Last Minute Christmas Shopping Guide: Anime Collectibles

Just starting your Christmas shopping or just looking for a perfectly unique present that you can't find in retail stores? We've got you covered.  If you've got friends or family with a flair for the geeky we've probably got the perfect something in stock at www.avaneshop.com right now!

We're going to do a series of these shopping guides over the next few days and this is our third guide focusing on vintage anime toys. We have tons of anime collectibles from various series ranging from figures, to plushies to original production cels. We mostly carry items from older animes, pre-2000 vintage, but we carry a few items from newer shows as well.

These are our top Anime gift picks!

Card Captor Sakura Summer School Doll Complete in Box:

Card Captor Sakura doll for sale

This doll is a North American release from When Card Captor Sakura was re-branded as Cardcaptors back in 2000. The North American edit of the CCS anime wasn't great, but the dolls are very similar to the Japanese releases. This doll is Sakura in her School fuku and is still sealed in the original box very cute and a perfect gift for any CCS fan at $15.

Peach English Artbook by Peach Girl Mangaka Miwa Ueda:

Peach Girl artbook for sale

Miwa Ueda's peach girl is a shoujo staple and this artbook is full of beautiful illustrations from Momo's journey through adolescence and love. In addition to there's gorgeous illustrations from Ueda's lesser known works as well. This is a US release so all image information is in English. A really lovely gift for a shoujo fan and very affordable at just $5.

Premium Sculpt Naruto Shadow Clone Figure:

Naruto Premium Sculpt Figure for Sale

Generally speaking Naruto is a newer series than we normally carry but this figure is too great not to share. It's a US release figure from mattel. It's one of the premium sculpts meaning it's larger and more detailed than the normal figures in this line. It features an 8 inch Naruto figure with interchangeable hands and FX background of his shadow clones. At just $15 it's less than it retail and would be the perfect gift for any naruto fan.


Utena Movie Pencil Board:

Utena Pencil Board for Sale

People either love or hate the Utena Movie, with little inbetween. However even haters can agree that it had beautiful artwork. This rare Japanese Shitajiki  or Pencil board has a beautiful nearly full cast shot. It's still in the original plastic and is on sale for $11 making it a wonderful gift for utena fan.

Japanese Yu Yu Hakusho Botan Figure:

Yu Yu Hakusho Figure for sale

This figure was a ufo catcher prize and is part of Yujin's Super Real line of Yu Yu Hakusho figures. This is still in its original packaging though it was taken out for pictures a really great figure for a Yu Yu  Hakusho fan and on sale for $10.

Sakura Wars Sakura Battle Costume Figure:

Sakura Wars figure for sale

Sakura Wars/ Sakura Taisen is a classic anime and game series. The series namesake Sakura has a lovely character design and this is a awesome figure featuring her in her battle costume. She's complete in package and on sale for $5 making her an affordable gift for any anime fan.

Inuyasha Miroku Plush Doll:

Inuyasha Plush for sale

 This is a US release UFO Catcher style plush. He's got a suction cup on his head, but he stands up on his own as well. He's no longer got his hang tag but is in otherwise great shape, a cute little gift for an Inuyasha fan at just $8.

Sailor Moon Parody Venus Five Anime Cel:

Venus 5 anime cel for sale

Venus Five was the Hilarious H anime spoof of Sailor Moon. This original production cel used in the making of the anime. It is of the main "Sailor Senshi" in the show. Production cels are hand painted one of a kind collectibles, so this would make a perfect gift for your closet eechi anime loving friend or a great tongue in cheek present for a Sailor Moon fan with a sense of humor. This great shot is just $30.

Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch Furoku Box:

Mermaid Melody Box for sale

This adorable box is a piece of furoku from Nakayoshi magazine. Furoku items are special bonuses given away with magazines and are only available in limited quantities. This is an adorable cardboard box with the mermaids pictures on all the sides. A unique collectible and a fantastic gift for any fan at $9.00.


