Sensei's 2015.04 Update: Just in time for Thanksgiving

[sensei]

Good for you, Kino! I see that among the silly, sarcastic comments on YouTube, there is at least one polite request for a decently subbed version of the special. I suspect Dracula is much less silly being voiced by Kenji Utsumi, who was one of the giants of voice acting. And I greatly suspect that the translation used by the dubbers may have been deliberately campy, with the original ... well ... not more logical, but ... well ... Anyhow, it's an entertaining way to spend 90 minutes, and with a little craft beer or a mild hallucinogen, it can be rather mind-altering.

[Quacker]

Another truly wonderful eclectic update Sensei which encompasses anime that spans across the 70s, 80s, 2k & present!

Congratulations on acquiring the 'Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned' cel. I had heard from other serious collectors about this..........let's say 'unique' production, in that the scarcity of Cels (materials etc.) is only matched by the camp absurdity of the show itself. If that is the case, I firmly believe this rare piece of anime-history has found its new perfect home in your storied collection.

The 'Asatte no Houkou' genga of Shouko is a beautiful piece. For something that is supposed to be a 'rough' layout, there is a fair amount of detail within the character image. I agree with you that the little 'visual touches' drawn in by Itoh-sama shows the care & respect he had for his characters. Thank-you for also taking the time to re-animate those new sequences too.

But of course for me, your new 'Rozen Maiden' additions takes home the cake. The Shinku-copy is another tremendous find as production materials from the latest series are extremely rare as the Japan-side hard-core collectors battle over anything that does see the light of day! I am glad to see that the meticulous attention to detail that the original series' was renowned for is still being adhered to; as witnessed by the details in Shinku-copy's bonnet, hair & dress.

I also find myself intrigued by your 'Yamibou' section.
It is another series that is yet to receive an 'official' release in Australia (and probably never will), which is surprising considering both Yuji Yamaguchi & Asako Nishida were heavily involved with its production; these two were also involved with the 2006 'Fate/Stay Night' series as both Director & Animation Director respectively. Whilst viewing your new additions in this section I recognized the Character Design & my suspicions were confirmed whilst reading through your comments.

Thank-you once more for sharing your latest acquisitions & taking the time to research & write-up the relevant information for each art piece.

[sensei]

Thanks, James, for your interesting observations from your collector's observation post. I'm intrigued by your comments on sketchwork for RM Zurueckspulen. I know I'd never seen anything from this series up for auction on Yahoo Japan, nor on Mandarake, though in its present format with cels and sketchwork on separate pages, it would have been easy for me to miss it if it had. It was just a surprise gift from my daughter as a consolation for not being able to attend AnimeNext and give the panel on collecting anime art as I'd planned. She got it from Cel Depot (Killua's con-going concern). When I first got it, I was initially puzzled, as first-series RM art is standard-sized while this was letterboxed.

I'd hoped that perhaps this item would be the harbinger of more RMZ art to appear, but, sadly, it sounds from what you've heard this is unlikely. As other collectors have noted, the increasing control studios have over their used art is a factor that is making collecting much more difficult. (Imagine if as many sketches were coming out for Battle on Titan as did for Fullmetal Alchemist.)

Thanks for your other comments, and for exploring the Asatte additions. That is a beautiful little series that deserves more respect (and a better English title than the nonsensical "Living for the Day After Tomorrow"). And Dracula certainly deserves credit for being a quick-moving title full of surprises. Finally, thanks for noting the link between YamiBou and Fate/Stay Night, which I'll add to the notes.

Yes, there are rumblings all round that anime art collecting, or at least the community that's supported it all these years, or at least the 15-year-old virtual infrastructure it uses, is all knocked in the head. But I'm still finding that it has its unique pleasures. Well ... maybe just one more update ...

