Hataraku Saibo is a charming live-action adaptation!

 

Sometimes a live-action adaptation can surprise you. You can head into a movie adaptation with the lowest of expectations and be pleasantly surprised by a well-thought out script that stays faithful to the source material. This happened to me when I watched the live-action movie adaptation of Akane Shimizu's manga, Hataraku Saibo. 

The story of Hataraku Saibo is a rather unique one. It follows a father and daughter, Niko and Shigeru, as Niko does her best studying at high school in order to get into a medical school and become a doctor. She lives a rather healthy lifestyle, which is contrasted by the chain-smoking, alcohol consuming, junk food glutton that is Shigeru. The sad truth of the duo is that Shigeru's wife and Niko's mother tragically died whilst Niko was just 9 years old due to illness. As a result, Niko attempts to push her father towards living a healthier lifestyle in order to prevent losing him too. Inside their bodies, their cells are hard at work. This includes the bright and bubbly red blood cell, AE3803 and the ever resolute white blood cell, U-1146. The pair of cells actually met when they were young hopefuls, with U-1146 making a pinky promise to always protect AE33803. Unfortunately, not all goes well within Niko's body despite her living a much healthier lifestyle than her father. Certain cells begin acting up, which causes some catastrophic issues. 

Hataraku Saibo can be best described as an Edutainment movie. Heavily emphasising the entertainment portion, which is a good thing as leaning too heavily into the education side of things could have led to a terribly boring production. Instead, the movie teaches the audience, particularly the younger members, all about the body and particularly the cells within, the script aiding in this via introducing the central human characters that weren't present in the original manga. The addition of Shigeru's unhealthy lifestyle could be seen as incorporating elements of the darker spin-off manga, Code Black, which I have read and enjoyed. 

The visuals are something to behold. Whilst I'm not a fan of everything as certain designs appear too campy, too goofy and childish for my personal taste, it does bring the world to life in a fun style. Credit where it's due, the blood cells all like great and certainly remain true to the source material. The contrasting visuals of the sunny, all around pleasant landscape of Niko's healthy body and the dark, drab and dreary hellscape of Shigeru's neglected one, is a very neat usage of effects, lighting and makes for a fascinating viewing. There was a section that had me giggling like crazy and it involved what was essentially toilet humour as Shigeru fights for his life to get to the restroom with an upset stomach. The visual imagery is crazy as tons of extras are used to battle against one another, some wearing brown costumes to represent faecal matter! Happiness is represented in a way that's almost not safe for children with provocatively dressed samba dancers, it's bonkers and I love it. I also appreciated the mirror imagery of the same sweeping shot being used at the very beginning and towards the very end. 

What I adore about the movie is the fact that Shigeru, despite his flaws, is trying to support his daughter in any way that he possibly can. He's not a deadbeat father, with him pushing through the loss of his wife to try to provide for Niko. His unhealthy lifestyle is actually him trying to save money and in combination with him working as many extra hours as possible, he is attempting to gain and save the money to fund Niko's medical school dream. We also witness him being there for her in other ways, such as making her laugh when she needs it most. He also supports her in her quest to gain the love of her senpai. 

The movie got the casting spot on in regards to the two main leads. Mei Nagano and Takeru Satoh were perfectly cast. They resemble the characters in the manga extraordinarily. Mei Nagano makes us root for AE3803 with her bright and bubbly personality and her cute smile. Likewise, Takeru Satoh, is easy to root for even with his understated performance as he's effortlessly cool and excels in the fight sequences. 

The fight sequences themselves are far from realistic and whilst I prefer realism, they can be let off the hook due to the rule of cool and the fact that the characters fighting aren't even human to begin with. The best sequence is a one on one that happens towards the tail end of the movie. Very anime-like. 

Overall, I definitely enjoyed the movie much more than I ever thought that I would. It's an easy recommendation with the engaging narrative, high production quality, wonderful cast and zany action. It's a neatly crafted edutainment package.