cocopunk

When I was about 12, I asked for something very specific for my birthday: an animation cel of the character Piccolo from Dragon Ball Z I found for sale online. It cost $40.

For the following 25 years or so, I have been wondering where the cel was specifically from. Presumably the show, Dragon Ball Z, and I could tell from the style of drawing that it was from later in the series — but I had rewatched many of Piccolo’s scenes and there weren’t any scenes that were even similar. But there are 291 episodes of Dragon Ball Z and I never did an exhaustive search.

To add to the brain scratch, at some point I found an animated gif that looked incredibly similar, but the gif was so small that it didn’t help identify the source. It did, however, show the context and camera angle: a close up of Piccolo’s face, then a quick pull away with a dark background.

I also thought it might be from one of the then-13 Dragon Ball movies. But again, I skimmed them and none of them had that scene of Piccolo.

A couple years later I also acquired a cel of the character Kaioshin for about $30:

Because of the character’s relatively limited appearances, I was able to find it’s origin: episode 229 of Dragon Ball Z.

This also bolstered my theory that the Piccolo cel was not from the TV show, because it is physically a little different than the Kaioshin cel. The Piccolo cel is a more complicated shot: it’s two layers of acetate and is painted with thick coats of paint that cover the entire back of the illustration. (Possibly, I would guess, for some kind of back-lighting effect that would require the cel to be opaque.) For comparison:

Being a complicated effects shot doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not from the television show, of course.

All of this was more of an exercise in patience than an ongoing obsession; I knew that I would eventually rewatch various parts of the Dragon Ball series and recognize the cel. Eventually. I just had to wait for it to cross my path.

But still, if it wasn’t from the TV show, and if it wasn’t from the movies, where could it be from?

Last night while scrolling through Instagram I came across the cover of a 1995 PlayStation game: Dragon Ball Z Ultimate Battle 22. (Yes, the Instagram algorithm serves me images of video games and anime. The algorithm knows best.)

I’d never seen the gameplay so I was curious what it looked like. The intro video to the game came up on YouTube:

Lo and behold.

The thing is, I had seen that video before, probably in a lower resolution, probably around the year 2000. Maybe before I even had the cel. I’d just never made the connection.

As a teen I probably would’ve been a little disappointed to learn that it wasn’t from the “real” TV show, and perhaps not even done by Toei Animation (though some people think it was definitely the same animators). That doesn’t bother me at all now. In fact the strangeness only makes it more unique! And I still have the other cel from the television series anyway.

Animation cels from beloved anime series are now stunningly expensive for the little bits of television production esoterica that they are. The cartoons have only become more and more popular over time, plus the internet has made us all insane, especially those of us who like to collect things. (I’d say I could easily get $500 for mine. That’s on the low end because they don’t feature main characters or particularly good composition. Better frames go for thousands of dollars.) Just a few years ago you could still find <$100 Dragon Ball GT cels on Japanese auction sites but somehow, somewhy, they’ve all ballooned in price. And here’s the kicker: You can’t even display them because they’re sensitive to light. I didn’t know better at the time and that’s why the linework has faded. They were never designed to last, after all.

Of course, animation cels fell out of use twenty years ago so they’re all relics now, vintage ephemera from another time. And this year, Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama died unexpectedly at the age of 68.

So it is unlikely I’ll ever get another Dragon Ball cel. But I can finally close this loop and file away one unanswered question that’s been rattling around for a couple decades.