Japanese Dragonball Z Pencil Shitajiki:

Dragonball Z Pencil board for sale

Japanese Dragonball Z pencil board with a full color cast shot on one side and sepia toned saiyans on the other side.  This is a really cool shot and is still sealed in the original plastic, a great piece for a dbz fan on sale for $4.

Magical Do Re Mi Ellie Plush Doll:

Magical Doremi Plush for sale

Super cute plush from  Magical Do Re Mi (Ojamajo Doremi) This is Ellie/Onpu. She's an official Japanese UFO Catcher and is in near mint shape with her original  hang tag. A great collectible for fans of the Japanese or US release of the show and on sale for $8 so she's easy on the wallet.

Five Star Stories Poster:

Five Star Stories Poster for sale

Five Star Stories is truly a classic. Probably one of the best sci-fi mech based stories outside of the Gundam franchise. This features a  commonly used but really beautiful image of one of the Mortar Headds in the background with a character leaping in front of it like a ballet dancer. This poster was a Newtype USA promo making it rare and unique gift for a fan of classic anime at $7.

We've got tons of other anime collectibles in the shop, and if you're thinking a certain super popular magical girl is missing, check out our Sailor Moon Dolls and Sailor Moon toys shopping guides!

Don't forget to stop by our shop:

Collection Update: Signed Revolutionary Girl Utena Promo Poster

We haven't done a collection update in awhile basically because we've been so busy with other things we've hardly had time to focus on curating our own collection.  We're still a little time short so this is a single item update, but it's a good one.

A promo poster for the English release of the Revolutionary Girl Utena anime Signed by both  Chiho Saito & Kunihio Ikuhara ( the creator of the show and director of the anime if you don't know) at Animazement in 2000. Utena is Jen's favorite series after Sailor Moon, so it's a pretty exciting  item for her. We've actually had it for about a year, but a local frame sale inspired us to take it out of the closet and frame it.

 We haven't hung it up yet, but soon it will be sharing wall space with this Furoku poster from Newtype 1997. Both will be hanging in our stock room/office, which due to the rarity of most Utena merchandise, contains a tiny tiny amount of Utena stuff for sale. Given the aforementioned lack of readily available Utena merch we're really happy to have such a unique piece in our collection.


Don't forget to stop by our shop:
 

Collection: Cel Gallery Update!

We've recently updated a LOAD of cels to our cel galleries so I thought it was time for another cel gallery update post. As always if you want to see our full collections you can stop in at Acetate Addiction for our full cel collection encompassing various series and genres or Millions of Cats for Jen's cats only cel collection.

Meanwhile if you're not into browsing, here are the highlights from our most recent adds:

 Last unicorn Wishlist cel. The last unicorn is my favorite animated film so I am always excited to add ANYTHING from this film to my collection. But this piece is really, really special. I always loved the scene of the unicorns crossing horns, it's such a beautiful iconic image of them, but given the rarity and expense of last unicorn cels I was sure I'd never get to own one. Luckily for me a few months ago I was proven wrong. One of my favorite pieces in the whole collection.

Balloon Mario. I ridiculously hardcore loved the awfulness that was the Super Mario brothers super show as a child. I still obviously haven't given up my love of Mario even in adulthood so naturally I'm always thrilled to add cels of Mario to my collection. I mean he's a big round ball here, what's not to love?

 She-Ra Princess of Power, Swiftwind. In case it isn't clear, I've got a unicorn problem, I had an insanely huge collection of them as a kid and it was always my dream to be one of those crazy people you see articles about that have like 1 million of one item. I changed my collecting focus a lot since then. But sometimes my unicorn hoarding problem rears it's ugly head. My She-Ra cel section is a a really obvious example of this, there's nothing but unicorns and probably never will be, But c'mon Swiftwind is awesome, he's a rainbow winged unicorn, that alone makes him cooler than pretty much anyone you know.

Keith Harrington Seasame Street cel. The end of a short animation designed by Keith Harrington about about counting to 10. This was Jen's graduation Present for getting her accounting degree, so now she can officially tell me how much money we've wasted on silly geeky stuff over the years and charge me for the privilege.

