The Legend of Crystania is a film that has had a significant impact on me. Unlike any of movie, it wasn't because of the story, characters, art, or music. It was because, 14 years ago, my college friends and I and over 25 members of our college anime club, SPAMM, created a feature length fandub of the film. To this day, I have yet to know anything about the official story or characters other than it's connection to Lodoss War.

Our film was entitled The Secret of Crystania, and you can view it here:
theschlock.com/the-secret-of-crystania

Every since moving to Japan, I often go to Yahoo Auctions and when I'm there, I always search for Crystania. Over the last 10 years, many pieces of Crystania memorabilia has surfaced. Usually the prices are very cheap compared to well known anime productions of the time, so buying these things has worked on quite well. Recently, some very interesting things has shown up there, too.

I have scanned in all of my memorabilia, and you can take a look at it all below.

The Legend of Crystania premiered in Japanese theaters during the Tsunogawa Anime Festival on July 29th, 1995. It was part of a double feature along with the Slayers movie. Obviously, Slayers was incredibly popular, so people were basically suckered into seeing Crystania, too.

I have found a ticket from that event, which has a March 27th, 1995 date on it for some reason. Were they selling tickets that far in advance? Looking around all tickets have that date on them. I don't know why.

Additionally, I found a flyer for the premiere event as well as a film pamphlet.

As films release in Japan, theaters will sell a pamphlet book of the film with shots from the film, story explanation, and occasionally production notes, interviews, and other behind the scenes stuff. This particular book also has several pages of ads for additional Crystania mechandise. Most of the time these books are sold, but maybe these were given away with the premiere. I've scanned the pamphlet and the flyer and included them below.

Legend of Crystania - Film Pamphlet (20 pages)
はじまりの冒険者たち　レジェンド・オブ・クリスタニア パンフレット
https://drive.google.com/.../1c8g83Hvg7Z6VQ0-c5SMrJeXM-NJNapjm

Slayers / Legend of Crystania Premiere Flyer
スレイヤーズ はじまりの冒険者たち　レジェンド・オブ・クリスタニア 映画 チラシ
https://drive.google.com/.../1gUuA27jhyLwaO5PghHqRcZ9o8R2MX5Hy

The original home release of Legend of Crystania was on VHS in Japan on March 8th, 1996. But, it was a decaying format and LaserDisc was the new hotness. LaserDisc took an incredible hold in Japan and almost all the modern popular anime releases got a LaserDisc release through the late 90s. The LaserDisc version of Crystania was released on March 23rd, 1996, and by the end of the year, the 3-part 6-episode OAV sequel was released on LaserDisc, too.

The LaserDisc version of Legend of Crystania is the most high quality release to date. In America, we got a DVD version in 2000, but the DVD version released by ADV was a transfer of the LaserDisc. Additionally, the American DVD has subtitles and other English edits burned directly onto the video. This cuts out some of the original video.

I picked up two copies of the movie as they weren't too expensive.

The VHS tape shows up on Yahoo Auctions from time to time, but I think it's unnecessary to own since the LaserDisc is the definitive version.

Around 7 years ago, as I was looking through Yahoo Auctions, I first searched for Crystania and saw that some was selling animation cels. I had always dreamed or had a fantasy of owning animation cels of Crystania, but owning such things seemed incredible cost prohibited in my mind, considering cels of popular shows go for hundreds of dollars.

Luckily, Crystania is not popular, nor even really all that good. I purchased my first cels and posted about it here: theschlock.com/animation-cels-from-the-legend-of-crystania.

The years went on, and occasionally more and more cels would appear on Yahoo Auctions. Today, I own 15 cels from the film. I have scanned them all, and added them in the gallery below.

Recently, these two items appeared on Yahoo Auctions and I immediately put all of my money behind acquiring them. Although, the final price of the auctions weren't really that expensive.

We have a collection of Character Reference sheets and a collection of Cel Layout Corrections, both used during the production of the film.

The Character Reference was used by key animator on the film the accurately and correctly draw characters with the correct clothes, items, as well as size and dimensions. When characters face different directions or do move in various ways, animators will use these references to make sure everything is okay.

The Cel Layout Corrections collection is pretty self explanatory from the title, although after flipping through the pages, I don't really see that many corrections. I think it's mostly a collection of line art used for Key frames in the film. Once these frames were drawn, they were traced onto cel paper. From there, the colors were onto the cels.

You can download and page through each collection from the links below.

Legend of Crystania - Character Reference Collection (65 pages)
「レジェンド・オブ・クリスタニア」キャラクラー設定集
https://drive.google.com/.../1RbCooF9dTjEmcYfd31qo9zoUJpTqlOXW

Legend of Crystania - Cel Layout Corrections (96 pages)
「レジェンド・オブ・クリスタニア」レイアウト時のキャラ・修正集
https://drive.google.com/.../19v8gTPq7vYGSlZt6WmOl79SysB_nYnVV

I continue to look for unique Crystania items on Yahoo Auctions.

(Update 2023): It has been a while since anything interesting Crystania related has showed up on Yahoo. I haven't seen any animation cels in the last 2 1/2 years. Originally, there were quite a bit, but things have dried up. Maybe I've bought them all? Maybe it's time to move to a different platform to find stuff?

(Update May 2023): A new animation cel showed up on Yahoo Auctions, so I added that one to my collection. But things are still mostly dry.