Black Magic M-66: Part 3

A third Black Magic M-66 collection round up post? At the risk of seeming obsessive about such things. Why not? This time We'll be having a look at animation cels. Which, while they can be a bit expensive are pretty cool to collect. Mind you, it has to have been made somewhere before 2000 when cels were still in use.

Proceed onwards for the third installment in this fascinating trillogy.

(Image heavy post ahead 56k beware!)

Cel Animation right? Fascinating stuff, it started to disappear somewhere in the late 90's with the advent of digital animation, which beat cels for quality and cost.The last full length anime movie that I am aware of which used Cels was Princess Mononoke from (1997), and the last still cel based anime still running is Sazae-san, source on that.

I can't say cel collecting is something I'm really intense about because of the cost involved. But I keep an eye out for any interesting cels that might pop up for sale. I hear some exhibitors at anime cons specialise in cels, but I've never seen any at the cons I've been to. In my opinion the Internet kind of shits on real life stores anyway, cons tend to have a lot of overpriced shit. But lets not get into that.

I could have scanned these. But some of them are already quite delicate, one of them further down has slivers of paper coming off. Like it slightly tore after being damp or put under too much pressure or something. I doubt scanning would do any more damage than a flash but I can't be bothered for now.

And because I know you're wondering what they look like from behind.

Ferris_taken_from_behind.png

The reason there are so many background-less cells is that one (background) was used per scene (correct me if I'm wrong here). I'd love to get my hands on some background cels. I think they're possibly even cooler than the ones with characters

(This is the one with the light peeling if you look at the robomaid on the right)

Unfortunately though, they don't turn up too often. And when they do they're more expensive too. related to this I also read that for Black Magic M-66, there was an pretty huge amount of cels made - somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 cels. So there must be a ton floating around out there somewhere.

Now that I think about it though - how do these even get on the market? Surely they were sold with the knowledge of the studio that animated them. Perhaps it was another, way to make money back on an anime, (Cels as as a premium item?)

Note the notes on the cel. I have no idea what they're saying but it's interesting nonetheless.

The lines for the colour changes/shadow in the cel are aslso pretty interesting. The paper original is also known as the genga, from memory the plastic cel on top is the douga. I think I saw some shifty characters on eBay splitting them up and selling them separately for double profit. Personally, I think that's a shitty move, if you see someone doing that call them an asshole for me.

This one is from the ending scene, I could have arranged these in chronological order but that's way too much effort. Also, I can understand why people point out Terminator and Aliens as the main influences for this film.Which isn't so bad because Terminator and Aliens are both great movies.

 

This one, as well isn't in the best quality, very slight wear and tear on the colours. And another reason why you should store things out of sunlight.

I nearly got a double on this one by accident, looks pretty close to one of the cels above right? It's only one or two apart by the looks of it. The plastic sleeve it came in doesn't even fit it, which is a bit of a bummer if you don't want it getting wear and tear on the paper.

 
And this is the type of cels I mentioned before, the ones which have the backgrounds attached. They're much harder to come across in stores. I'm also not sure why the lounge in the background is missing in the cel.

It's worth noting that you get - a tiny amount of extra detail that doesn't get used in the anime, in this case - rocks. In detail. Hypothetically with this type it's possible to remove the overlaid cel and just get the background. But you'd (possibly) never get it back into the exact same place. And there snot much point unless there's some kind of hidden message or interesting feature in the backg-

wait.

...

If that's some kind of clever reference to a classic painting out there tell me. I'd love to know. Until then though this is nudist_yuri_knee_licking_with_kamehameha_on_the_beach.png.

While we're at it I noticed this a few times.

Shebel C T strikes again, what's the CT for anyway?
Her middle and last name initals?

So this wraps up a look at the cels I have in my collection at the moment - hopefully someone out there will find this interesting. (It's possible anyway) Personally, I find it fascinating at the way the cels interact - you may have noticed they tend to overlap a bit. The one at the top is half overlaid with another obscuring the guy on the left, and the fifth one down has some bushed covering up the foreground a little. So perhaps the rumors of 20,000 cels aren't so far off?

That's enough detail out of me for now, keep an eye on the blog and I'll see you around!

-Superkawaii‼

Part one is over here.
Part two is here.
Part four is here.