The Last of Sensei's 2012 Upgrade Thread: Mayan Doomsday!

[sensei]

Sensei's Mayan Doomsday upgrade now is up!

You’ll see that I’ve used a new trick to reorganize the listing on my home page, so that the “Golden Age” galleries are now grouped at the beginning where they are more visible, followed by the classic cel-based series, and the CGI series now gathered together at the end.

Along with this new emphasis on the historically important galleries, I’ve added another new one:

Andersen Monogatari (Mushi, 1971) (unusually brilliant images, thanks to Mushi’s preference for hand-painted trace lines that will never fade.

An especially nice set of dramatic and folkloristically interesting items has been added to

Gegege no Kitaro: Cels

But the real highlight is courtesy of the unexpected appearance of one more batch of sketch sets from the 1999 Toei magical girl series Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne (adapted from an Arina Tanemura manga). Take time to browse through

Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne 1: Maron, Jeanne, & Fish Fin (Nice additions from Ep. 37, an especially good adventure from near the end of the story)

CAUTION: MINOR SPOILERS IN THIS AND THE NEXT TWO GALLERIES!

Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne 2: Rivals and Demons] (From the same episode: Zen, the poor kid who received the heart transplant from Satan)

Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne Ep 34: Confession of Separation! (Especially good additions. Don’t miss the reanimations, including a nice one of Maron bumping into the wise artist while avoiding stepping on The Cute Kitty >^@_@^< Who Helps Save Humanity from the Devil

Rozen Maiden 1: Shinku and Jun (A creepy rough by Kumi Ishii from the prologue that begins the series

Rozen Maiden 3: Episode 12 (A dramatic rough from the beginning of the series’ final conflict [MINOR SPOILER!])

The “One or two of a Kind” gallery is also placed close to the top of the listing and has two nice additions, one from

Fruits Basket

and the other from Texhnolyze

Finally, the "Quirky Tour" has been renewed as Sensei’s annual Quirky Review of the year’s new acquisitions, including the much anticipated naming of 2012’s “Gallery of the Year.”

Enjoy! And happy holidays to everyone in case this ole world actually gets that far!

[BuraddoRun]

Wow, Sensei, I really like the fun things you do with your gallery. I just looked through your Quirky Year in Review. You really have a great way of sharing not just the images of your cels, but also your feelings toward them, the history behind them (and the shows they come from), and, well, YOUR history as far as obtaining them is concerned. It was a pleasure to peruse, and I will look forward to seeing what new additions arrive throughout 2013.

[sensei]

Thanks, BR. It always surprises me how much longer it takes to put together these review than I expect. What the heck, I start, there's just a dozen or so series, and some just got a couple of new items. How hard can it be? And then I start ranking them ... and it's not so easy after all.

I really agonize over the "final four" every year. Each one gets a moment in the top place to see if it fits, then I shuffle again and again until it feels semi-right. It's a pleasure and relief to get it all uploaded finally ... though I can't help thinking ... did I really make the right choice ... ?

[Lain]

@sensei i was just looking at your beautifully detail review and the highlights and you know all i can say is omg i love it But you know i do because your taste to me is like Anime heaven And also i think it is so nice to have passionate experts here because it really makes us beginners want to aspire and look for really cool Anime too

[sensei]

@lain (a new wrinkle for this haggard ole dog ... but Web 3.0, like rock'n'roll, is here to stay): Thank you for your good words! I commented in my blog on how diversifying my taste has really put me out of the mainstream of other collectors. Even in 2006 I was seeing reactions from other collectors start to die off. When a collection is wall-to-wall CCS (or DBZ or Sailor Moon or Inuyasha or Naruto or Vampire Knight or whatever is hot at the time), then there's a group of enthusiasts who come to hang out there regularly.

But when it starts to go more toward "Andersen Monogatari ... Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne ... Texhnolyze ... Maeterlink's Blue Bird," then lots of people look at the titles, blink a couple times , then move on in search of new art in a series they know well. That's the downside of my approach: sometimes I think I'm just updating for my own sake alone.

