Some collaborations are just too perfect. Take this one between Cells At Work! and Sanrio which was announced on Wednesday.
You won’t find Hello Kitty or her friends anywhere in this collection. (I double checked the photos just to make sure.) Instead, you will find chibi versions of Red Blood Cell, White Blood Cell, and several other characters from this wonderful comedy series.
The characters are cute enough under normal circumstances. (Note that these are the characters from the main series, and not the darker and more serious Cells At Work! Code Black spin-off.)
But in this collaboration, the Sanrio designs really make them look like they belong at your local mall alongside My Melody, Little Twin Stars, and the rest. It probably also helps that cute and clumsy AE3803 always wears the same basic colors that Hello Kitty wears in the Animal Crossing Pocket Camp collaboration.
In any case, the collection features a lot of T-shirts, hoodies, one-piece long-length shirts, ‘room wear’ (they look like pajamas to me), and cushions. These designs are clever. It’s hard to see from the photo, but the Red Blood Cell T-shirt has one of her oxygen delivery boxes on the front like a designer label. The Platelet shirt has a flag, like the lead platelet often carries.
If you can’t decide which character is your favorite, you could get the T-shirt with a platelet, Macrophage, Helper T-Cell, Killer T-Cell, Red Blood Cell, and White Blood Cell (neutrophil). And the room wear is just covered with cells.
The items will be sold by Aeon’s casual fashion brand Double Focus starting on Friday. You can watch Cells at Work! on Crunchyroll.