Looking for Seimei no Kagaku - Micro Patrol

[LilaQ]

Hi there!

A while ago I was sucked into cel collecting, and I would really love to get my hands on some cels from the show:

"Seimei no Kagaku - Micro Patrol" (JAP)
"Es war einmal... das Leben" (GER)
"Il était une fois… la Vie" (FRA)
"Once Upon a Time... Life" (ENG)

Not sure which naming convention it is best known as.
Sadly I can't find anything, I tried eBay, googling, etc. and now I found this forum, and hope that maybe someone here can help me out.

Any information would be greatly appreciated, offers / links even more!

Thanks in advance & Best regards
LQ

[sensei]

The series is listed in Anime News Network's Encyclopedia under the first of your titles:

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encycl ... p?id=11517

It seems to have been popular in international licensing. Made for a French TV network, I can see that it was also dubbed and broadcast in Polish, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Arabic. (Plus it was released in Japan as an OVA.) The producing studio was Eiken.

Might be worth sending a query to Takamura Store, which has a very wide stock of cels from series of that general period (1987) that are not as visible among collectors as classic series from just after this date.

Good luck: it seems a quest well worth engaging.

[LilaQ]

Oh wow, awesome. Thank you so much! I will definitely contact them right away!

[LilaQ]

Okay, I got a reply, sadly they haven't encountered any cels of it yet

Do you maybe have more ideas where I could try my luck?

Thank you so much in advance for your help!
LQ

[sensei]

Wider-ranging collecting friends? Where do you find your most inaccessible cels and sketches? I can only suggest trolling the Mandarake auctions, which frequently are filled with series names that are unfamiliar to me.

[LilaQ]

I'm more or less the only one in my circle collecting cels, and so far eBay has been pretty much my only source

So all the (probably very well known for veteran cel collectors) links and sources you guys know, are really new to me, and help me a lot already!

I will check out these Mandarake auctions now as well, thanks

[sensei]

This takes a little more ingenuity if you are not competent in Japanese, but you can do a search on Yahoo Japan with the Japanese title.

生命の科学ミクロパトロール

and add セル画 ("celga" the Japanese term for "cel")

Another possibility is to Google the two terms. That will sometimes turn up an image that was glommed from a Mandarake or other auction sale. (They will sadly be long over, but it will give you some hints on where to look.)

Another is to join one of the Facebook groups devoted to animation art collecting, as these attract an international group that is often much more knowledgeable about selling/buying in Asia. I'm in the Rubberslug and Anime-Beta FB group, and also the Anime Cel Collectors groups (which has a sales/search page of its own).

I did do a preliminary search using the anime title on my home page at Rinkya (most non-Japanese collectors use a deputy service to bid on Yahoo Japan, for which you pay a modest commission on your wins). Nothing immediately showed up, and when I tried "Seimei no Kagaku" ("Once upon a time") I got lots of books that I'd assume use this tag. "Micro Patrol" by itself turned up some plastic figurines that might be from this series or another with a similar theme. Still, it might be worth trying.

Good luck.

[LilaQ]

Oh wow, thank you so much for this!

I guess it's time to re-create a Facebook account then

I will keep you updated if I'm successful! I really hope I can get my hands on some cels, sooner or later

[sensei]

No problems: in doing some of this trolling I found some really interesting pieces (from the same general animation era) that I would not have seen otherwise. This is, of course, the constant peril a collector faces whenever you're looking for something in particular.

S