[sensei]

Got my latest upgrade posted, the fourth for this year, during time when I probably should have been paying attention to the Open House

Plastic lovers? You have an easy choice:

One of my increasingly infrequent Cardcaptor Sakura additions, "Prince Sakura" suddenly being returned to reality at the end of the memorable Light/Dark ordeal in Ep. 42. It's a favorite episode (I even did an academic publication on it!) and a memorable moment. Or...

From Office Academy's 1980 production of Maeterlinck's Blue Bird,a lively image of Mytyl and Tyltyl starting off on their existential journey. With the original play increasingly forgotten and the various movie versions all turkeys of different species, it's nice to know that the anime is the one genuinely viable version of this classic story.

Paper lovers? Ah ... you have a more difficult set of choices and a longer journey ahead, though, arguably, you will find yourself learning more this way. You may begin with:

A Tree of Palme (2001), an ambitious film that was mostly cel-based with some CGI effects. The additions this time are all paper, though, including

A long, thin background that, looked at one way, seems to be a spectacular panorama of a desolate landscape, typical of many scenes in this dark movie. Actually, it turns out to be just a mud puddle that one character gets slapped into during a flashback. Whatever it depicts, it is one of the biggest pieces of animation art that I own (fully 26 1/2 inches wide) and it shows incredible artwork. I love to explore it with my eyes. Also...

Some interesting sets of gengas from key moments, one showing Popo defying her domineering mother for the first time and the other showing her starting out on her journey to the Underworld with a suitably thin, grim smile. Then there's ...

Yamibou, the 2006 Studio Deen videogame based adventure. A lot of 3 layouts yielded...

this terrific image of the warrior woman Hazumi in full cry, going with gengas I already had of her preparing her move. Plus the preternaturally cute prepubescent Milka and the demon Seiren caught in a tricky situation. Or you could look at paper from

Rozen Maiden, the 2004 Nomad classic (at least the first season; the second led to such a gummed-up finish that the main characters had to get their alter egos from the next decade to come world-skipping to save them). This time it's a nice matched set from the Ep. 11 "Alice Game" showing Suigintou getting the upper hand and Shinku by no means down and out yet. Or check out...

One of my rare Inuyasha sketch additions, this one showing Kagome painfully realizing that her rival Kikyo is nearby. This sketch set attracted me because it was reasonably priced (IY paper has really gone up in value since I was picking up sketch sets for a song a few years ago) and because it contained art by animator Atsuo Tobe, who did only three episodes for the first series of IY (plus one more for The Final Act). Tobe is a far-traveled artist, and I already had some of his work for Slayers Try and Hyper Police.

Or if you're a real fan of anime sketchwork, explore...

Asatte no Houkou (J. C. Staff, 2006), for which I've added five two cuts, all with reanimations of varying length. One feature of this series is the extensive contributions by the two senior animation directors, Character designer Ikuko Itou (Sailor Moon, Princess Tutu) and Shinya Hasegawa (Revolutionary Girl Utena). The highlight, for me, was this gorgeous "shuusei no shuusei" by Itou-sama of Karada (the little girl grown old) in a contented moment. Also from nearby cuts are sketches featuring Karada's big-brother-only-not-really and the grown girl (and Hiro's former lover) become little girl again Shouko (this also has a nice shuusei by Itou-sama.

From Ep. 10, one supervised by Hasegawa (who had quite a different style of correcting, equally good but more delicate) you can see this culminating image at the end of a very dramatic scene (quick, start the wind machine and unleash the hair animators!) and a cute cut from a flashback showing poor Karada-chan sobbing after her future boyfriend hurts her feelings.

Enjoy! (And now off to finish up those Open House feedbacks...)

[Quacker]

I am also in the midst of completing *phantom* Open House comments, only have one more to finalize - it has been a busy fortnight!!

Wow! Is it just me or does this latest update trump all of this year's previous updates thus far? Every piece had its own unique beauty to it or something that ultimately grabbed you and said..........shouted "Hey look at me!". The detail & research provided within the comments is as always meticulous providing an interesting yet entertaining read.

