I spent last weekend at Comic-Con in San Diego. It was my second visit to the show, and I had a blast reveling in the nerdy debauchery. MC Lars played at the G4/STRANGEco party, and unleashed this awesome song:

I spent a good bit of time perusing the show floor. While I didn’t have time to test out Street Fighter 4, I did discover an amazing booth for an American animation art dealer: Van Eaton Galleries. They had a mind-blowing assortment of work that spanned the last century. I spent hours digging through their collection rediscovering my childhood (I had completely forgotten about “Road Rovers”!). It reminded me of when I used to dig for vinyl, searching for the needle in the haystack. I really can’t describe how cool it was to see so many treasures from american animation, but it has definitely gotten me to consider a temporary transition from anime cels to those of the american variety. Luckily, the gallery happens to be nearby in Sherman Oaks, so I’m sure I’ll be spending more time there.

Greetings everyone. Since I have reached a point in both expected maturity and practical storage space where it is no longer feasible to be buying collectibles (or what some would call “toys,” including me) I have moved on to cels. Today, the second of my two recent purchases arrived.

For the uninitiated, cels are the original drawings made on celluloid (hence the name) that were used in traditional animation in the pre-computer era. Most recently I have purchased two cels to round out my collection. “Porco Rosso” is a phenomenal film by Hayao Miyazaki, who has continued to make classics like “Spirited Away”. The second cel is from an anime that not only changed anime, but showed me the power of anime and pushed me to think about it in a whole new way. From the brilliant mind of Hideaki Anno came “Neon Genesis Evangelion”, a 26-episode series that my roommates and I watched in a single marathon sitting.

Please join me in welcoming these two new members to the fold.

Porco Rosso

Neon Genesis Evangelion