Cells At Work! Gets Black Spinoff Manga In June

The official website for Kodansha's Morning magazine revealed on Friday that the Cells at Work! (Hataraku Saibō) spinoff manga Hataraku Saibō BLACK will launch in the magazine and in the Weekly D Morning digital manga magazine on June 7. Shigemitsu Harada is providing the story, Issei Hatsuyoshi is drawing the manga, and original manga creator Akane Shimizu is supervising the work. The website also revealed a visual for the series.



In the image above, a red blood cell carries oxygen in a healthy body on the right. The cell on the left struggles to work inside the body of someone who drinks too much, smokes, and has high stress and cholesterol. In the manga's story, cells work in a "black" environment in the body of a human in poor health. The person drinks and eats too much, has insufficient physical activity, and has high stress.

The spinoff's first compiled book volume will ship in Japan on July 9.

The original manga's television anime adaptation will premiere in July. Kenichi Suzuki (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Drifters) is directing the anime at David Production, and Yuuko Kakihara (Tsuki ga Kirei, Persona 4 The Animation) is in charge of series composition, and both Suzuki and Kakihara will pen the scripts.

Kodansha Comics is publishing the manga in English, and it describes the story:

The average human body contains about 60 trillion cells, and each of them has work to do! But when you get injured, viruses or bacteria invade, or when an allergic reaction flares up, everyone from the silent but deadly white blood cells to the brainy neurons has to work together to get through the crisis!

Shimizu launched the Cells at Work! manga in the March 2015 issue of Kodansha's Monthly Shonen Sirius, and Kodansha shipped the fifth compiled volume in Japan last August. Kodansha Comics shipped the manga's fifth volume last November. The manga ranked on the Kono Manga ga Sugoi! guidebook's 2016 list of top graphic novels for male readers. The manga has 1.5 million copies in print. Haruyuki Kichida launched the Hataraku Saikin (Bacteria at Work) spinoff manga in Nakayoshi last April. Moe Sugimoto launched another spinoff manga titled Hatarakanai Saibō (Cells That Don't Work) last July.

The manga received an animated commercial last July.