There are 20-30 trillion red blood cells in the human body, responsible for carrying oxygen from the lungs to the other cells, and carbon dioxide back to be expelled. Cells at Work stars a red blood cell named AE3803 (Cherami Leigh in English), imagined as a red-haired delivery girl with a sealed package of oxygen, rushing down the streets and  plazas of a human body imagined as a vast city.

She gets lost on the way to the lungs, and ends up in the spleen, and then in a lymph node.

When an evil bacterium attacks, she is saved by white blood cell U-1146 (Billy Kametz), a muscular all-white teenager.  They have a history: he saved her from an evil bacterium long ago, when he was just a student in White Blood Cell School. 

Future episodes introduce many other types of cells, including the cocky, aggressive Killer T-Cell (Robbie Daymond), who is responsible for killing cancerous or otherwise damaged cells.

The plots involve conflicts between various types of cells:

When Killer T-Cell gets into an argument with his commanding officer, Helper T-Cell (Ray Chase),  Dentritic T-Cell reveals a photo album indicating that they were close friends in White Blood Cell school.  They are embarrassed, and try to destroy the album.

And responses to threats:

The body suffers from heat stroke, leading to "global warming," a depletion of fluids. and an invasion of bacillus cereus, which thrive on high temperatures.  U-1146 pursues the bacillus, but is too weak from fluid depletion to fight.  Then the body gets an injection of new fluid, reviving everyone. 

A band of staphylococcus aureus invade the nasal cavity.  They trap the white blood cells in a mesh of fibrin.  Mysterious hazmat-suited monocytes come to the rescue.  Later the monocytes take off their hazmat suits, revealing that they are really macrophages in disguise.  Whoa, plot twist!

I have so many questions.

1. If cells are anthropomorphic beings, then their bodies must also be full of anthropomorphic cells, and so on, and so on, all the way down ad infinitium.

2. They know that they are in "the body," but do they realize that it's a sentient being?  Do they think it's the entire universe?

3. They eat (glucose from food kiosks), and they have day and night, but do they have private lives?  Apartments?  Recreation?  Do they sleep? Date?  Read philosophical tracts about the nature of the universe?

4. Why is it so barbaric?  "Kill them!  Kill every one of them!" may be ok for pathogens, but it's inappropriate for human-looking enemy troops who are just following orders.   It's like in the Bible where the God tells the Israelites to take over a town and kill everyone, even the children and animals.

5. There's a lot of very technical information.  Eosonophilia are white blood cells responsible for fighting multicellular parasites, but not bacteria or viruses.  Basphilia are white blood cells responsible for histamine, which produces the inflammatory reaction to infections.  Is this entertainment or a physiology textbook?

This is all so bizarre that I forgot to check for gay characters or subtexts. I don't think the blood cells actually have romantic relationships, but there is plenty of fan shipping.

SWAT: The Son of the Incredible Hulk as a Meh Cop

I never watch cop shows.  After working at the L.A. Police Academy and as a juvenile probation officer, I know that they get procedures all wrong. Plus they exacerbate the belief that the crime rate is very high in the U.S. (when it's at the lowest level in over 20 years), leading to all sorts of expensive, unnecessary policies. like arresting kids for bringing toy soldiers to school and sentencing someone to 20 years in prison for having a marijuana joint in their car.

But when I discovered that Lou Ferrigno Jr., the son of 1970s Incredible Hulk superstar Lou Ferrigno and my "son" Infinite Chazz's hookup, was starring in SWAT (2017-), I watched an episode.

SWAT stands for Special Units and Tactics, the police using military-style weapons and techniques to make arrests.  They became popular during the Tough on Crime Movmenet of the 1980s, when the federal government offered grants for precincts that made a lot of drug busts, so tanks would roll into (black) neighborhoods and officers would swarm into random houses in search of marijuana.

This SWAT team, based in L.A. and led by by-the-books former marine Hondo Harrison (Shemar Moore, top photo) and lone-wolf-plays-by-his-own-rules Street (Alex Russell, left) , has slightly more dangerous foes:

1. Inmates who escaped from a transport, including "psychopath" El Cuchillo (they get psychopaths wrong, too.  Most psychopaths are not violent).

2. An auto-theft ring led by a paranoid psychopath (again?).

3. A hostage situation at a maximum-security prison.

4. A  human trafficking ring.

5. Diamond robbers who are connected to the Israeli mafia.

There are also personal entanglements: dating, romance, affairs, betrayals, and so on.

Lou appears in about half of the episodes as Donovan Rocker, a training instructor.  In Season 2, Mumford (Peter Onorati) retires, and Rocker takes over the team.

I watched the only episode where he's actually listed in the plot synopsis, "Ghosts" (this show loves one-word titles.  Attention span of the intended audience?).  There are three plotlines:

Main Plot: Luca (Kenny Johnson) and his boyfriend Street (above) are at a street festival (a gay pride festival?)  when he sees the Vanity Killer, a "psycho" who played Saw-type games with "pretty people," then was exploded to death two years ago.  The boss insists that he is  just seeing "ghosts," so he investigates himself.

Yawn.  They get serial killers wrong, too, acting like they are the most common type of criminal, responsible for 90% of all murders.  Actually, thrill-type serial killers are very rare, responsible for only about 1% of murders.

I guess Luca and Street are not a gay couple after all.  Luca has kind of a thing going on with Keri, a previous victim who he rescued (on this show, it's always last names for men, first names for women and prettyboys.  That's not sexist at all, right?).

Turns out that the "sicko" faked his own death so he could continue his games.  He has grabbed two new victims, including prettyboy Lance (Paul Black, left).  SWAT storms the house.

Well, that is what you're watching a show called SWAT for, right?

Secondary Plot: Spivey (Louis Fereira), who was fired in the first episode after he shot an unarmed black teenager, is depressed, "bowling alone in Long Beach."  So we should feel sorry for him?  So team captain Hondo, (see above), who has apparently been mentoring the boy, arranges a meeting.  Restorative justice in action!

Third Plot: Jessica (Stephanie Stigman) tries to find out who put the threatening letter in her desk and vandalized her car.  Turn's out it was Rocker's wife, Val.  He was complaining about Cortez's proposal (I don't know why), and she decided to get revenge.

He apologizes, she gets the charges reduced to harassment, the end.

Whoa, he's married to a psycho, and it's resolved in 30 seconds?  Bummer.

Heterosexism:  Not a lot.  Some guys have wives and girlfriends, but no kissing and no sex.

Beefcake:  None.  Hondo is shirtless in the opening credits.  What's the point of all these hunks if they're not going to be stripping down?

Other Scenery:  The street fair, for about 20 seconds.

Gay Characters:  Nothing specified. Lance might be gay.  A lot of buddy-bonding.

My grade: Meh.

See also: The Sons of the Incredible Hulk