On the other hand, the downside of the "currently hot series" approach is that can be self-limiting. Sooner or later that great series gets old, and with it collecting animation art, and then something new appears on the horizon (like bjds), and the gallery gets left abandoned, as I see many times on RS.

On the other hand, the downside to collecting oddball series is that you have to explain more about what the series is all about and why it's worth knowing about. But that too can be an interesting challenge. I've been giving panels at AnimeNext the last 2 years on "Anime Under the Radar," beginning with Tenshi ni Narumon (cel collectors know it, but not many people in the anime community know it exists, no thanks to Synch Point's incompetent and incomplete release). I'm thinking about doing KKJ and, if I can get hold of a region-free DVD player, a fuller presentation on Blue Bird. What I managed to see of the Italian dub (before the FBI shut down the site) made me a believer.

Iain, thanks for being tolerant of new approaches. Lots of times newbies get the message that "all the good cels were bought up on the market in 2002" or some such. Yes, it was a flusher market for some series then, and looking for good art now takes a different approach. But I still enjoy the hunt, and I think it's still a good time to be collecting anime art.

[rosesleep]

Beautiful update, Sensei! I enjoyed reading your Quirky Review of 2012, I would have thought CCS would hold the #1 spot. Props to organizing your content by category!

My favorite acquisition would be Fruits Basket, Tohru. She is completely adorable!

Hmmm.. your sketches compels me to watch Rozen Maiden..

[sensei]

Beautiful update, Sensei! I enjoyed reading your Quirky Review of 2012, I would have thought CCS would hold the #1 spot.

I thought at one point it might: that Fly Capture genga set was an acquisition of a lifetime. But my CCS holdings are huge already, and so I'm really trying to hold the line in getting only things I can't live without. So on the "most improved" front it fell short. It's not less precious in my eyes, only very very hard to improve a collection that's better than the one I'd dreamed of having when I began.

Props to organizing your content by category!

Thanks, rs. It's a simple trick: add a blank space (or two, or three) to the start of the title. I was finding that the smaller galleries got lost in the shuffle. This way, the big collections are all in the middle and the little galleries are at either end.

My favorite acquisition would be Fruits Basket, Tohru. She is completely adorable!

Yeah, that is such an iconic image that I went against all kinds of instincts and got it anyhow. That's a series that I wish they'd waited to adapt to anime, as the finished manga is so complex with so many twists that the anime seems a little simple-minded by contrast.

Hmmm.. your sketches compels me to watch Rozen Maiden..

It's just 12 episodes (the first season -- the second has some issues), so you lose just five hours of time. You can still make it to the end before the Crack of Doom!

[Quacker]

(Success!! I am able to log back in once again. Massive Thank-yous to both DW for sorting out my log-in issues & to Rei-J to notifying DW about said issues.)

Love the latest theme Sensei, very appropriate.
Well, it is less than 8hours until the so-called Mayan apocalypse doomsday "cats sleeping with dogs" prophecy takes place, 10:11pm local time. Watching the news reports, I am amazed how some people choose to openly ignore the fact that there are actually 20 'batukans' in the translated Mayan calendar and this current one ending on December 21st is only the 13th. There are still many future celestial events which the Maya predicted to occur, involving a fully intact Earth, stretching many thousands of years ahead of us?! It will be interesting to see what form the next 'doomsday' date will take?

I do eagerly look forward to your updates & the patented 'Quirky tours' each time they are announced; the anticipation of what precious treasures you may have un-earthed & willing to share with the rest of us.
In this latest batch, I will let my heart rule and go with your latest 'Rozen Maiden gengas, especially the layout of Shinku from the first episode are the pick of the bunch for me this time around. The Rozen Maiden series is a firm family favourite nowadays and continues to be watched by niece/little sister at least once a month; this was only brought about due primarily reading through your Gallery.
Although a close second would be tied between the 'Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne and 'Texhnolyze' additions.

What seperates your Gallery & thus makes it remarkable is that on any given day, you are guaranteed on venturing in and being able to find something truly unique & interesting to check out, as well as an accompanying description & analysis of what makes that cel/item/series unique in the first place.

The 'Quirky review' is an amazing re-cap of all your acquisitions over the last 12months and it was nice to see some recent favourites make a welcome re-appearance.

