A "New" Cel

Last winter I bought a miscellaneous batch of cels from Sanrio's "Legend of Syrius" aka "The Sea Prince and the Fire Child." Mostly I was interested in a set showing some of the sea creatures, as the film seems a model for Disney's "Little Mermaid" in this regard. But I was puzzled by one cel that came with the batch, an elegant blonde-haired sylph that I assumed was one of Malta's fellow fire-children.

I actually did a special view-through of the film, looking for this character alone, enjoying myself, but, alas, not finding the cel. And yet the character design obviously had the exact same feel as "Syrius," and fit well with the other cels that I got, which I could track down. Perhaps a deleted scene? In the end I put the pretty cel up in the "Syrius" gallery as an "unknown," hoping some visitor would have more information.

But actually I solved the riddle through one of my random trawls through Yahoo Japan. There, in a cel being sold by a dealer (who also was offering a "Syrius" cel) was the same character -- and happily some information on its source.

I could understand my confusion. Sanrio, seeking to develop a bigger market for animated films, released a series of titles in the early 1980s including "Syrius" and the two Unico movies. The last of their projects was a quirky homage to Disney's classic "Fantasia," titled "Yosei Florence." (It was briefly available in North America on a VHS tape titled "A Journey through Fairyland.") This was, according to one filmography report I found in English, some four years in the making, with entirely hand-traced cels and all sorts of special effects. Unfortunately, it failed to be commercially successful in Japan, and its failure essentially ended Sanrio's efforts in making feature animated films. Still, the reviewer says, "Florence has a secure place in anime history as a tour-de-force of full animation."

Cels from this project don't seem common -- I found one other on RS. But I've given this mystery cel its place of honor in my "One or Two of a Kind" gallery, alongside some other "Golden Age" rarities. And I'll certainly look for more from the same film.

http://sensei.rubberslug.com/gallery/inv_info.asp?ItemID=366101