I was about ready to give up on Descending Stories: Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju. It wasn’t what I wanted it to be and seemed to have gotten bogged down in some gangster junk. Then I re-read the series before reading volume 7, and I realized that there were many more connections than I remembered, bringing new depth to the story. This is a series that rewards paying attention to detail as the story sprawls over three generations. The most important […]

Now that the premise has become a bit repetitive, Akane Shimizu is changing things up a bit by creating a through plot in Cells at Work! volume 5. An ordinary cell is bored and resentful of the attention immune cells get. He rescues four baby germs and hides them, but they turn out to be lactic acid bacteria, a kind of bacteria that live in the digestive system and aid the body. Although they’re helpful, they’re still outsiders, so they […]

I had no idea the topics inside the human body were going to be as varied as they are in Cells at Work! volume 2 by Akane Shimizu. The first book was mostly respiratory related, with allergies and flu and such. In this volume, though, we get food poisoning, heat stress, and a two-part battle against creepy-looking cancer cells. The various types of white blood cells continue to be personified with different character quirks. The chapter on food poisoning focuses […]

I may have enjoyed Cells at Work! so much because, when I first read it, I was getting over a winter cold. That made the exploration of the body’s defense system by Akane Shimizu even funnier to me, particularly when the giant missile labeled “Sneeze One” appears in a glorious two-page spread. The cute young lady on the front cover is a red blood cell, responsible for moving packages of oxygen around the body. She’s new, so she keeps getting […]