Cels Forum

Dear Jen,

Wow, you're lucky!  I, unfortunately, wasn't that lucky =(.
I went to LA the EXACT same weekend as you did (during that
convention at the Shrine Auditorium).  I DID NOT get a
chance to read the forum before I left, and that was the
biggest mistake I ever made!  I knew I had only one free
day available after I finished my business there, so I had
to choose one place to visit.

I chose to go to Mandarake because of the overwhelming
reviews about them on various places on the net.  I was
EXTREMELY disappointed =(.  I came back to see that someone
did post a warning about Mandarake on the forum.  The
person who warned you was exactly right! Mandarake is a very
small store (about the size of a small apartment) with few
choice cels.  I scrounged their junk cel bin for an hour and
got a few nice and cheap cels (one $3.00 cel that I have no
idea where it came from and a couple of cheap but nice
Vampire Princess Miyu cels).  Mandarake did have some choice
cels BUT they were EXTREMELY pricey!  They had about one
cel each of the more popular shows (Sailor Moon, Shamanic
Princess, etc.), but the prices for those were about the
same as you would find on the web.  They did have some
original sketches for sale by some famous manga and anime
artists, but they cost $600.00 - $1000.00 each.  There was
a nice Princess Mononoke cel there for $4000.00, and a
beautiful Card Captor Sakura movie cel for $400.00 =P.
Other than that, the store mainly was mainly filled with
manga, magazines, a rummage through card bin, and a few
other anime related goodies.

The people there were nice, but MOST of the employees there
did not understand English very well =(.  There were only 2
English speaking employees when I went who fielded all my
questions.

Next time I get the chance to goto LA, I'm going to find
Noriko!  I just hope it's sometime soon!


Sincerely,

Sonia