Hi J! Well, there's not much I can tell from the 
scan itself—it doesn't strike me as fake, but I 
haven't seen enough of FY to know the scene 
in question— I can tell you what to look out for 
in most anime cels:

The first dead giveaway for a fake cel is 
usually the lines. Unless the cel is SUPER 
old, make sure the black lines of the cel are 
photocopier ink, NOT handpainted with 
celpaint. You can tell photocopier ink because 
it is more brittle than celpaint; it will fade over 
time—so look for spots where the ink lines 
turn brownish or fade out. Correction spots of 
black celpaint are OK, but overall the black 
lines should have been put on the cel with a 
copier. Also, most people who paint cels are 
not as steady-handed painting as they might 
be with a pencil. Anime cels are copied 
directly from pencil sketches, so the lines will 
normally be smooth and even. Look for clues 
in things like hair, round objects, and long line 
segments. 

On most anime cels, the guidelines for 
shadows and highlights are painted by hand 
on the FRONT of the cel. You should be able 
to see them if you hold the cel at an angle in 
the light, or you can even touch them. Then the 
resulting spaces are filled in with paint on the 
back of the cel.

Most real cels are not "perfect" because they 
have to be completed so quickly. Cel painters 
work under strict deadlines, so the outside 
edges of the paint are usually irregular or just 
run off the edge of the cel in weird places. 
Sometimes things near the edge aren't even 
completed because they won't end up in the 
picture anyway. Look out for cels which seem 
like they were painted from a screencapture, 
(ie. They have perfectly rectangular edges) or 
like too much attention was paid to making 
them look "perfect". 

Look for the sequence number at the top right 
of most production cels. A cels are drawn by 
the key animator. B, C, D, etc. are drawn by in-
betweeners, and so might not have as high a 
drawing quality.

Granted, a cel might have all of these 
characteristics and STILL be fake, so the best 
way to make sure is twofold:

1) Find the scene the cel is from and try to 
match the exact frame. Compare the lines of 
the cel to what you see on the screen. They 
must match perfectly.

2) Find another cel from a similar or the same 
sequence, with the same lighting on the 
character, and compare the paint colors. It is 
VERY difficult for counterfeiters to match paint 
color if all they're working from is a screencap.

Good luck!

Izobel
The Zelgoddess

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