Want to buy an Evangelion animation cel?

By Aaron Clark on Thursday, October 24th, 2013

Occasionally, I put esoteric search terms into craigslist, just to see if anything interesting comes up, like putting “anime” or “manga” into the jobs section, or in this case, I entered “evangelion” into the for sale section. Given various Evangelion media is out of print, I thought maybe I would see someone trying to make a quick buck off of a DVD of The End of Evangelion. Rather, I found someone claiming to be selling “original cels” from Evangelion for $125 bucks a piece.

So I thought this might be a good opportunity to touch upon the subject, just in case anyone else out there may be aspiring to own a small, tangible piece of the show they hold near and dear to their heart. The sad truth is that unlike many other shows, the animation cels from Evangelion were deliberately withheld and never circulated into the secondary market. My understanding is that this was an uncommon and controversial decision. However, Gainax did release a series of 18 reproduced cels called the Neon Genesis Evangelion “Cellu Club”, consisting of 12 machine reproduced cels with backgrounds and 6 limited edition hand painted cels without backgrounds.

Genuine animation cels from Evangelion are considered extremely rare, and very rarely does one show up for legitimate sale. A couple years ago a cel of Misato from the opening animation was auctioned on Mandarake and it sold for 326,100 yen. This is what you should expect for something genuine, so if you ever find yourself in a situation where someone is selling something like the aforementioned craigslist seller, take heed, someone is probably trying to rip you off. Do your research about cels, and most importantly, it is imperative that you buy from a reputable, trusted seller, as there are many people out there making counterfeit cels. This is especially true for something like Evangelion, but it applies to animation cel collecting as a whole.

Posted in: Neon Genesis Evangelion.