Cells at Work! taught an entire generation how their immune system worked. It piqued kids’ interest in biology, became a global anime hit, and inspired parents to explain white blood cells to their sick children using cartoon characters. Behind all of that, Akane Shimizu was going through one of the worst periods of her life, and nobody at Kodansha was doing anything about it.
The Abuse Akane Shimizu Was Hiding While Drawing Red Blood Cells For a Living
On June 15, 2026, Shimizu posted on X that during the serialization of Cells at Work! between 2015 and 2021, she was diagnosed with depression and trichotillomania, and later developed PTSD.
She also disclosed that she experienced financial and sexual abuse from a close relative, and that family members added secondary harm on top of that. The sister who originally inspired her to create the manga is someone she has since had to cut off entirely.
In November 2025, she gave her first public hint that something was wrong, posting that she had been continuously dealing with serious troubles with people around her during the serialization period. By June 2026, she was ready to say more, and the reason she decided to go public was specific. For about six months, she had felt that legal pressure was being suggested in a way that implied her career could be impacted if she kept talking. She was not going to wait to find out.
The Editor, the Broken Promises, and Kodansha’s Apology
Then came the July posts, and this is where the controversy became an industry story rather than just a personal one. Starting July 1, Shimizu shared a detailed account of what her editor, referred to only as Mr. A, put her through during the serialization. It is a separate issue from the sexual abuse she had previously described, and she was clear about that.
When Cells at Work! began serialization in 2014, Shimizu said she was promised medical supervision for the manga. The series is about human cells and immune responses, and needed to be medically accurate.
When the first volume was published in 2015, it contained numerous inaccuracies, and no medical supervisor was listed. Readers noticed and criticized her research. She went to Mr. A and asked for the supervision system to be properly set up. His response was that it was just a manga, so being inaccurate was fine.
She bought medical reference books out of her own pocket and kept going. She also needed professional manga assistants, which is a standard provision for published manga artists at major publishers. Instead, she was given aspiring artists who refused to take on key production tasks, leaving her and a small group of dedicated assistants to pull all-nighters to meet deadlines.
When a reader commented online that the art style had gotten rough and wondered if she had dumped the work on her assistants, the reality was the complete opposite. She was doing more of it herself than she ever should have been.
She made requests for improvement in 2016, 2017, 2018, and again after the manga went on hiatus. Each time, she was either dismissed, promised changes that never came, or told that the problem was her personality.
When she asked about medical supervision in one meeting, Mr. A reportedly said, “Are you still mad about that? You’re being way too persistent.” When she asked for professional assistants another time, she was told, “You need to change your habit of blaming everyone else for your problems.”
By the time the manga went on hiatus, Shimizu had contemplated standing in front of an express train. The publicly announced reason for the hiatus was preparation for a better serialization environment. What she was told privately by the editor-in-chief and Mr. A was that she had run out of ideas and needed to go out and have fun.
After she ended her relationship with the editorial department in 2023, Kodansha changed her credit on Cells at Work! spin-off from Original Creator: Akane Shimizu to Cooperation: Shimizu Production, without telling her. In 2026, she discovered her name had been removed entirely from the 2019 Cells at Work! Illustrated Guide. The Sirius Editorial Department was credited in her place. When she asked why, she was told it was to avoid causing her trouble in case the content contained medical errors.
Kodansha posted a formal apology on July 3, acknowledging that the editorial department failed to establish medical supervision, failed to provide necessary production support, and did not properly confirm credits with Shimizu on spin-off titles. The editor referred to as Mr. A is no longer working with Shimizu, though whether they are still employed at Kodansha has not been confirmed.
Shimizu’s posts also opened a door for other manga artists to speak up. Kayatamaru, the creator of The Girl, the Shovel, and the Evil Eye, revealed they had not received royalties from overseas e-book sales for over a year, with no apology.
Meiji Merou, of Magical Girl and Narco Wars, wrote that they had been repeatedly told by past editors that they were inferior to other artists and would end up a loser, adding that there was a tendency to emotionally corner artists back then. Q-ta Minami wrote that if even Shimizu, after achieving massive commercial success, was still being treated that badly by her editor, then there was really no hope. The fact that she is still alive and still making manga, Minami said, is a miracle.
Shimizu confirmed that discussions with Kodansha are ongoing, that all current spin-offs and licensed works are being produced only with her personal approval and consent, and that her current working environment is positive. She said she reads every message of support she receives and considers it one of the most important sources of strength in her life.