Cells at Work! Lady (はたらく細胞 Lady or Hataraku Saibou Lady) is a spinoff of Cells at Work! written by Shigemitsu Harada, illustrated by Akari Otokawa, and supervised by the author and illustrator of the original manga, Akane Shimizu.
Originally launched in the March 2020 issue of Monthly Morning Two on January 22, 2020, currently being serialized with three collected volumes published so far. An official English translation is stated for release on September 12, 2023
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Other spinoffs of Cells at Work! include Cells NOT at Work!, Cells at Work! CODE BLACK, Cells at Work and Friends!, Cells at Work: Bacteria!, Cells at Work: Baby!, Cells at Work: Platelets!, and Cells At Work! White Brigade.
Cells at Work! Lady provides examples of:
- Anthropomorphized Anatomy: Every entry in the series personifies various cells of the human body and how they function. Lady is no exception.
- Breaking Old Trends: Lady is the only spin-off with a multi-cell-type cast that doesn't have a type of Red Blood Cell in the main crew.
- Cast Full of Pretty Boys: The main cast is staffed by fair-faced versions of the usual cell types.
- Convenient Miscarriage: The second pregnancy ends in this, and the host's resulting grief is represented as an endless snowstorm ravaging the cells' lives.
- Gender Flip: Instead of the usual Ninja Maids, the main Macrophage in Lady is portrayed as a Battle Butler.
- Hammerspace: Both the sperm and ovum has their own variations as a means to store their DNA strings, with the sperm having a Bag of Holding and the ovum having Hammerspace Hair.
- Hotter and Sexier: Though not to the extent of CODE BLACK, Lady has its own moments of this, most damningly by having chapters that focuses on sexual intercourse and pleasure in a positive light.
- Law of Inverse Fertility: Both downplayed and played straight. The first time around, it's implied that the host and her husband were inexperienced, causing pain and discomfort on the woman's end, but they eventually manage to conceive a child. The second time around, biological factors start playing a factor against them, from scarred uterine tissue from an earlier health issue, to the sperm not being strong enough and the egg wall being too stiff for the sperm to penetrate normally. Eventually, the host has to resort to in vitro fertilization in order to get pregnant, and even then, it ends in a miscarriage.
- Lawful Stupid: Macrophage is dedicated to protecting his host, even mistaking things like intercourse as a planned assault on the host's body and nearly ruining her impregnation chance, despite the other cells trying to talk him down of being so gung-ho. The latter case is Truth in Television, since sperm and (for a brief moment) a fertilized egg are considered foreign entities to the female's immune system due to them containing a different DNA set compared to the host's own.
- Menstrual Menace: The third chapter has PMS as the cause of the abnormalities that attack the cells that work in the female body.
- Noble Male, Roguish Male: Sophisticated, gentlemanly Macrophage as the noble male and the rough, uncouth Killer T as the roguish male.
- No Periods, Period: Averted, as one of the arcs focuses on the cells dealing with the host's Pre-Menstrual Syndrome. The actual event is depicted as giant robotic hands (prostaglandin) squeezing the lavish bed (uterus) and forcing the endometrial cells out, where they are carried away on a boat manned by a Red Blood Cell.
- Post-Stress Overeating: Naturally Deconstructed in one chapter, since the host ingesting a large amount of food due to something happening to her love life, leading to constipation and her urinary tract to nearly become infected with E. Coli due to the build up of waste materials.
- Sperm as People: Just like with CODE BLACK, the sperm cells make their appearance, but unlike in BLACK, where their fate is an Ambiguous Situation, here we see them actively fulfill their duty of fertilizing the ovum. Their design is also altered slightly from BLACK, as instead of wearing a tuxedo as seen in concept art, they're depicted as Bishōnen knights to parallel the ovum's appearance as a regal princess.