I know I usually like to point out a 'favourite' new item, one that really strikes my fancy (i.e. "Damn You, wish I had gotten that" :-p) but in this instance I cannot, there is no clear-cut favourite, each new item is stunning. The 'InuYasha' Kagome Genga is an Awesome find, displaying the talents of the under-appreciated Tobe-san. Both the 'Yamibou' and 'Asatte no Houkou' additions make me curse how selective the past nature of Australia's anime releases were. Of course seeing any new Cardcaptor', 'Rozen Maiden', & 'Blue Bird' within your Gallery is a highlight too.

Congratulations on all your latest additions Bill.
Oh one question - what is the latest subject for your background? It looks like a plant??

[sensei]

Thanks for visiting, Quacker. As I face up to the responsibilities of maintaining a large collection, I'm getting more and more cautious about the new items I get. Paper can be maintained more predictably than plastic. (I'm still experiencing cold chills over reading Charon's experience with melting 80s-era cels.) So I'm quicker to add to my RM and AnH collections than to my already large cel collection. But even so, I think twice or more before I commit to a bid for anything.

I'm glad that this leads to what you see as a consistency of choices based on my (admittedly somewhat quirky) sense of taste. I appreciate your comments, the more so as this tighter focus in collecting means fewer and fewer comments on my updates. Still, I get the same old charge in processing a box of new arrivals. I'm still enjoying that wonderfully surreal long pan Tree of Palmeimage of the mud puddle (can't help seeing it as a huge panorama of tundra wasteland seen from a high peak by an explorer). And a nice shuusei by Ikuko Itou always makes my aging heart go pitty-pat.

Oh one question - what is the latest subject for your background? It looks like a plant??

That is an atmospheric photo of the angel's trumpet (Brugmansia spp.) that I have in a big pot at the end of my driveway. I found it years ago in a too-small pot at a greenhouse in central Pennsylvania, and it quickly outgrew every pot I gave it in that chilly climate. In the warmer coastal region where I live, it's found a habitat (and a huge pot) that it likes, and so it blooms every year from late summer into fall, sometimes as late as Halloween. In the day it attracts admiring neighbors from up and down the street, and at light, when it lets its intoxicating scent loose, it draws every moth in the county. Plus little frogs who perch on the outside of the "bells" and go for the little ones (the big moths could easily fly off with the tiny hoppers).



I just wanted a bg with a dark yellow/orange hue for this color scheme, and this snapshot worked.

[Jadeduo]

I didn't comment right away, but I did look at the update as soon as it came out. I just haven't had a chance to comment! I of course am biased and the hit the newest CCS addition to your collection. It's quite lovely and of course I am always awed in how you are able to find out so much information about each individual cut, the animators, and even the details of the cel itself.

I also took a moment to go over every piece of your CCS collection again just to enjoy ^_^

I was also very in awe of CGI art added, I am really old school in that most of what I have watched recently is not very new, but your newest Rozen Maiden is quite lovely, and the whole collection makes me want to go check it out.

Thanks again for your contributions to the community and I always look forward to a new update from you!

JD

[JWR]

I don't remember ever hearing anything about Yamibou but this sketch http://sensei.rubberslug.com/gallery/in ... mID=378505 makes me want to find out more.

Using your Angel's trumpets as a background reminds me of last year my during the Gallery feedback project involved the use of a salad as your gallery wallpaper.

[sensei]

Thanks, JD and JWR. I know it takes more than "a moment" to look through my CCS collection (I recently finished a personal checklist of cels/sketches, and even so I know there are a few that haven't officially been logged in). So I appreciate your remarks. CCS holds a special place, as it was the series that really convinced me that anime was a matured art form, and I consider myself lucky that I had the opportunity to be in the collecting game when prime material was coming on the market.

