If you’re asking whether reproduction cels
masquerading as production cels are a big problem
in this hobby, I think the answer is no, with a
few exceptions. The most notable exception is
Ah! My Goddess OVA (not movie) cels, particularly
of Belldandy. AIC made a bunch of repros; the
ones I’ve seen are relatively close-up shots
(waist-up or head shots). There doesn’t appear
to be a record of which cels had repros made from
them, nor how many, and a bunch of them made
their way to the US and often onto ebay. It’s
probably a good idea to check any decent AMG OVA
cel you’re thinking about buying (which should
become easier with the release of the DVDs).
The black xerographic lines are the same in the
production cels and the repros, so you have to
look at hand-drawn lines and painted areas to
look for differences from the screen shot. As
stated in the previous post, there is often (but
not always) an area where the color in the repro
is different from that in the screen shot.
Perhaps AIC asked the artists to do that on
purpose on many of the repros.
As for other series, I believe someone on the
forum has an example of a Tenchi repro on his
site, and I have an El Hazard cel that has an AIC
stamp but wasn’t used in the video. However,
these are probably unusual in the world of cels.
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