One of the Lee Brothers from the double Dragon Cartoon show. I don't remember which Lee brother this is because in the cartoon show because they look nothing like their video game counterparts. In fact NOTHING in the cartoon show is anything like the series. We pretty much enjoy this show on a so awful it's funny basis. Seriously the Super Mario Brothers Super Show is serious film making comparatively. But, hey they're video game characters so naturally we have to add them to the collection.

So that is just a little taste of our recent acquisitions (recent being a relative term as these were all acquired sometime in the last six months) If you're interested enough, going to our galleries will net you a lot more cat cels, and tons more cels from various series including: Utena, Tenshi Ni Narumon, Frogger, Donkey Kong,  Patalliro, A Kite, more Sailor Moon and others I'm probably ignoring right now.

Additionally if you're looking to add cels to your own collection we've recently updated a few for sale including this Gorgeous shot of mamoru.You can find him, more cels and lots of other fun stuff in our shop.

~Stephanie

Basara Manga and Anime Mini Review & Store Updates

We're doing bunches of store updates now in an effort to reclaim some of our long lost shelf/floor/closet space. We're starting with our manga collection though it's proving a bit difficult to part with too many, is there some sort of 12 step program for manga addicts? Actually book buyers in general I can never pass up a decently priced interesting looking book of any sort and now they're kind of eating the house. But, I'm getting pretty off topic here.

Anyway, the largest manga collection in our shop wasn't even something we had to decide to part with, it's doubles from buying a lot to complete our collection. *sigh* But, it's well worth reading and well worth featuring: 12 volumes of Basara in English.


If you haven't heard of Basara, I would liken it one of my personal favorite manga/anime, CLAMP's masterpiece, X. Beautiful, bloody and emotionally complex. At first there seems to be a clear wrong and right, but as you progress you can see that everything is bathed in grey, both sides have valid points and arguments and are fighting for what they truly believe in. There's much more of an emphasis an the romance aspects than you see in X, but even for someone like me who often feels romance ruins an otherwise great manga, it's well written and really helps develop the characters. Basara is shoujo fantasy epic that supposed to be set in a distant future post apocolyptic Japan but looks much more like a medieval inspired fantasy kingdom. It follows the story of a young girl named Sarasa. Sarasa's twin brother, Tatara, was predicted to be the "child of light" who would lead the people to revolution and freedom. However, the hated and feared tyrant of their land , the Red King, sees to the end of Tatara's prophecy. Before anyone realizes what happens to Tatara, Sarasa decided to take up the revolutionary fight, calls herself Tatara and vows to fufil the prophecy on her own without anyone knowing the truth. Sarasa is not your typical crying helpless herione who thinks about nothing more than shopping and her next date. She has the fate of her land and her people on her shoulders and doesn't even get a magic wand. It's a far cry from the magical girls and high school drama one usually associates with the Shoujo genre. Though like you would expect with a Shoujo, there is romance and most of the story is told in, feelings, emotions and chance encounters rather than epic battles.
The entire Manga series runs 27 volumes, but these 12 are good place to start. :)

There's an anime as well, titled as Legend of Basara, it runs 13 episodes and covers the first 5 manga. It's a pretty true telling compared with the manga and well worth tracking down, we watched the entire thing in one sitting, it was THAT complelling. Sadly, it hasn't been released outside of japan, but fasubs are pretty readily available (We've got it on fansubed VHS , we're old like that). My only complaints about the anime are :
1) The art is pretty inconsistent, a third of the time it's beautiful, a third of the time it's terrible, and the rest of the time it's pretty "meh".
And 2) It also end very early on and with a cliffhanger. So I highly suggest at least having some of the manga on hand if you plan to watch the anime first or you will find yourself wandering online bookstores when you finishit late at night hoping to find it ASAP. I speak from personal experience on this one. ;)

Lots of other manga are headed into the store in the next few days as well so look for large portions/complete sets from: Judas, oh/ah my goddess, a slew of sailor moon comics and lots of single volumes other great titles.
A few other fun things that aren't so manga shaped will probably make their way in too , like this cute mint on card Sailor Neptune Figure.