Those RM roughs are by Kimiko Tamai, whose animation style I really really like. I keep expecting her to emerge as character designer/chief animation director for some hugely popular anime, because she did a super job on the episodes she directed (2, 6, and 11). I wonder if she hasn't gone into some other, more profitable artistic design career.

JWR, you can watch an OK fansub of Yamibou (or Yami to Bōshi to Hon no Tabibito for long) on YouTube. There is also an official Media Blaster release announced, but I can't tell if it ever actually came out. The character designer, Asako Nishida, has done some very splashy assignments otherwise, notably Simoun and Vampire Knight. I don't much care for the yuri plot but Hazuki nevertheless appeals to me as a very capable warrior girl with a mission.

I alternate backgrounds based on snapshots with those that are extreme close-ups of background or sketch art. This month seemed like time to turn from light, sunny color schemes (to go with potato salad) to more earthy fall/winter feels.

Thanks for visiting and for your reactions!

[KinoLRB]

I always look forward to your updates, Sensei. Congratulations on more amazing finds!

I was most intrigued by the duality of the "Tree of Palme" pan background (another movie that I need to see, thanks to your descriptions). A haunting image in any context.

And your InuYasha collection is always a favorite to return to. Your collection is quite a unique combination of images with close attention paid to the animators and directors at work. Your new Kagome sketch (the layout especially) is beautifully realized, her expression quietly unsettled. Great stuff.

[sensei]

Thanks, Kino. Palme is well worth a watch, though I like to call it "a great movie and a half." Unfortunately, the "half" is not very good, and because it's integral to the plot, it can't be skipped. But the great stuff really is Miyazaki-level quality. Don't worry if a lot of it doesn't make sense. As I understood, Nakamura wanted it to be a multi-episode TV series, and when he couldn't swing this, he boiled down the plot in his head to 130 minutes and did it as a feature movie. So there are all kinds of plot elements that kick in briefly and then vanish, and even after watching several times, I still can't figure out how or why all the principal characters survive at the end. Somehow it "feels right," but don't ask me to explain it.

But no matter: two-thirds of it is an exhilarating ride, if you're willing to surf along on the cusp of incomprehensibility. The team opted for super-high-quality production art, meaning surreal backgrounds, more cels than usual (because of higher frame speed), etc.

Thanks, too, for the comments on the IY sketch. I'm hoping that more of this sort is going to trickle on the market, as the CGI half of the series has pleasures of its own, even without the joys of paint on plastic. As you say, it's fascinating to be able to eavesdrop on the internal conversation of the animators to see how a screen image got constructed, not by inspiration but by several layers of hard work.

[Ichigos]

Yo sensi, for http://sensei.rubberslug.com/gallery/in ... mID=314811 what program did you use to put the animation together?

[sensei]

Jasc Animation Shop 3.11. It may not be the best animation software out there, but it has a handy "wizard" that makes it easy to rough out the basic sequence, and then it's pretty intuitive to figure out the fine-tuning and clean-up. It's also a free shareware.

[sensei]

Last of the year update! I think the "Gallery of the Year" is a runaway this time, though three-time winner Rozen Maiden made it a contest to the very end. In any case, it's been quite a year for paper rather than plastic. While not as immediately compelling as paint-on-acetate, really good sketches have a power of their own, the more so as they record the moment when a familiar image from your DVD actually came into existence.

This set took more than the usual time to put up, because the sketch sets were very full, often recording the animation process from layouts to final dougas. In between, the issues often became so complicated that it took scanning and "flickering" different versions of the images to determine the order in which the sketches were executed, and by which member of the studio team. So the discussion in the notes to these sketches is sometimes fussy and long-winded (though essential if you really want to know how a given series was created behind the scenes).

So if you are a plastic lover, your decision is simple:



Go visit Maeterlinck's Blue Bird for a moody (and grandly oversized) cel of the two children Tyltyl and Mytyl looking wistfully out the window of their humble domicile, while their rich neighbors whoop it up at a Christmas party celebrating the god of wretched excess.

