YMMV / Cells at Work! CODE BLACK

aka: Cells At Work Black

• Accidental Aesop: While the main aesop of the story is to take care of your body, you could also interpret it as a cautionary tale about how unhealthy a Workaholic-mindset really is and how it can negatively affect both you and your environment. The cells run themselves ragged every day, leading to very low work morale and heavy tolls on their mental states, with special mention going to the Killer T Cells who end up snapping due to the never-ending workload. The body is also heavily implied to be a workaholic himself. Most of his health problems are either stress-induced or a result of him trying to alleviate stress through harmful coping mechanisms like smoking and drinking.
• Fan Nickname: The Neutrophil squadron of the original host body, especially U1196, gain the moniker "White Boob Cell" by English-speaking fans for their large busts.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Honestly, every cell tends to fall into this from time to time but special mention goes to the Killer-T Cells. They're rude, arrogant, and dismissive of the other White Blood Cells in the body, even going so far as to call the WBCs useless and weak after they suffer heavy losses in the battle against the phallic Gonorrhea. However, at this point they had been severely overworked already and had to cover for the White Blood Cells additionally. Is it any wonder they're less than thrilled that their workload just increased?
  • Both of the host bodies. They’re only jerkasses from the perspective of their cells, as their unhealthy habits take a major toll on them, with some lamenting on how it feels like their hosts have given up on staying alive. But even if we never see them directly, the condition of their bodies and the things that happen to them speak for themselves. When the second host survives an overdose, they start crying, which RBC believes is a sign that they’re remorseful.
• Misaimed Fandom: A lot of readers and viewers misinterpret Chapter 3's message as being anti-masturbation, in part due to the Moe designs of the sperm cells and AA2153 subsequent breakdown upon finding out that they're constantly exposed to Uncertain Doom and that the Red Blood Cell's efforts are viewed as All for Nothing... except there's nothing in the chapter's text that suggests the case, especially since it's a natural occurrence that the body sometimes takes advantage of to clear out dead or weak cells that builds up over time ^note While overly engaging in masturbation can be dangerous, abstaining from it entirely can even more destructive, since it can lead to blue balls and masturbation has been scientifically proven to reduce risk of prostate cancer. What also doesn't support this claim is that the chapter ends with U1196 announcing that Gonorrhea has invaded the body (which becomes the focus of Chapter 4), something that can only happen from the host having unprotected sex with an infected partner.
• Squick: Frequently and deliberately induced, as you might expect from a manga about poor health! An excellent example would be the gratuitous, almost full-page shot of the extremely phallic Gonorrhea killing hordes of White Blood Cells, ripping off their bloodied clothing, and moaning "So gon-ely..." while they're at it.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: For some fans, it's difficult to follow CODE BLACK due to how depressingly dark it is. While the show does serve a purpose in educating viewers about the severe effects of poor health, it also means the main characters are never going to get a happy ending because otherwise, the series has no point if the body isn't in some sort of spiral of self-destruction.
• Uncertain Audience: CODE BLACK is a spinoff of an Edutainment Show (admittedly one that can get pretty gory and depressing by Western standards) aimed at children, and is even more Anvilicious about the importance of healthy living than its parent series. Yet the manga runs in a Seinen magazine, and it isn't afraid to show the negative consequences of unhealthy habits through its Crapsack World setting where Anyone Can Die, and it doesn't shy away from graphic depictions of health problems like drug addictions and sexually transmitted diseases, which, combined with the sheer bleakness of the setting and likelihood of the main characters to either die or end up in situations even worse from when they started, makes it too dark and dramatic for the child audience of the parent manga to enjoy. Meanwhile, the show's heavy-handed commentary about the health effects of bad habits fails to appeal to most adult readers, since the series doesn't offer any insight that couldn't have already been found in a self-help book or Google search. It's been commented that the only people the manga could appeal to are the adult Periphery Demographic of the original series, since they already know the franchise's M.O. when it comes to morality plays and edutainment.
• The Woobie: Practically the entire cell cast is a case of this, for both bodies. The hosts doing horrible jobs taking care of their bodies means that each and every cell is heavily stressed to the breaking point, frequently experiencing mental breakdowns in their situation, which isn't even getting into the fact so many of them actually end up dying. The way they express their woobie-dom is quite varied, with Red Blood Cell and a few others being regular woobies, White Blood Cell having a Stoic Woobie attitude that occasionally falters, and a large number of cases where the cells deal with the traumas by becoming Jerkass Woobies.

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