After an unusually long "down" time, I've finally reopened my gallery with a smallish upgrade that had one surprisingly large consequence (as you'll see). New this time are four cels from "Golden Age" series and seven sketch sets from newer CGI series.
The most immediately splashy one is from Sanrio's 1981 film
Syrius no Densetsu, familiar here as
The Sea Prince and the Fire Child:
Malta pretending to be mad at Syrius
It's an engaging moment (more so if you know what happens in the scene), and I was happy to find that the delicate airbrushed wings (done on the front with no extra cel to protect them) were in fine shape.
Anyone who was watching Nick Toons during the late 80s and early 90s will remember
Noozles aka
Fushigi na Koala Blinky. Cels have been very scarce, but I've picked up two more:
Pinky getting a snack and
Pinky throwing a hissy fit (which she does quite often, if you know the series).
And from Mushi's foundational 1971 series
The Tales of Hans Christian Andersen:
The Old Man, his son, and a goat
Elders like me will notice the decided influence of Jay Ward Productions, whose
Rocky and Bullwinkle Show was a staple of American TV in the 1960s.
From the CGI front, I've added some additional art from
Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne, an early CGI project of Toei (1999-2000) that twists the magical girl theme in a dark direction, making it a predecessor of
Madoka Magica IMHO. (It was the first series with a cute magical helper who turns out to be evil!) All are from Ep. 37, close to the ending and so especially dark:
A funny image of
Chiaki upset because his dad has divorced his mom and wants to start dating again. (A lighthearted moment, but a serious theme throughout the series)
The demon-possessed boy Zen sees Jeanne appear. This character, though a guest, plays a pivotal role, and the animation directors seems to have fallen in love with him, as every rough and shuusei I've seen are full of emotion and fine detail.
and, best of all...
Bad, Bad, Claude Noin nonchalantly responding to Jeanne's magical attack. Noin-sama is one of the really memorable villains of anime (voiced by Kappei Yamaguchi), and here's he's at the top of his oily, intimidating form.
But the reason the upgrade took so long has to do with the additions from
Asatte no Hōkō aka
Living for the Day after Tomorrow (not a very good translation, IMHO). It had been a while since I'd checked the staff credits, and when I did, I quickly saw that I needed to upgrade this whole section with new and better information. Much of it had to do with the artists in the first set, from Ep. 7, in which Karada, the girl magically grown up, and Shōkō, the woman magically returned to childhood, collaborate to bake a birthday cake for the central male character Hiro. In the scene I got, the cake is pronounced delicious, and both characters respond with relief and happiness:
First Shōkō
Then Karada
After a fair amount of research, in which I got all of my AnH sketches out and compared them with each other, I finally realized that the artist of the first sketch (on light-salmon paper) had to be Masahiro Fujii, who was credited as episode animation director (and also did some lovely roughs for Ep. 12 as well). And the second one, on light-green paper, had to be the work of Fujii's supervisor, Senior Animation Director (of all the odd-numbered episodes) Ikuko Itō, who was also character designer for this series.
When I'd first set up the original AnH gallery, Anime News Network had misidentified the character designer as
Tomoko Itō, another active but less highly regarded animator. So it was with considerable surprise and wonder that I realized that a whole series of light-green sketches that I'd previously owned were in fact by Ikuko Itō. I'd seen that they were extraordinarily good from the start, but now I sense they are even more precious than I thought, especially as Itō-sama is something of an idol of mine for creating
Princess Tutu.
That and similar realizations led me to do a thorough item-by-item revision of the descriptions in both AnH galleries, and then to a new
Quirky Tour of AnH, during which I gave a much more detailed and accurate assessment of the series. [That, and some tests for a minor but annoying medical issue, account for the delay in reopening.]
Finally, two more AnH sketch sets, these from a crucial moment in Ep. 10 where the grown-up Karada has an intimate conversation with Tetsu, her much-younger boyfriend, who does not recognize her:
First Tetsu
Then Karada, after the conversation leads to a big confession.
Not as splashy an update as Quacker's (go look at that if you haven't already!) but worth a visit if you are interested in some significant but relatively unappreciated corners of anime.
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