Animation Art Collecting, for me, is like ... ?

[Cordelia]

like eating warm chocolate fudge with vanilla ice-cream......perks me up when I'm down. But over-consumption has dire consequences (to my wallet) too...


To collect cels and sketches is to own a piece of anime history...and they are like a keepsake for my memories. I get excited when I see the scene I own on screen. And of course, certain scenes are memorable, they still elicit the same response and kind of bring me back to how I was like then.

[teggacat]

like eating warm chocolate fudge with vanilla ice-cream......perks me up when I'm down. But over-consumption has dire consequences (to my wallet) too...

OMG, between you and DT, I'm starving!!! Just lovin' these
chocolate comparisons
now let me go back to thinking 'bout that hot fudge sundae....

[GuyvarIII]

What would you compare your experience in collecting cels or sketches to?

"Animation Art Collecting, for me, is like ..."

… buying an incomplete jigsaw puzzle; to marvel at the unique images on the individual pieces, and think of how the pieces I do own might be fit together.

[sensei]

Animation Art Collecting, for me, is like ... buying an incomplete jigsaw puzzle.

Interesting: I might just toss in that this is an analogy that occurred to me years ago when I was doing academic research on Nathaniel Hawthorne's activities in Great Britain in 1853-58. There were large parts of the puzzle that had been completed already, thanks to the survival of his personal journal and lots of letters. But the man was so devilish private in so many ways (and after he died, his wife didn't help by snipping out parts of his letters and burning them and then inking out large parts of his journal).

So a lot of my work was gleaning through archives, in the US and in England, looking for pieces that would help me put together the completed but disconnected pieces of the puzzle in a more coherent way.

I'll never forget the day when I asked for one last bound volume of routine records from the Liverpool Consulate (where he worked), opened it up, and saw a rolled up document that had been tucked randomly between the pages drop out onto the floor. I picked it up, unrolled it, and immediately realized that the unsigned record was mostly in the handwriting of Mr. Scarlet Letter. I read it (slowly, as Hawthorne's penmanship was never easy to read) and two big pieces of the puzzle suddenly came together for the first time in 125 years.

The jigsaw analogy was not the first one that first came to my mind, but I can see how GuyverIII's image fits animation art too.

[sensei]

I just "harvested" the first batch of data, but will let this thread run a few more days yet to see what else emerges. So far, all the examples can be fitted into the five core metaphors, though with some interesting twists that I think may be distinctive to animation art collecting (vs. stamps, autographs, baseball cards, etc.)

My thanks to those who have responded so far with some very thoughtful and, in some cases, surprisingly emotional reactions. I think I am getting a clearer sense of where the emotional core of the activity lies, which isn't where I expected but which, on reflection, begins to make perfect sense.

[sensei]

Harvesting data here too. Here in bold are the "canonical" five key metaphors, with some subtypes in italics that I found myself inventing to deal with some of the common ideas more specificially. Also a typical quote, either from this thread or from one of the others from this week that dealt with similar issues.

1. collecting is hunting

The thrill of the hunt followed by the joy of "bagging and tagging" the rarest of beasts the A1End.

[1a. collecting is a quest, a search for something valuable]

It's like going to estate sales. At the cheap sales you have to dig through piles of crap to find something worthwhile that gives you a sense of accomplishment when you finally find it.

[1b. collecting is possessing a piece of a historically significant event.]

Collecting for me is like going back in time and being able to see a beautiful monument (like the Taj Mahal) as it was being built.

2. collecting is therapy

Being something that, currently, I cannot be. I look at my gallery, often, at work. It calms me. It gives me a goal in life . . . to be the person that I really want to be.

[2a. collecting lets the owner meet or even imagine taking part in a favorite anime ]

It's like going backstage and getting a chance to meet and greet my favourite movie stars.

[2b. collecting lets the owner capture and revisit the past]

They are like a keepsake for my memories. I get excited when I see the scene I own on screen. And of course, certain scenes are memorable, they still elicit the same response and kind of bring me back to how I was like then.

3. collecting is passion, desire

It's like going out of my mind, I shriek, I laugh and I die a little.

4. collecting is a disease [or addiction]

The moment I start letting myself shop around I seem to set off a rather insatiable urge to keep buying more. It feels like a fall from sobriety, in all honesty.

5. collecting is a supernatural experience.

For me, the cel usually sparks up a good memory and I associate that good feeling to the cel everytime I look at it. Owning that piece is like creating a piece of magick and subsequent purchases in the same field are similar to continuing to build on that positive magickal energy.

One interesting issue I saw is that it challenged my academic source, which found that the "hunting," "passion," and "disease" metaphors were relatively plentiful, the "therapy" (like "supernatural") was relatively rare. I found, on the contrary, that it was the most commonly offered metaphor. There is certainly the common "addictive thrill of the hunt/quest" thread in anime art collecting. But I found that there is also a deeply felt complementary thread that finds that seeking out and possessing cels is a more profound way of engaging with an art form that the collector finds deeply meaningful.

I've felt for some time that anime (like the Western fairy tale) is an imaginative way of exploring troubling psychological conflicts, especially in the disorienting period of puberty and adolescence. (The idea that fairy tales were for children is a Victorian fiction justifying the routine bowdlerizing of much rougher narratives collected from oral tellings.) So it's intriguing that collecting anime art seems to parallel the collecting of Clow Cards, Shikon jewel shards, pieces of Mytho's shattered heart, etc. etc.

This will take some patient thinking and sorting out. Meantime, thanks to all who, both here and in other threads, confided in me some of your personal feelings. The fact that there is so much emotion invested in the activity, over and above the usual passion for order, is extremely interesting and makes me feel as if I've chosen an extraordinary topic for my little ethnography.

[Sylia]

I've felt for some time that anime (like the Western fairy tale) is an imaginative way of exploring troubling psychological conflicts, especially in the disorienting period of puberty and adolescence. (The idea that fairy tales were for children is a Victorian fiction justifying the routine bowdlerizing of much rougher narratives collected from oral tellings.) So it's intriguing that collecting anime art seems to parallel the collecting of Clow Cards, Shikon jewel shards, pieces of Mytho's shattered heart, etc. etc.

Anime as a medium in general is largely like that to me as well, only one of the things I think is really interesting is it targets quite a diverse range of things and age transitions between different groups. I think it's really that diversity that keeps me coming back... One can always go back and explore something else about childhood, about transitions in teenage years, as well as find a lot of usefulness in what writers have to say about adulthood. It's all quite therapeutic and can spark a lot of introspection and personal evolution. Semi-relatedly, I like the fact that some of the overbloated side of showbusiness doesn't get in the way of the messages and ideas sometimes so much in the anime medium, quite as much as some other mediums can ^^.

Well... that wasn't about what cel collecting is to me... at least it's shorter than what I'd have written if it was lol ^^;

[pixie_princess]

Animation art collecting for me is like...

Going out with a fresh roll of film in my camera

(or an empty memory card and fresh battery in this day and age lol)

Basically open to unlimited possibilities and you never know what you'll be able to capture on film.