[sensei]

Martin Luther allegedly said (somewhere in the Table Talk, though I haven't tracked it down) that if he knew tomorrow was the End of the World, he would go out and plant a tree. It's too cold here to do that, but we bought a melancholy little Norfolk Island pine that had been decked out as a living Christmas tree and then put on the "Clearance" table. And last night we celebrated the Crack of Doom by unpacking and snapping together our artificial Christmas tree. It's not very authentic (and now two strings of lights don't work and need replacing) but when grading from the fall semester nearly runs into Christmas, it's a tremendous relief. (We used to steal our trees from a nearby church's "Living Nativity.")

I'm a great believer in "realized eschatology," which, translated out of scholarbabble, just means that the world will end for each and every one of us one day. That is, the world will trundle on, trees and all, just not with us in it. So in practical terms, it makes sense to have a little prior reminder of essential facts of life like this, so that, in Thoreau's words, I can "learn what life had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived" (Walden).

Thanks, Quacker, for your kind words about my gallery. I'm especially happy that I've made one family a believer in Rozen Maiden, which is that rarity, an anime significantly better than the manga on which it's based. And I feel blessed by the genga no kami in being able to build such a strong collection from it, even if it slipped in the ranking this year.

Thanks too for checking out KKJ, which is (admittedly) not as good, but is a rarity of another kind, a series that is quite aware of the multiple absurdities of its premise and still manages to be constantly quirky, surprising, and even emotionally involving in spite of its illogical trajectory. One senses that the artists really cared about poor Maron, and it shows up in the art, even (wonder of wonder) the dougas, which in many cases turn out to be even more compelling than the keys from which they were traced.

One really wonders who "Atsunobu Umezawa," the person credited as the series director for KKJ, really was. KKJ is the only anime project for whom this person ever received credit, and, as I can't imagine Toei giving such an important job to a total newbie, or not continuing to use him after KKJ's successful completion, I presume this is a pseudonym for some more widely known animation artist.

Thanks too for checking in every so often. The gallery is an important part of my post-retirement life, and I enjoy keeping it up to date and improving it in small ways. It will never be the peer of galleries with strong collections in Miyazaki films or groundbreaking series such as Neon Genesis Evangelion or Cowboy Bebop, but at least I try to make it an educational waste of time.

Sorry to hear that you had more than your share of getting logged in ... and sorry not to be more proactive in the process of getting the issues resolved. Thanks to Rei for being such a good neighbor!

[Nehelenia]

I love your KKJ collection ^^
Jeanne is one of my favourite series

[cutiebunny]

That's the downside of my approach: sometimes I think I'm just updating for my own sake alone.

Do you really think this, despite the fact that your gallery is amongst the Top 10 visited galleries on RS? Just because your individual items are not visited doesn't mean that your gallery is not visited. Often, people just click on things that really interest them, either because they're attractive items, they are fans of the show/character or plain curiosity. Happens to everyone.

Gallery ratings aside, even if your gallery were amongst the least visited RS galleries, would that make your collection any less significant? I know that you, along with many other collectors, buy stuff because you like it, and not because of its possible resale value. If the resale value mattered to you, you would either collect from only series that had massive US appeal or, to prevent competition, you would wait until the supply of items from a particular show became non-existant, and then update with everything at once. I can hardly picture you at the Antiques Roadshow in 2050 (I'm sure you have Sakura's Time Card stashed somewhere), rolling in your Itoyas and asking them what the value of your cels are. Like most collectors, I don't think it's something you think about when you add something to your collection.

Anyways, nice update as always. You added a lot of nice items to your collection this year, especially the CCS sketches.

[sensei]

That's the downside of my approach: sometimes I think I'm just updating for my own sake alone.

Do you really think this, despite the fact that your gallery is amongst the Top 10 visited galleries on RS? Just because your individual items are not visited doesn't mean that your gallery is not visited.

