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Production Art

that i found being auctioned off and did not buy

'gurl how did you find this'

Ok, so, last night (5/3/24), I went into a multi-hour trance looking at Hikago merch on Suruga-ya and other sites. I eventually remembered about Buyee, a platform YouTubers used to hawk that lets you buy shit from Japanese auction sites and get it shipped with less effort on your part and on the part of the seller. There's like a hundred of them, but that's the one I was using- it doesn't really matter, tbh, because I was just looking at Yahoo Auctions Japan through its little portal and I didn't even buy anything. Anyways, I ended up finding some listings for ANIMATION CELS, and I was like 'that's too cool to let disappear when the auctions expire/get bought', so I saved all the images I could. Here ya' go!

All images are resized to fit the page format, but only inline- so if you open them in a new tab, you should be able to view and save them in the full resolution I saved and uploaded them at.

Animation Cells

These appear to be real sketches from the animation of the show. Any that are grouped together in a section were grouped together in the auction listing. I don't know how animation cels work, so I can't infer much more than that... but any further comments or information I have will be at the end of each section.

That is almost definitely the outfit seen in his picture on this SL page... I'd say this could be the adaptation of that very panel, but he makes that face all the time, so it's hard to tell.

This and the next one come with what I can only assume are thumbnails in dark yellow- as opposed to the lighter yellow sketch pages we'll see later. In the full, we have Akari, Mitani, Tsutsui, and... someone. Hikaru's rarely that tall, but Kaga's never that short, and the hair doesn't really match either. I don't know what's going on with the yellow squiggles, you'll see those a lot. Each character is marked with one or two letters, and this is page C... Maybe this is a scrapped draft page. You can see the Studio Pierrot logo in the top-right, which is fun. I also like how Mitani's identity is still obvious even in his thumbnial form.

No clue what's giong on here. The perspective is giving 'that blank space off to the right is where the tournament players Hikaru accidentally kibitzed on', but their body language and expressions are... not. If the number in the top-left is to be believed, this and the previous one might be from episode 15? But I kind of doubt that.

This third page appears to be the background behind Hikaru's head, as you can see from the matching-up lines in the lower left corner of the frame. This is the first* cell to have one of the light-yellow sketch pages with all the different colored pencils, which is a very pretty effect.

*These are sorted alphabetically according to what I named the files, not per price or importance or episode number (yet?) or anything.

I don't know what the functional difference between all these sketches is, but it's interesting to see the changes in the way he's drawn.

This one's only got red and yellow.

Here's my hot take: Isumi is overrated. I get that he's narratively important, but he's not that hot!

Is this from 51 or 52? Make up your mind! That's a pretty big tonal difference!!!

I've lost all ability to tell what the yellow pages are for. Also, is that Kurata? That's totally Kurata. Predictably, what with this being Sai, this was the most expensive cell on the site.

My gut says that this is from his first appearance, this is when he's laying out the second life-and-death problem. But I don't know that for sure... This was the first one I found on the site, as it was the cheapest.

six of him...

"Setting Materials"

This was three auctions- the two shadowy ones were each their own separate one, and the rest were sample pictures from a lot of FIFTY-EIGHT PAGES. What I wouldn't do to see them all... The only thing convincing me that these are for the show and not the manga itself is the referenced panel on the third-and-second-to-last entries.

Under the title "Setting Materials I", we have a head-turn-around of Hikaru and one of Akira, a dynamic pose of Hikaru placing a stone down, and an outfit reference for Sai.

Under the title "Setting Materials II", we have a head-turn-around of Isumi, and standing references of Akira in his Kaio uniform, Waya in the camo shirt, and Ichikawa in her work outfit. Through the pages, you can see Tsutsui's head-turn-around behind Waya, what might be Ogata behind Ichikawa, and something barely visible behind Isumi.

Ok, I'm actually organizing these now. Everything from here onwards is from the 58-page lot- interestingly, two these are also seen in the other upload. If I was actually considering purchasing these, I'd say this is a little suspicious, but here it's mostly useful for historical purposes.

Here's the other one, that reference of Waya in this outfit.

At first I thought this was another duplicate, but no, this is a different page full of Hikaru faces.

As you can tell by the outfit and the proportions, this is his appearance early in the series. Compared to the one immediately previous, you can see how much he grew up between them...

This one's got a lot more black in it than normal (although 'pen' in the filename is admittedly probably wrong, now that I look closer). You can tell from the outfit that this is middle school Hikaru.

Here is Sai as seen from the back, and a cool pose of him from the front. This could be useful for cosplayers, since they've drawn parts of his outfit that are normally obscured by his hair.

Here is a reference for the board Hikaru has in his room. It's a nice one with legs. (This is NOT the board that Sai haunted, of course, that one stayed in the attic.)

Here's the layout of the room at the Go Institute where matches are played! You see this room so often, but I still had trouble recognizing it until I looked at the detials around the edges. You get a good feel for the size of the room, as well as details that are usually obscured by characters and/or text bubbles (depending on your adaptation). Fascinatingly, it even shows how the boards are stored when note in use, which is something I don't think we ever see in the show!

And finally, the picture that made me literally leap out of my chair... a full reference for AKIRA'S ROOM! We only see this a handful of times total across the series- even in the manga, when they're literally staying AT HIS HOUSE, we mostly see the room that the Go salon takes place in. I think the most focus it gets is during his game with Sai, you can see the computer there. Honestly, if it weren't for the literal label of "Akira's Room" (and the absolutely familiar reverse-angle shot on the right there), I'd assume this was some kind of home office area. It's giving 'we know he's going to use a computer once, so we have to put it in there'... You can see he stores his go board on its side like the Institute does, I guess that's the right way to do it. And that's totally a CD player off to the left of the clock. That's adorable.

Overall, I think you could show this picture to anyone and they'd instantly get Akira's vibe, especially with his size reference there that's totally wearing the striped polo shirt. You have this fancy traditional Japanese house and unmistakeable affluence for the time period... but also that 'just some guy' energy that gives him so much charm. Not much decor. The bookshelf is the dominant piece of furniture. But he's still got a CD player and a backpack on the floor.