So go shopping! and don't forget to use may's coupon code: MayBlog for a nice discount!

~Stephanie

May's Coupon Code and Cel Gallery Update

First, this month's coupon code has been set up and will get you 15% off your order, It's MayBlog So go shopping so we can both have awesome stuff!

We've updated very recently so there's more fun stuff to use your code on :) . The most interesting item I think is this:


A Vintage 1998 Zelda Trophy Figure. We're only selling it because we have this figure already, but it's completely awesome and I want some other Zelda fan to enjoy it. I'll be updating later today with some great things, but nothing as good as a Zelda trophy.

Next up, we updated our cel gallery. We normally update every couple months so such a quick update is a bit strange for us. I loathe scanning so I only do it sparingly but, we received a very special gift so I did it as soon as it arrived.

So our Ultra awesome special gift first, A gorgeous pan cel of young Sawa from A Kite NSFW warning as it is nude. I begged the original owner, who has a completely gorgeous gallery I suggest visiting, for years to let me buy that cel and then when she was finally willing to give it up, I couldn't afford it. She was sweet enough to hold it for me until i could which just wasn't happening for me. I've bought some things in that period of time, but only one thing anywhere near that price. Our cel funds are pretty near nil these days unfortunately. :( I ordered another Kite cel from her when she took offers. And when I received it in the mail she had included the pan cel along with it to cheer me up as I've going through a rough patch lately. It really touched my heart. So special *hugs* to her though I don't think she reads this.

Next we created a whole new section, Patalliro! , containing 3 cels one of each of the main characters. Patalliro! was the first series with shonen-ai/yaoi shown on mainstream TV running from 1982-1983 with movie after that and a new digital series, Patalliro sayuki that came out in 2005. Our cels are from the original series which is one of the best written gag series we've come across we highly suggest watching it. Check out the wikipedia page for more info. Unfortunately it's never been released outside Japan so you'll have to find fan subs (which currently aren't finished). Though if you can watch it raw (and have a Japanese address) the official site has boxsets available as well as some super cool T-shirts we wish we owned. Seriously, go watch patalliro, you'll love it.

Next up another new section, Peach Girl. Peach Girl absolutely drips of Shoujo. It centers on Momo who's your typical shoujo heroine, worried about her looks and obsessed with her crush. However because her hair is sun bleached and she tans easily her classmates stereotype her as a complete airhead and spread rumors about her. The whole ting gets pretty ridiculous quickly, but we managed to enjoy reading it (we haven't seen the show yet) anyway. Momo is actually pretty likable if not a bit vapid.

Next a gorgeous cel of the Snow Queen From the Sailor Moon S Movie. The S Movie had a a pretty so-so storyline, but the art was gorgeous. The Snow Queen is a pretty accurate reflection of that as is my Gorgeous Pluto cel. Now, if we could only find a human Luna to keep them company.

Last but, not least, A wonderfully detailed cel of Meier from the Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust Movie. This shot isn't the normal "pretty" sort we gravitate towards, but it is beautiful. The detail is exquisite, his eyes really drew us in to this one. Check out the even more amazing matching sketch and while you're there take some time to appreciate the animators. That cel is sequence number A13 and it's not an end cel so that means there are at least 14 cels and sketches that were drawn and painted for just that tiny bit of screen time and really the entire movie is like that. It's absolutely mind blowing when you think about how much time and effort went into it. So think about that next time you're enjoy bloodlust's stunning visuals. :)

That's all for now!

Oh an in case you're wondering why my cel posts are full of links instead of pretty pictures when clearly cel collecting is a visual hobby, it's because I post our cel gallery updates from a completely different computer than I post blog updates from so when I'm blogging I don't have direct access to the scans. Additionally I use flickr as my file host and I don't think cel scans fit their usage policy, nor do I want to steal Rubberslugs precious bandwidth to post pictures elsewhere. So for now you'll just have to click the links to see the pretties. I promise that they're worth it.

