inside animation art
inside animation art
Cel Society is an independent site dedicated to the analysis and documentation of original Japanese animation production art, including cels, genga, backgrounds and rare documents.
The market for Japanese anime production art is booming. Pieces that sold for a few hundred euros ten years ago now fetch five and six figures at Christie's, Bonhams, or Aibo. Yet, quality information remains scarce, fragmented, and often reserved for insiders.
Cel Society was born from a simple observation: collectors, auction houses, and the media need an independent, rigorous, and accessible reference.
Our editorial scope covers the entirety of original Japanese anime production art: hand-painted acetate cels, genga (原画), douga (動画), backgrounds, layouts, ekonte, and settei. From the golden age of the 1980s–1990s to the last productions before the digital transition.
We cover major international auctions — Aibo, Bonhams, Christie's, Yahoo Japan Auctions.
Our analyses combine human expertise and digital tools. The final editorial judgment, rating and validation of each insight are handled by humans. Our team brings together collectors with long experience of the secondary market and people from the worlds of art and appraisal, used to reading and contextualizing original works.
Cel Society is an independent publication. We are not affiliated with any auction house, gallery owner or dealer. Our analyses are not sponsored.
We believe that quality information about this market must exist outside the commercial interests of the actors operating within it.
Cel Society is developing an on-demand rating service for collectors and auction houses. Each rating produces a reference document: reasoned analysis by criterion, calculated CS Score and assigned CS Grade.
Would you like to rate a lot? Create an account and fill in the form in your customer area (we will reply as quickly as possible).
Subject
Importance of the character, scene or environment within its work. The author's identity is taken into account when documented. The rating is internal to the work, with no comparison between series. The physical condition of the document never enters into this criterion.
Image
Formal quality of the document: framing, composition, expressiveness, palette, mastery of line or painting. Rates what is visible, never the physical condition of the support. A document can be formally exceptional regardless of its configuration.
Setup
For cels: physical configuration of the lot, cel alone, with background, with douga. For backgrounds and gengas: technical mastery of the document. For sericels: numbering and non-reproduction guarantees. The calibration details for this criterion are part of our proprietary methodology.
Physical condition
The CS Score does not include conservation condition. Vinegar syndrome, yellowing or cracking affect market value, not intrinsic value. The condition is reported separately in each sheet, as communicated by the auction house on the indicated date.
Important note: The Cel Society score is an analytical and editorial tool. It is not a financial estimate, buying or selling advice, and does not prejudge auction results.
Each Cel Society score is associated with a grade, a synthetic translation allowing quick and standardized reading. The CS Grade does not replace the numerical score and does not include any market data.
CS Common and CS Collector are not pejorative ratings. They are categories that honestly describe common production, which represents the vast majority of documents in circulation. CS Holy Grail and CS Icon are structurally rare: they require a subject, an image and a setup that all converge toward the exceptional within their own reference universe.
