Be Careful What You Wish For!

last modified: Wednesday, June 11, 2008 (9:12:23 PM CST)

During the Open House, one visitor encouraged me to revive my wishlist section. I’d decommissioned this after some unpleasant experiences a few years ago, but I agreed that it was a way of sharing my current collecting agenda with others. For most series I just described in general what I liked to acquire, without referring to specific scenes. But the wishlist entry for Takashi Nakamura’s ambitious, if flawed, film A Tree of Palme I did allow that I was looking for a cel of a “healed Koram.”

A little background: the plot of Palme is not easy to follow. But it has several tremendous moments, one falling close to the end. Koram, the vengeful ghost of a bloodthirsty female warrior, realizes that she will never be able to fulfill her quest, and despairs. Palme (also in despair) joins her, singing the eerie lament he sang over his dead mistress’s grave. In a way that isn’t explained but which feels emotionally right, the song heals Koram. In a wonderful series of images, she lifts her head and turns to Palme, her face full of light for the first time.

Well -- the week after I revived my wishlist, a lot came up on Yahoo Japan. Like most Palme art, it was being sold in bulk, in this case a big messy midden. It wasn’t clear from the seller’s photo what actually was in the stack, but some of it looked interesting, especially the original backgrounds . And on top -- lo -- a “healed Koram”!

Winning it wasn’t hard. Getting it proved more difficult: not only was there a substantial charge for shipping, but the box went to my campus address and had to be reposted. It arrived today, and I spent part of the afternoon sorting through the midden to see what I had. The materials, all of them oversized, hadn’t been treated kindly: in fact, they’d just been stuffed inside a plastic shopping bag for shipping. Some of the cels were badly dinged; one was even ripped, and the dougas were often rumpled, torn, or creased. But much of the material was nice enough to be worth having.

But the amazing part of the lot was a hefty stack of cels, simply shipped loose, separated only by tissue paper and dougas. At first I seemed just a bunch of partials; then I saw that they were all from the same series. In the end, I realized that I’d just acquired the entire cut that I’d mentioned in my wishlist. Yep, all three layers, ninety-three cels in all, with the dougas, and copy layouts, and original background (a huge velvety black sheet), and cut bag. Yes, yes, with the way the cut develops there probably are not more than a dozen or so displayable images. And they are all on poster-sized acetate sheets which are going to be the very devil to scan and splice together for display. And where am I going to store them? (Anyone got a spare closet?)

But -- golly! -- it’s the turning point of the entire movie, and now every image in it belongs to me!

Mmmm . . . I’m giving up making wishes for the next six months at least. (Maybe a teeny one just in time for Xmas.)

Just one more sign that you might be in Cephiro:

19. The police blotter features the case of a man who was arrested and fined $250 for possession of a baby bird without a permit.

An Open House Wrap

last modified: Sunday, June 01, 2008 (9:05:33 PM CST)

This has been a very productive event. I managed to work my way through the list of galleries and learned a lot about anime series that I’d only seen as names on people’s galleries and had never really investigated. I particularly got a fresh appreciation for Hunter X Hunter art a series that really brings out the passion in viewer-collectors. And by visiting the secondary pages (“About,” “Wishlist,” etc.) I could more fully appreciate the role these play in making a gallery a social place to visit.

I received feedback from the following Betarians: funshine, Carla, majinuub, Kujaku, Blaster, Animeobsessed, Cypress, sugarcels, Caroline, Moop, Kaona/Red Eye, Ryouko, metheus, Moonrabitt, GoldenBoy, Akadro, ReiTheJelly, Syan, Yuri-chan, lcatino, Renee, Cutiebunny, Krafty, and Buttrflym. Overall, I got a number of strong suggestions, all the way from toning down my rather harsh color preferences to inserting line breaks into my home page to keep single galleries from getting lost in the shuffle of the larger subdivided galleries.

One thing I got was an overall vote of confidence in my “museum” approach, even if I sometimes lay on the “scholarship” a little thick. For instance, cutiebunny wrote, “I don't particularly care for galleries where, if I click on an item, there is little, if any, description. . . . What I want when I look at a gallery is for the curator to tell me about the image, where it comes from, what the storyline behind the image is, etc. . . . Basically, I want to see the image as the owner sees the image.”

And I was pleased when the gallery presentation made the case for taking an “under-the-radar” anime seriously, even if the visitor hadn’t seen it yet. In fact funshine wrote, “your gallery actually made me go buy “A Tree of Palme,” though i haven't had the chance to watch it since it arrived (i will though!).” [Just don’t worry if a lot of the plot doesn’t make sense, funshine -- narrative coherence isn’t this movie’s strong point!]

I found myself reacting to suggestions even before the Open House is over, and while there are a few places that still need work (especially “Links,” which is out of date and in need of an overhaul) I think the gallery is a much more visitor-friendly place as a result. I was only disappointed that 13 of the participants, about a third, never did leave feedback. Many of these, also, did not acknowledge the feedback I left for them. While I know (from experience!) how daunting the task was, it’s the most rewarding when it is truly a two-way process and not just a passive soliciting of kudos.

So my thanks to all who gave me feedback, and particularly to those who found places where I could improve, and who likewise went through the entire list and did the same for all the other Open House participants.

Summer’s here, and the back yard of our neighbors on Tail of the Fox Drive has disappeared into a green jungle of vines and shrubs, which our kitty has adopted as his private panther reserve. Weather’s getting sticky, spring flowers are just about shot, and tomatoes are in the ground and already spreading. Not much in the pipelines now, but look for some very nice KKJ reanimations, thanks to Vampyreshoujo, which are just about ready to unveil.

More and more signs that you might be in Cephiro:

16. You finally pick up the quirky local pronunciations of place names that distinguish Cephirians from Outsiders: e.g., “Berlin” (exact rhyme with King Arthur’s wizard), “Showell” (one syllable, rhymes with “trowel”), Lewes (two syllables, sounds like “do us”).

17. Your Lutheran Church has a musicians’ sound board permanently installed (for the rock band that plays for the 9:30 service).

18. Headline in local paper: “Storm damage delays town smoking ban” [because the local constabulary are busy repairing stressed barrier dunes and don’t have spare time to enforce the new law]. Dude!