Also, I took some pictures of our preexisting collections. I just have to get them resized and then go about the undertaking of cataloging what's in them.

~Stephanie

Cel update, our addiction to viva pinata and Freezepop

This is actually old news now but, I added new cels to our gallery! Well honestly not so new as we've had them sitting around for quite some time we just couldn't share them, luckily though the scanner issue has been fixed and we can scan merrily. While of course all our additions are fantastic there are a few highlights which are as follows:

A large pan cel of Sonia from Midnight Panther.

I've always loved Sonia's character design and I missed out on this cel (or one like it) several years early so I was absolutely thrilled to get my hands on this one. I have to admit though that I'm pretty apathetic towards the story of Midnight Panther. I don't know if it's better in manga form but the ova is really only worth watching for the lovely character designs. As like most H anime, the artwork is lovely even in spite of the storyline being pretty blah.

Next highlight is:

Miruru from Tenshi Ni Narumon

Everybody loves a cat girl and we're no exception! Miruru has a wonderful character design and Tenshi Ni Narumon or I'm gonna be an Angel as (half) released in the US, has some of the most detailed and beautiful art of any anime series so it's always a treat to add her to our collection. It was was her look of being battered and beaten but not defeated is what really drew us to this shot. I have to admit that I haven't finished watching TNN yet, I do so wish it had finished being released on DVD here, so I don't know what's happening here hopefully knowing will make us love it more. I screwed up the resizing on this one so it's a lot smaller than our others scans, eventually I'll correct it.

Next one and the last one I'm going to blather on about is:

Vega/ Balrog, my first pixel love, from the Street fighter II V series


I absolutely love Street Fighter. When I was a wee lass there were these magical places known as arcades young people use to favor. In this magical land for the paltry price of a quarter or two or the equivalency in the local currency of the arcade, the token, you could be transformed into a world renowned fighter and be transported to various beautiful locations all the way around the globe in a stunning haze of bright colors, lights and sounds. With a knowledgeable flick of the arcade stick and the mash of the buttons you could fell the greatest warriors, Japan, Thailand, Russia, the US and others had to offer. Hours of my time effort and hard earned cash went into this Magical Street fighter II machine, I was always the one token girl, Chun Li and I always got hung up on the most beautiful of all fighters, Vega. Oh Vega (called balrog in the Japanese release) the most arrogant of beauties occupying the rarefied space women love so much of being decidedly androgynous with his long hair, dancers body and grace but with enough machismo to intimidate all but the most self assured man. His speed and "girly" fighting style always made it seem almost like a "mirror match" which every digital fighter knows is the hardest to win. Though he'd often defeat me I almost didn't mind as it'd give me another look at those beautiful pixels which gave me a peek at the lovely face behind the mask./end gushing fangirling
The cel itself is from the street fighter II V series which wasn't bad and wasn't good. It just was. I enjoyed it more than I probably should have but wouldn't recommend it for someone who isn't a street fighter fan. It does have a good thing going for it though, Vega looks closest to his original design in that one. I love his cocky expression in this shot it was a wonderful and thoughtful present from Jen.

Overall we updated 10 or 11 cels in various series and they can all be seen in our gallery. There are several beauties I didn't touch on in there so go check em' out. :) Also, we're working on a super secret specialized cel gallery right now as well, it's still lacking in additions but I made the awesome layout. Get a sneak peek here.

Next up, we're late to the party as we didn't get a 360 until RE5 came out with the snazzy LE red console, but viva pinata is so amazingly addictive. It's totally monster rancher all over again but with less ridiculous fighting and more emphasis on nurturing your adorable little pinatas. We've been alternating turns and are both a little bit stuck right now but looking for all the variants and trying to lure new pinatas into the garden is still proving fun. I've already put several hours into it though it's a little mystifying how it can be so much fun when it's basically just constantly working at something. I guess it's like animal crossing in that way. I wonder what it says about modern society when we put off real world chores and work to do it virtually? something to consider....

