TL;DR: A 2-hour-long episode that dials the cuteness up to 11, with more than a few good laughs. Does have pacing issues and recycled animations from the previous show. Overall very enjoyable, but felt a bit stretched out.
Since Hataraku Saibou is not a particularly story-driven series, I was wondering how they would try to make it into a 2-hour long movie. The answer was by mashing 2 different stories together while adding new characters and giving fanservice for existing ones, with the end result being an enjoyable entry into the Hataraku Saibou series, even if the story felt extremely disjointed.
There are 2 core plot threads: one involves a normal cell trying to protect lactic acid bacteria he found, which are the new cute mascots for the series next to the platelets (don't worry, the platelets still return for plenty of screentime!). The other plot thread features the return of the cancer cell, who felt kind of shoved in because the movie needed a main villain, since he isn't even mentioned until halfway through the movie.
The end result is a thoroughly enjoyable movie, with plenty of laugh out loud moments with side characters such as the Natural Killer cell, and "awww so cuuute" moments with the platelets. However, the movie has massive pacing issues because the 2 main plot threads barely mesh together. It feels like the studio took 2 separate arcs that weren't long enough for a movie on their own and forced them together to get up to the movie run time.
The other issue with the movie is the animation - several of the fight scenes were noticeably just glorified slideshows with voices, and plenty of flashbacks to the main show and even to the beginning of the movie felt like an attempt to pad the run time.
Oh, and one last complaint - not enough "ara-ara" Macrophage onee-san!!!!!
All in all, I highly recommend the movie to fans of the series. It didn't disappoint and I enjoyed the return of the old characters and introduction of the new mascots. Unfortunately, a disjointed plot, pacing issues, and animation shortcuts knocked it down from a "Great!" to a "Very Good."
Final score: 7/10
