"I'm also bothered by the "assembly line" aura of 
repro cels.  Not to sound pretentious, but they 
lack "art." Knowing that some poor, bored 
underpaid workers sat around painting the same 
areas with the same colors over and over and over 
again just seems to me to be the exact opposite 
of art."

dear tralfie, I have to disagree with you on this 
point. this description is exactly what underpaid 
workers do in animation studios to produce the 
real thing as well, coloring in just about the 
same areas over and over again to produce one 
scene. critics of the fine arts might deny anime 
production cels the classification of art just as 
you deny it to repro cels. besides, they've 
denied andy warhol too, didn't they? o_O just 
some food for thought.

/mina