Last and certainly not least we saw Freezepop Saturday night! They were at the Triple Rock Bar in Minneapolis. If you're not a freezepop fan they're a synthpop band that's been featured in many video games over the years including: Frequency, Amplitude, Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero II, Karaoke Revolution, DDR, Rock Band and others I'm just not remembering right now. Jen's been a big fan of them for the last 7 or 8 years and this is the second time they've toured near enough for us to go check them out. This time we were center stage and close enough to touch them at any point. Jen got a singed CD and a hug and a couple moments with Sean on the documentary tape. We'll see if it makes the final cut. :) If you're not a freezepop fan you should really check them out. Their myspace has some fun tracks but my favorites aren't there :( But, the internet should yield some results for: science genius girl, I am not you gameboy and freezepop forever. Go take a listen. Also, the games listed above are also pretty fantastic as well, FreQuency is one of my favorite rhythm games ever!

I've got orders to pack and send (THANKS!) so that's all for now. If I have more time I'll add some pretty pictures of the signed freezepop CD later.

It's later so here's the picture. :) If I'm really industrious I'll eventually add in pics of the singed purse from last year so we can compare Sean's Kitty drawings.



~Stephanie


Don't forget to stop by our shop fro cels for sale and other goodies:

Stephanie's Introduction

As this the first post I thought it best if I do an introduction post. I'm one half of the collecting team, Stephanie. As of these writing I'm 26 and as one could easily guess I collect bits of geekery. I like to collect lots of things and have the cluttered shelves to prove it. My favorite collections though are easily animation cels and vintage video games.

I started collecting animation cels because I was on the look out for a unique Christmas present for Jen. I chanced on a sailor moon cel on ebay and was suddenly amazed that you could own an actual piece of your favorite show. You could own a frame millions of people have seen and enjoyed for a fraction of what a movie prop or similarly exposed painting would cost. So I eventually bought some cheap ones for myself and I was hooked. If you're interested in cels I suggest checking out keys cel FAQ for your basic information, Rubberslug for some gorgegous galleries and anime-beta to meet other collectors. There are lots of other sites devoted to cel collecting/collections but those are some of the most accessible. We have a joint online collection gallery at rubberslug which showcases our art collection quite nicely so be sure to stop over there if you're interested in our collection. We'll probably post here when we've updated over there if we remember. On that note we have some in the works as our gallery hasn't seen a new cel in months but we've purchased several. Though compensate for the new we've had to take out a few old. They're being slowly updated to our shop so head on over and take a peak. I'd love to see our celluloid babies in new homes.

For video games, I've been playing games for as long as I can remeber starting with the intellevision and just blossoming from there as I've aged. Jen and I have many of the major gaming systems released from the early 1980's to the present, our most recent acquisition being the red limited edition Resident Evil 5 Xbox 360 with the game (RE5 is fabulous and we've already beat it twice). We have hundreds of games, so many in fact we have trouble keeping count and sometimes buy doubles.(pictures documenting pieces of it to come soon) Hopefully keeping a collection blog will help us catalog our collection a little better. In all honesty I actually love video games a lot more than anime so most of the collectibles I tend to buy for myself are video game related. I can't get enough of weird video game related bits and baubles especially from the Super Mario brothers and the Zelda game series.

My other collections include: unicorns (in general), x-men comics, vinyl records, D&D 1st & 2nd edition manuals, Star trek memorobilia related to spock/leonard Nimoy, Star wars memoribilia primarily relating to the sith and the more minor alien races, fossils, and other weird things I'm too lazy to think of at the moment. Not to mention all the things I really love but don't collect much from like Dr. Who (mostly the Tom Baker seasons) and the early Godzilla films.

So I think that's it I think that gives a pretty good overview of my mainline geekery. I promise that subsquent entries will be at least a little more interesting.

~Stephanie