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Confessions of a Cel Collector
By Bottou-chan
(originally written for the Anime
Heretics 10/01 newsletter)
A flat, cardboard package arrives in the mail, and hubby looks at it
suspiciously.
He doesn't need to look at the "DO NOT BEND" sticker. He doesn't
need to check to see if the postmark is from Japan, Switzerland, or the US. He
doesn't even need to see if the return address is an individual, or something
like CELGA or HASHI.
He just sort of knows.
"You bought cels again?"
And I have to nod guiltily, before rescuing my newest babies from his
clutches, and scurrying off to open the package in private, so I can ogle them
happily for a few minutes before wiping the drool off my face and getting back
to what I *had* been doing, like making dinner or folding laundry or something.
I can scan them in later, of course.
My cel collection isn't even that good, compared to some of the droolworthy
galleries out there, although I quite enjoy my cels. The first series I started
collecting was Flame of Recca, and unlike some of Studio Pierrot's other works--
say, Fushigi Yuugi comes to mind-- that show doesn't really have the intricate
artwork that goes along with a to-die for Miko cel, or quite the same
flowing-ness of lines, or even the same vibrant colors. Still, there's something
about it that makes my brain say, "Bid! Bid! Bid!" if I see a good
one, meaning a character that I like, or a spot from a meaningful scene that I
recognize, or even just enjoying the colors of a character. Over time, the
collection has spread to include light samplings from Sailor Moon, Violinist of
Hameln, Weiss Kruz, Kodomo no Omocha, and Legend of Basara. Lately, I've gotten
a lot pickier, and I've been eyeing my "children", mentally culling
the lesser ones, like my closed-eyes Sana-chan, which had been cute at the time,
or my orange-sweatered Aya and cheesy-looking Recca, who I only got because they
came with a goshdarned nice Kai-Mikagami as part of a lot.
But I haven't been able to abandon them on Ebay. Not quite yet.
A fellow collector, Cal-Tan,
made a very astute comment. "Acetate is made of crack. That's pretty much
the only possible explanation for why we slaver to spend hundreds of dollars on
8x10 sheets of painted plastic."
And they're absolutely right. What is it about cel art that makes
people-who-could-pass-for-sane systematically go searching through Ebay, the
Yahoo!Japan auctions, and all their favorite cel galleries and cel vendors late
at night, checking to see if something new and worthwhile has popped up? What
makes them squander the majority of their monthly Mad Money on accumulating
these little plastic sheets? What makes them wait for a five-month turnaround
from Anime Shop Pocket, or dish out 20% extra to get a proxy bidder to buy
something off a Japanese auction site that the seller wasn't going to ship
internationally?
Is it a love of the show, or the characters, that you would want to own a
piece of them? Is it the same madness that causes people run around in cosplay
costumes, obsess over epic-length Alternate Universe fanfics, or draw fanart in
the margins of their class notes? Is it just normal adults reverting to a "Gimme,
gimme, gimme, I want, I want, I want" mentality, that makes them ooooh with
envy when they see just-the-perfect shot of just-the-perfect character on
someone else's site?
Or maybe it *is* just crack in the acetate.
Who knows?
But if you try to smoke one of my cels, I'll beat you up.
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