A long-deferred wish

[sensei]

Just to generate some chatter and exercise our memories: Have you ever watched for some particular cel or kind of cel or just any art from some particularly elusive series for a long, long time, and then finally have your wish come true?

I'm thinking about this, as I'd been idly watching for art from one of my "Golden Age" series for six or seven years. But I'd had so little luck that I began to assume that it had all perished, either through a studio decision or just from neglect, since animation art was not considered particularly collectable at that time. And then ... without any particular fanfare ... here's a batch of four cels popping up for sale this week.

Anyone with a similar experience?

[Jadeduo]

Sensei, cool idea I will totally back the chatter play we need some noise in the community again! Just recently I was able to acquire an episode 1 Dragonball cel! All the way from 1986! I guess not as old as some of you vintage Golden Age stuff but still it will be the oldest cel in my collection once it arrives!

There is always a ton of DBZ available to acquire depending on how much you want to pay for it, but Dragonball not so much, and what has been out there has been like teeny tiny cels with not a lot of quality... So when this one came up, and the image takes up almost the entire piece of acetate, I was so there!

It's not here yet but I will be definitely posting as soon as it arrives!

Happy Hunting!
Jadeduo!

[sensei]

I guess I should have added that my cel batch is from a show that I watched -- not during my childhood (we just had the clan elder make shadow puppets on the cave wall then) but during my daughter's. When she was little, during the late 1980s, she'd watch "Nick Toons" during the day, and when I wasn't grading papers, I'd come in and watch too. It was all first-generation anime, dubbed by Saban Productions, but we had no way of knowing that: Maya the Bee, David the Gnome, Maple Town, The Little Prince, and Mysterious Cities of Gold among others.

One that struck me then was a series called Noozles ("Blinky, the Mysterious Koala" was the original title.) The idea of a plush toy that came alive from time to time was fun, but I was struck by the emphasis on the long-range story arc, which set it apart from most of the other series she watched. Most of the domestically produced entertainment she was watching was designed for a child with a short attention span. So it was interesting to watch something that was clearly designed for a pre-school mind but with a complicated long-term plot, even if it was about Koala-Walla land, an abducted archaeologist, and some kind of cosmic catastrophe caused by seismic drilling.

Anyhow, after I started collecting cels, I'd see cels show up for some of these series, and I started watching for Noozles cels, which sadly were very, very scarce. (Keys, of the well-used FAQ, once had one.) I'd pretty much given up when during a random troll ... oops! ... what to my wondering eye should appear ...

[JWR]

Well I have recently been able find genga/douga from a Sister Princesss that for some reason almost none of the production art has ever made it to auction (I have only found Hankens). After years of looking and coming up empty up popped a bunch of auctions from one seller which I won all seven auctions I bid on. So in a bit once the shipment from Japan arrives and I can scan them I will have a whole new section for my gallery.

[star-phoenix]

Oh what a fun topic!

For me, a less known series I used to watch when I first got into Anime (15 years ago) was King of Braves Gaogaigar
http://starphoenix.rubberslug.com/galle ... esID=17422
I found some great pieces from the opening credits for a good price. The Brave series was popular in Japan during the 1990s and never became mainstream int he United States. So a lot of people never heard of this.

[Keropi]

I've had a few like that. I seen the Natsuiro no Sunadokei OVA in 2004. I started using a YJ search for it in ?May 2005. I played the game and enjoyed it some years later. Then finally around early 2012 was when I finally seen some artwork from it. So that took almost seven years.

It took maybe six or seven years before I seen something from the anime Campus (but I didn't bid on that cel).

KimiNozo took three years. Sister Princess took almost four years of searching. Those don't seem like long waits by comparison.

It's always nice to see something pop up after such a long wait.

[cutiebunny]

My long deferred wish was more meeting certain people who were responsible for certain anime or characters that I enjoy rather than an actual piece of artwork.

In terms of artists, I reallly wanted to meet Kazuchika Kise. He was character designer for all the xxxHolic incarnations. I've been a fan of the xxxHolic series since its initial release in Japan, and I happily read scanlations of each chapter as they were released (and still do with the new series). I've long given up the hope that I'd be able to get a sketch from CLAMP at a con - Far too many people flocked to see them when they were at AX 2007 and they only drew for the charity auction (and that sketch ended up selling for several thousand). But I thought that Kise would be more realistic, so, on a whim, I requested it on AX's forum. I figured that I had little chance of meeting him because conventions rarely get guests that people request for many reasons. But, as luck would have it, Kise did the character designs for the latest installment of the Ghost in the Shell series, and Aniplex wanted to plug the new series in the US. I was able to get a couple sketches, including three of Yuuko, from him.

Seiyuu-wise, I get a big kick out of meeting the Sailor Moon seiyuu. So far I've met the seiyuu for Sailor Moon, Tuxedo Kamen, Sailor Saturn, Luna and one of the villains, Tigerseye. Of course, I'd still love to meet more seiyuu that voiced my favorite anime. But I'm still thrilled that I've had the opportunity to meet all that I have, and to get an autograph from them.

[Mackettric]

It's not anime but it was animated in Korea, one of my favorite series when I was a small child was Puppy's Great Adventures. Very very few of the cels were saved. It was animated in the early 80s in Korea when overseas animation was a pretty controversial thing for American saturday morning cartoons. Nearly all of the cels were destroyed after production ended. I'd been able to find a few cels of minor characters and some models but had given up ever finding any really great cels... then recently I found the title card. I never thought in a million years I'd be able to get that but it was so worth the search. http://kett.rubberslug.com/gallery/inv_ ... mID=363882

If you keep searching, it's amazing the artwork you can find, but you have to keep looking. Recently I've found a few wish list cels it's taken me nearly 20 years to find.