Cells at Work! Baby 1

The cells inside a baby's body are the cast here, and the baby is still unborn. A young Red Blood Cell collects oxygen from the workers at the Placenta and, on the same trip, meets a White Blood Cell for the first time. Both are newer to the job than the adults of the original series.

Then tremors begin to shake their world. The cells go to the Gene Library to work out what is happening and learn that it is a contraction. The body will soon have to live on its own outside the womb.

This is a spinoff of Akane Shimizu's Cells at Work, which follows the cells of an adult body. Here the personified cells are younger and more childlike versions of their adult counterparts. The manga uses that setup as a guided tour of a newborn's body during and just after birth.

It treats real medical problems as part of the plot, among them fluid in the lungs and early illness. The first volume starts in the last stretch of pregnancy, so it moves from a calm, sheltered setting toward the upheaval of delivery.