Muse: A59
Source: TV
Layers: 2
Sketches: 1
Cel Number: A59, A59 kabuse
Standard size
Opening Cel
No Background
Added 5/17/2022
Updated 5/31/2022
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At the end of her twirls, she does a pretty pose in a spotlight with her “Queen of Spades” parasol.
Interestingly, Muse’s eyes, as small as they are on this cel, required a kabuse layer to make them more expressive. The cel came with the douga for this correction layer, but not for the A59 image of Muse. The lot did preserve a photocopy (likely second generation) of the layout for this image, which is added in the thumb.
A non-matching photocopy background came with this cel, but I preferred to work something up with art paper that suggested the cel’s original backing.
Cels from the end stage of this cut have also shown up in other Tennimon collections. Otakusin has the A57. Tictac’s Corner also has the very similar A54. Finally, there is (or was) another end-stage cel in Keys’ Little Anime Cel Gallery.
SENSEI CHECK EXTRA!
If you’ve ever wondered why Muse is always shown wearing a kind of hakama or formal gown decorated with spades from the common playing card deck, you’re noticing a detail with a long history in gamblers’ folklore. Spades (originally swords, or spadi in Italy where playing cards evolved), are a suit associated with bad luck, and the Ace of Spades is customarily referred to as “the death card” or “the coffin card” when it comes up in a deal.
In the opera Carmen, this is thought to be the card that the gypsy turns over when she tells her own fortune and recognizes that she is fated to die by her lover’s hand. A theatrical story relates that Célestine Galli-Marié, the singer who created the role of the gypsy Carmen, used real playing cards on stage, shuffling and turning them over randomly while performing the scene. In one performance during the first run of the opera, she is said to have actually turned over the ace of spades at this point. She immediately had a vivid premonition of danger and had to leave the stage for a moment to regain her composure. That same night, the composer, Georges Bizet, died unexpectedly of a heart attack.
Muse, however, may be advertising herself as a Queen of Spades, another playing card that tokens evil and bad luck. The Russian author Nicolai Pushkin wrote a novella called The Queen of Spades and headed it with the epigraph that warns that the fall of this card in fortune-telling "denotes secret ill will." A nineteenth-century book on the significance of playing cards adds that this card identifies a woman in the subject's life who is "not to be provoked with impunity, never forgetting an injury, and having a considerable spice of malice in her composition."
Certainly, given Muse’s role as a troublemaker in this stage of the story arc and also her predestined death at Silky’s hands, you might say that both Spades are in play in her fortune.
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