Sometimes I do. Looking at my 50 most visited items, I see that they are virtually all CCS items that come from my pre-2006 collecting career, plus some oddballs that I think are hotlinked somewhere. (Well, God bless the hotlinker. Poor Rengokuki gets himself killed within ten minutes of his introduction in the sole Inuyasha episode in which he appears, and so it's nice to see the poor guy end up being Sensei's most popular sketch by over 2000 hits.) So I suspect that my gallery might be just as frequently visited if I had stopped collecting after Nick's Anime-Chaos sales site had gone dark and not made any further updates for the past six years.

Anyway, hits are not the same as social contacts, and I really do miss the intense and thought-provoking discussions I'd have with fellow collectors, even as recently as a few years ago. And my recent trend toward "Golden Age" series like Andersen Monogatari and Microid S also seems to provoke the "Whatever!" reaction from most Betarians. Researching and writing up new exhibits is a lot of work -- it always surprises me how long it takes to move from "removed from package" to "scanned" to "ready-to-upload" status. So after an update goes up, it's not surprising that I look back on it and suspect that my activity was just a little obsessive and over-done, given the scattered response I get.

The upside of it is that it's always a tremendously enjoyable puzzle to research the items, identify (when possible) the artists, and really look at the art to see what's there to see. (It amused me to review the KKJ set after her big confrontation with Chiaki and realize that she keeps running with her eyes shut and rubbing her eyes and looking distraught, and she never does work up more than the hint of one tiny teardrop.) I'm delighted to have found an activity that has been so much excitement and joy to me -- and still is after all these years. I'm just a little wistful at times that this deep joy isn't more widely shared.

Anyways, nice update as always. You added a lot of nice items to your collection this year, especially the CCS sketches.

Thank you, Cutie. Yes, it would have been great to give top place to CCS one more time (and who knows what's going to happen in 2013?). Still, those Fly and Light sketches were unforgettable additions.

[Quacker]

The gallery is an important part of my post-retirement life, and I enjoy keeping it up to date and improving it in small ways. It will never be the peer of galleries with strong collections in Miyazaki films or groundbreaking series such as Neon Genesis Evangelion or Cowboy Bebop, but at least I try to make it an educational waste of time.

Sometimes I do. Looking at my 50 most visited items, I see that they are virtually all CCS items that come from my pre-2006 collecting career, plus some oddballs that I think are hotlinked somewhere. (Well, God bless the hotlinker. Poor Rengokuki gets himself killed within ten minutes of his introduction in the sole Inuyasha episode in which he appears, and so it's nice to see the poor guy end up being Sensei's most popular sketch by over 2000 hits.) So I suspect that my gallery might be just as frequently visited if I had stopped collecting after Nick's Anime-Chaos sales site had gone dark and not made any further updates for the past six years.

Anyway, hits are not the same as social contacts, and I really do miss the intense and thought-provoking discussions I'd have with fellow collectors, even as recently as a few years ago. And my recent trend toward "Golden Age" series like Andersen Monogatari and Microid S also seems to provoke the "Whatever!" reaction from most Betarians. Researching and writing up new exhibits is a lot of work -- it always surprises me how long it takes to move from "removed from package" to "scanned" to "ready-to-upload" status. So after an update goes up, it's not surprising that I look back on it and suspect that my activity was just a little obsessive and over-done, given the scattered response I get.

One of the main reasons I continue to visit your Gallery Sensei is because it isn't so 'mainstream' & thus making a welcome refreshing change from all the "O-Ps, B's, , DBz's, Eva's & Nar's etc centric galleries. As I remarked earlier, one is always bound to discover & learn something interesting along the way. I for one appreciate the time & effort you put into your research & Gallery, which clearly translates across on each screen clicked upon, as I am sure other A-Bians are too.
The whole mainstream argument is more of a larger dilemma; most people are too afraid.......no, not that word, too wary....of stepping away from their 'comfort zone', their accepted view of 'normal'. As a rough example, taking friends to an Art Gallery or show/auction (which for some of them they have already stepped out of their comfort zone) they are only 'interested' in those names/artists they remember or familiar with, even though I am urging them to check out other contemporaries or those that studied under or with them. Stepping away from the 'mainstream' is hard for some people, which is why I applaud your Gallery for the shedding the educational light upon those lesser-known, yet equal in quality series'.

