You can own some very iconic and very expensive animation cells thanks to a new memorabilia auction

People love to say that money can’t buy happiness, as if there isn’t a direct line between “happiness” and “not having to worry about paying for food or housing or healthcare, but there is one thing that you absolutely can buy with money: expensive prints and animation cells from iconic cartoons, both anime and otherwise! Seriously, who needs happiness (or food, for that matter) when you can own an actual animation cell of the little Totoros from the opening sequence of My Neighbor Totoro? Or a series of frames of the Joker laughing from Batman: Mask Of The Phantasm? Those things (and more!) could be yours, provided you have a lot of money that you don’t need to spend on other things, courtesy of a new auction from Heritage Auctions running this week called “The Art Of Anime And Everything Cool.”

That name is certainly appropriate, because holy cow, this stuff rules. There are some real nice animation cells from stuff like Akira, like Kaneda on his bike, Tetsuo on his rampage through the hospital, and the collected jars of Akira’s organs or whatever. There’s a bananas collection of Studio Ghibli art, most of which is from Totoro, but there’s also a nice cell from Porco Rosso that could double as regular art, a badass shot of San from Princess Mononoke ready to tear up some jerks, and a cell from Kiki’s Delivery Service that is going for over $15,000.

As we keep teasing, a lot of this stuff is going for some serious money (the likes of which would render most of this out of reach for the average anime fan), but it’s also just so darn cool. How about Motoko reloading her gun in Ghost In The Shell for over $1,200? Or the Sailor Scouts posing for $1,800? The pricier pieces are mostly in the Akira and Studio Ghibli sections, but there are some relatively reasonable bids going for Dragon Ball Z and Batman: The Animated Series animation cells. This Frieza is going for only $350! The kids love Frieza, right? This all means that, if you have enough money, you could make a very short cartoon where the Joker laughs at Sailor Moon with Porco Rosso’s plane flying motionless in the background and Kaneda’s bike sitting motionless in the foreground. Cartoons are very cool!