Join us!

blorp.bot.nu/o/visual_cuisine

Note that you need a Hexbear account to use Blorptube. You may wish to use a VPN as well. Also, don’t use a cartoon from the 1980s as medical advice, not that I was expecting you to.

Also, if you use an anime tracker like Anilist or MAL: Once Upon a Time… Life is listed in a number of anime databases due to being a Japanese co-production.

What are we watching?

Episode titles: “The Cell Planet” — “Birth” — “The Body’s Sentinels” — “The Bone Marrow” — “The Blood”

Series description: Once Upon a Time… Life teaches about the human body and its various systems using the same characters from the other Once Upon a Time… seasons. The “good guys” (such as Pierrot and Mercedes from Space) represent the cells of the body’s defense mechanisms, and the “bad guys” (including the “red-nose guys” as one of our regulars calls them) represent the viruses and bacteria.

We’ll be watching the English dub, which this time around has pretty decent audio mixing.

Content warnings

I did rewatch a few episodes of this show a few years ago and honestly don’t really remember anything particularly offensive. I’ll just say that this show’s got body shit, so if you’ve got like trypophobia or don’t like looking at landscapes made of cartoon human flesh, then this show might be a problem for you. Also, a child gets infected with tetanus at one point, but ends up OK; a character dies of old age at some point I believe; there is some nudity in the opening; the immune system is presented as cops; the birth episode tells the “great sperm race” narrative and might trigger gender dysphoria for some people depending on how well you can handle other things related to gestation and birth.

All in all, though, this show is really the most innocuous Once Upon a Time… series, and I think that’s really a big part of why it’s had so much staying power compared to the other OUAT shows. Like I don’t think this show’s gonna have robot drapetomania like Space nor preach the Bible as fact like Man.

…But hey, Life is a sequel to those shows, so be prepared for That Sort of Thing. France in the '80s stuff. Weirdness around race and class. I don’t remember any of that stuff in this show, no, but I’m prepared to be proven wrong.