I will let you in on a little secret - one of my fondest memories I can recall was when I first 'discovered' the site of Rubberslug. It was waaayyyy back towards the end of 2004, it was a slow work day, so I was hunting the web for 'Rahxephon' sketches and my search lead me to something called "Rubberslug". It was literally like discovering a long-hidden treasure chest. All these images, actual cels from Anime I had enjoyed or in some instances never even heard of, all in the one area. And even after all this time, my favourites basically remain the same: - Anime Jewell, Anime Obsessed, Stem Cels, Katana's Edge, Sensei's Gallery & Nathalie's Cels.
Of course, there are others that have popped-up or I have since found and enjoy, but those above are my 'Original' Six, the ones I clearly remember & having an impact on me. So please do not ever think that your time is ever wasted, because it is not!

I also understand how disparaged you may feel regarding the lack of general comments, word-sparring & conversations (when I attempted to post-up a comment on the Tuesday after your update, that was when I discovered I could not log-in, hence the RS-Feedback I sent to you). Some may have dug themselves into their home-made bunkers awaiting the 'Mayan Doomsday' to engulf civilisation, whereas other A-Bians may be un-contactable travelling to Christmas functions & holidays, enjoying (or enduring & suffering through) family get-togethers given the timing of your update.
On a serious note though, I do feel we have become a smaller community from just a few years back since I first joined; a main point being this year we have no A-B Cel or Sketch competition?! The question was asked to get a discussion started, but there has been only one response, effectively killing it.

Your Gallery still brings you enjoyment & fulfilment, keep doing what you are doing - enlightening & educating those of us who are yet to see those moments and anime which have entertained you; maybe, just maybe you may entice a few more people, A-Bian & non-AB alike, to explore to the left or right of mainstream and discover something we may not have known was even there

[sensei]

Thanks for your long and supportive comment, Quacker. I certainly appreciate your initiative in getting feedback to me via RS feedback when you could not log on, and apologize for not doing more to get you logged back on. And I apologize for seeming to hector Betarians to give me feedback. I just came across my 2006 comment while hunting down my copy of "The Night Before the Update," and I thought it surprisingly predictive of a trend that has concerned me. I'll just say again that there are powerful pleasure principles in my continuing to collect and update, and they will continue to motivate me. And just that there is a certain wistfulness (no more ... certainly not a critical attitude of Beta residents) in response to the increasing quietness of my contacts with fellow collectors, not just here but in private emails, PMs, and RS feedback.

End of topic!

On a serious note though, I do feel we have become a smaller community from just a few years back since I first joined; a main point being this year we have no A-B Cel or Sketch competition?! The question was asked to get a discussion started, but there has been only one response, effectively killing it.

That's a valid topic, and I for one would be willing to help out in getting such a competition started. It has also been several years since we had a Gallery Open House. The last one was wildly work intensive: I don't think even half the participants successfully completed, and while I did, I felt it was more of a marathon than a festive chance to visit galleries that I don't often cruise through.

That said, I think a simpler, shorter approach, similar to the "Secret Santa" activity of last year (which I also conspicuously missed) would be enjoyed, especially by our newer members. That is, interested parties post their interest, and someone randomly assigns 3-5 galleries to each participant, rather than everyone visiting everyone else's gallery, which began to resemble a pyramid scheme after a short while. (Send Sensei a dime and three weeks later each of you will receive $5,242.88 -- or more! -- in the mail.)

Still, in all the versions of the open house in which I participated, I learned a lot, and made many changes in my layout that I think generate the positive qualities that Quacker attributes to my gallery. If my gallery is worthwhile, I think lots of others deserve credit.

"I built it?" NO! -- "We built it."

[sensei]

I love your KKJ collection ^^
Jeanne is one of my favourite series

My apologies for skipping your response, Nehelenia! I got all involved in CB's post and just plain didn't see yours up above. Thank you! I think if KKJ were given a North American review, it would attract many more followers than it already has in Asia and in Europe. The bad, bad Claude Noin tribute website, when it was live, had many followers from Finland to Argentina.

So many really good anime series! And not just the ones in the Funimation catalog!