Mandarake Correction Compilation?

[sunny]

Are correction compilations on Mandarake copies? I have noticed they auction for $100's of dollars.
What stops Mandarake from selling unlimited amounts of these copies? Does anyone know?

Like this Madoka one went for $5000 recently:
https://ekizo.mandarake.co.jp/auction/i ... dex=636736

[oxypetalus]

I'm not an expert on any of this but they look like copies to me. For the Madoka ones specifically they look to be 4 scans on one sheet too so it's not even full size for each image. Madoka Magica art is in high demand but some of these ending prices are truly ridiculous. This Made in Abyss correction compilation went crazy high too: https://ekizo.mandarake.co.jp/auction/i ... dex=605564 ... With Mandarake auctions there's a chance that even if an item goes crazy high the actual winner may not pay up and I hear they may offer the item to the next highest bidder or relist the item and maybe it'll be a bit more reasonably priced then.

As for your question about what's stopping Mandarake from making unlimited copies and selling them? Honestly in theory nothing but I don't think that would fit into their store concept and may possibly get them into legal trouble. As far as I know they only sell items brought in by individuals who either consign or sell their items to Mandarake directly. Items may come from Anime studio staff looking to get extra money because of how little they get paid or maybe other collectors selling off their collections etc. As far as I know Mandarake is pretty serious about not selling fake/counterfeit animation art. For BWA ( Big web Auction) items or other items of certain starting price like 10,000 yen and above they will usually come with Mandarake's certificate of authenticity with a guarantee that it's not fake or they will refund you. If Mandarake made copies of an item themselves it would no longer be an authentic studio copy.

[sunny]

Thank you for the write up. I am new to the hobby and recently started looking at Mandarake to buy things.

I have looked up past auctions and found the same sailor moon setting sheets being sold like 5 times over a 1-4 year period.
I have noticed the number of sheets differ each time.
I guess most of these are legit copies but I still don't understand why they go for so much money.
I also haven't really seen them being re-sold on ebay or yahoo.jp.

Now that I know they are pretty much copies I will probably skip buying these.

[cutiebunny]

The corrections look like authentic genga to me. It looks like the scans were made on an oversized scanner, so at least in the Madoka case, they were able to fit 4 sheets on it. I would imagine that the scanner that Mandarake has access to is much larger than my A3 oversized scanner, so while I can't fit 4 sheets on mine, maybe they can on their scanner (or they've digitally edited the scans to appear 4 per picture). The genga all have their registration holes and I don't see the telltale signs of copied genga on a color copier, such as the registration holes not being white but gray due to shadow from the copier.

Price is also another giveaway. Madoka doesn't have the popularity that it once did, but for it to command $5K years after production, that also indicates that they're not copies. I don't think Made in the Abyss has a huge following in Japan, so that also tells me that it's authentic genga.

I'd recommend collecting these sheets if I were you. They're often done by the character designer, episode director or someone higher up in the animation field. They're basically instructions to the inbetween animators as to how the character should look like in the sequence and the junior animators often trace over portions of that genga to make the douga which is what scanned into the computer and colored digitally there.


The auctions that you mostly want to avoid are the settei auctions. Usually Mandarake and various Yahoo Japan sellers will sell a packet of 10+ sheets. That indicates that what you're buying are copies, although there are some rare exceptions where Mandarake will be selling a couple of settei from an older and/or not popular series.

[oxypetalus]

Cutiebunny, you are absolutely right. When they are real, correction sheets are very collectible for the reasons you stated. I am still not convinced that the "correction compilations" on Mandarake are not copies though. When you do a general search for closed auctions on Mandy for "correction compilation" over 90% of them are obvious copies. I took another look and maybe the Madoka ones are real? though I'm still not sure. There's some questions I have about them. Like if there were real why did they sell them in a lot of 51 sheets when in the past sets of 2-3 sheets alone fetched prices of 1k+ ? Of course perhaps demand is lower like you mentioned but I see no reason why they wouldn't spread out the pages into different listings. I can see why you think they are real though. They are very high quality copies if they are copies. The reason I thought that they were multiple sheets on a single page is because that it is common in past compilation collections. They often say "4 pages copy 1 sheet" or "plural pages copy on one sheet" though it is not always specified. Sometimes they look to be more obvious copies sometimes they look to be higher quality. ex: https://ekizo.mandarake.co.jp/auction/i ... dex=640396 or https://ekizo.mandarake.co.jp/auction/i ... dex=636354 or https://ekizo.mandarake.co.jp/auction/i ... dex=605626 I think the Madoka ended up high because people mistook them for originals. The real value is probably closer to 30000 yen.


I'm certain the Made in Abyss ones were copies though. I didn't realize it but the situation I mentioned where it goes high but the winner doesn't pay up happened with those so it was relisted and ended much cheaper.
https://ekizo.mandarake.co.jp/auction/i ... dex=605564 (ended at 240,000 yen)
https://ekizo.mandarake.co.jp/auction/i ... dex=627101 (relisted with clarification it was a copy not original ended at 30,000 yen)
The giveaway that these are copies is the first image the top above the peg holes is cut off. If you examine the third image you can see where the edge of the actual image ends and where there was extra blank space printed onto the paper. The fourth images shows two sheets sized down and trimmed to fit on a single page etc..


Overall it seems "Correction compilation" seems to be a relatively new category of studio production goods. According to Mandy on this page: https://earth.mandarake.co.jp/help/auc- ... rd-en.html
This is their official notice on them:
"Setting, Storyboard and Correction compilation
Settings and storyboards are usually photocopies ones.
When they are handwritten will we say so in the description.

Scripts, cels, storyboards and similar anime products all come from animation production process.
Notes, cuttings and pasted areas, folding, stapling and other modifications made during the anime production process may not fully be mentioned in the item description.
This is especially in the case of damage to big sized layouts, genga, doga, genga photocopy and so on."

[sunny]

I have noticed on the "Big Web Auctions" they do specify if items are copies or not. But for "everyday auctions" they leave it very vague.
I am sure there are bidders outside of Japan thinking these are real.
Also they probably have run into these issues more than once so they really should specify on all auctions if they are copies. It's a little shady...

[cutiebunny]

Ok, I stand corrected. I had no idea that Mandarake now has a new category with a new description. I had always assumed that the English translation was just an truncated version of the Japanese version and had hoped that the Japanese text would specify if they were copies or not.

Still can't believe that someone would spend $5K for copies but then again, during Madoka's heyday, someone dropped over $1K for a 3 frame reel clip from the 'snuggle' part of the Madoka movie opening, so really...what do I know..?

[kathpatty]

I bought one once and they were copies