I really, really want a couple of those teacups. If someone could wrangle Japanese for me, I'd be delighted to pay a commission. One problem: I'm in Australia so there'd be an additional hassle sending the order on. Money in advance is not a problem.

EDIT: what's that circular-looking box with Utena and Anthy? Are those coasters or something like?

Last edited by crystalwren (09-01-2013 02:59:35 AM)

crystalwren wrote:

I really, really want a couple of those teacups. If someone could wrangle Japanese for me, I'd be delighted to pay a commission. One problem: I'm in Australia so there'd be an additional hassle sending the order on. Money in advance is not a problem.

SO! Because you're in Australia the shipping if we order for you would probably end up paying more, because the shipping from here to Australia would suck balls. We'll do it if you like, but in the interest of saving you money, once I've gone through the ordering process with Celga (which doesn't require you read or do anything in Japanese), I can walk you through the process of doing it yourself and getting it from Celga. Whichever you feel more comfortable/cheap with is fine, but just wanna give you the option.

I wish someone would get the idea to make poseable Utena figures -- I would throw money at Tamashii Nations or Max Factory/GoodSmile for an Utena figure. Just saying.

Lovely! But they look very fragile and I'd be too afraid to use them.

Those glasses look so classy, I'm way too tempted. Oh, man, and they have a rerelease of Juri's locket, too, looks like.... I've pined after the original for forever, haha. If they come out with a new version of Nanami's cowbell I'll probably die laughing.

HonorableShadow wrote:

http://www.movic.jp/uploadimages/item25703_1.jpg

These seem to be new. At least, new to me. They're pretty!
http://www.movic.jp/index.php?ctrl=sheet&code=25703

OOooooh!

Oh wow, awesome! So envious!

If you don't mind, could you maybe grab us some swag shots? I'd love to see the locket up close...

Awesome! I await these pictures with bated breath

Giovanna wrote:

http://i.imgur.com/60hog0o.jpg

This is a thing that exists in this world and now that I have seen it, I would commit unspeakable human atrocities to have it.

Ikuhara, seriously, if there are any small countries you don't take a shine to, we can arrange something.

That thing was right in front of me. Sorry I didn't run off with it for you.

Soooooooooooo... I've taken the Celga plunge. $122 USD for two tea cups and a set of those glasses. That's without postage to Australia. Holy shit, this is going to cost me a fortune.


Also, have any of you seen this yet?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Utena-Sketch-Bo … 4d12755b63

I really want the Bara no Zenbo art book but I'm not going to spend $250 on the thing.

Giovanna wrote:

Ahahaha I have a copy of that that's literally been torn apart to be scanned. A good chunk of the artwork in the gallery is from that book. It had weak binding anyway. It must be rare in Japan too, I rarely see it on Yahoo! Auction.

It seems that there's a 2013 edition out, because ehbah is suddenly drowning in them.

Postage to Australia is $22. So in total I've spent USD$133, or just over AU$147. For two tea cups and a set of glasses. These had better be good, otherwise I am going to be so pissed off.

Last edited by crystalwren (09-16-2013 01:28:31 AM)

So the Hard Core of Utena book set is definitely not a pamphlet - it's a huge book set.  When it arrived yesterday, I was really surprised by the weight of the package and now I can see why.  Basically, the set is three books:

1) Animation Side - 264 page book with animation stills, shots of cels & sketches (assuming this is ones selected for the exhibit and others the studio still had hanging around), backgrounds, storyboards, character designs, layouts, etc from the TV show & movie.

2) Illustration side - 174 page book that contains a lot of the promotional artwork into magazines, various products, DVD's, etc.  Beautiful hanken cels pics & sketches from hankens that I don't remember seeing in the past.

3) Supplemental Limited Edition - 43 page booklet that contains sketches from the game, more hankens, & the little manga book that Bepapas put out in a Newtype, I think (so not the Saito manga - I could check the gallery, but I'm too lazy)?

The books have a soft cover & the binding does not seem that great - many openings & closings is bound to wear out quickly.  The pages are semi-gloss and the paper is really nice for these.

Since I don't have a scanner, I am just photographing the pages as best I can to give a kind of photo tour as to what is in each one of them.  I just put them on flickr if anyone wants to take a look:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/13638589@N … 617465313/

Last night, I was only able to get through the Supplemental booklet & half of the Animation book.  I will try to work on finishing the animation book tonight and maybe the Illustration book tomorrow.

Last edited by cscratch (09-18-2013 08:55:42 AM)

Well, it looks all nice & official, just with a crummy binding, imo.   All the cels that I have seen in the pics posted on blogs from people that went appear to be in these volumes.  Also, I have not seen a cel from private cel collections or auctions that I can remember from the past couple of years in here, which supports the idea that this is newly photographed production material retained by the studio.  Another thing that seems to support this it is that half of the auctions show a pink paper gift bag, as though the person purchased the set at one of the exhibits & that's the bags they had around for it.

All this is based on the assumption that the material offered at the events is going to be officially produced stuff & that these were sold at the events.


Unfortunately, I can't read Japanese, but here are a couple of quick crappy snaps of the back credits on the animation book if this helps any:

http://kittyfire.com/img/utena_book_back1.JPG
http://kittyfire.com/img/utena_book_back2.JPG

I'll post some better ones once I get to the end of the book.

I know that most of the time, you'd probably have to pull it apart to get nice scans of the pages, but since it's a soft cover you might be able to get away with just flattening it out.  It looks like the binding is going to break eventually anyway.   I took a pic to show you what I mean:

http://kittyfire.com/img/utena_book_binding.jpg


Either way, I'd be happy to help chip in a few bucks for something that needs to get into the gallery