OK done and done. But if you're game, you'll follow me into the unseen recesses of Angelic Layer, Studio Bones' first important project (Wolf's Rain, Ouran High School Host Club, and Fullmetal Alchemist were to follow in short order). I was luck to get three interesting sketch sets from different episodes.



One animates the awkward moment when the newbie Misaki, who's just met the more experienced doll-battler Hotoko, first comes face-to-face with Hotoko's good lucking older brother. The reactions are all different and typical of the characters, so check out the reanimations of the dougas.

A bonus was the featured rough, probably by the episode AD Hiroki Kanno, later character designer for RahXephon and Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood.



Another shows poor Angel Hikaru absorbing a big hit in one of her difficult early battles in Ep. 5. She gets knocked head over heels for a country mile, so don't miss the huge copy layout that came with this set, or the reanimation of the dougas.



And an especially interesting set shows another battle sequence, this one from Ep. 7, where Hikaru's opponent, an arrogant and aggressive angel called Tsubaki, decides to make it a short match and closes for the brutal kill. That proved an interesting sketch set, as the roughs and gengas were both hopelessly inadequate. So the sketches featured were done as a full set of complete shuusei sketches that completely reworked the action. Again, stay for the reanimation.

Then comes Asatte no Houkou, an unjustly undervalued series in my opinion. I'd already begun the year with a quirky tour, untangling as far as I could the complicated assignments of chief and episode animation directors. Clearly it was a series that the two senior ADs wanted to be just right, and when you have artists of the calibre of Ikuko Itou (Sailor Moon, Princess Tutu) and Shinya Hasegawa (Utena, TV series and movie), you know the art is going to be crazy good. Especially as both animators didn't just fuss and supervise, but got their pencils out and did roughs and shuusei gengas by the dozens.

This update introduced me to the artwork for Episode 1, for which I previously had only a few copy layouts. Itou was the senior animation director for this crucial adventure, while Ryoichi Oki (a veteran of both Utena and Ai Yori Aoshi) laid the groundwork. Sometimes more than once! In two crucial cuts, I found a series of complete shuusei sketches, likely by Oki. But ... they did not correct the gengas, as I'd expected, but rather the gengas were traced from these revised sketches. It seems odd, but it looks as if Itou, who heavily revised Oki's first drafts, made this artist do complete revisions of his work under her eyes before the art was ready for the gengamen. And then ... more corrections and refinements by Itou, sometimes at the very last moment. One douga set contains kabuse dougas, indicating that the first run-through of the cut just wasn't good enough for the senior AD.

So, if you're interested in how animation actually gets handled behind the scenes, walk through these new displays. Or just cut to the good stuff and watch the reanimations. Or cut even quicker and go to this beauty:



That's a little A1 END cut that Itou for some reason wanted to get just right. So (as the timing sheet confirms) she did this one-key scene herself, executing a lovely portrait of the little girl Karada in intimate detail. Unlike the sketchwork for all the surrounding cuts, this gem went direct from Itou's desk to the douga artist.

And if you've read this far and explored this thoroughly, you're ready for a final treasure:



along with its sequence-buddy,



WARNING! These come from a pivotal scene in the climax of Rozen Maiden's first season (generally considered a stand-alone masterpiece, or in any case much better than the second season). So viewers who don't like spoilers with their art might want to pass them by.

But ... dang! ... they are the work of Kumii Ishi, chief animation director for the series, and both hit the complex emotions of this moment in the final combat exactly right. So you gotta go see them, ne? And watch the episode (which bears watching and rewatching anyhow...)

No more till the new year. And an enjoyable holiday season to you all, with lots and lots of animation loot in Santa-sama's sleigh, enough for everyone!

[majinuub]

Great and informative update as usual Sensei , especially the Asatte no Hōkō sketch.