Collector Recon · Newsletter No. 008 · covers October 21–22, 2026

Twelve sheets of Castle in the Sky rough genga, listed as corrected by Hayao Miyazaki, stand at ¥3.6 million at Mandarake with bidding open to Nov 7

Mandarake's Big Web Auction No. 136, the Tokyo dealer's bimonthly online sale, is led by a lot it describes as "Hayao Miyazaki Corrected Rough Genga" from Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986): twelve sheets, 234 by 351 millimeters, from cuts B-911 and B-913, condition rated 8, sold with Mandarake's authenticity warranty, per the lot page. Bidding opened October 15 at ¥3,000,000 and stood at ¥3,600,000 after six bids on October 22, with 63 watchers; the lot closes November 7 at 8 PM Japan time. At the indicative rate of $0.0063 per yen published by Pound Sterling Live for October 22, that is about $22,700, before the 10% handling fee Mandarake adds to every winning bid, per its auction index.

The machine-translated listing describes the cut as the quiet moment after the rescue of Sheeta, when Pazu and Sheeta decide on the flaptors of the Dola gang. Rough genga are the key drawings an animator produces before clean-up; a "corrected" set carries the director's revisions over the animator's lines, which for a 1986 Ghibli film means Miyazaki's own pencil on the sheet. That is what the lot title claims and what the warranty covers; we have not seen the sheets.

The same sale has a four-sheet Dragon Ball Z genga set that opened at ¥15,000 and reached ¥460,000 (about $2,900) on 24 bids by October 22, closing November 2, a Dragon Ball Z Vegeta cel at ¥60,000 and a Princess Mononoke layout at ¥150,000, per the index page.

Where the price sits

The comps for Ghibli production art are mostly cels, and mostly from Heritage. At The Art of Anime Vol. VIII (May 15 to 17, 2026), a $2.5 million sale of 1,206 lots that sold 100%, a Princess Mononoke San production cel made $67,100 and a My Neighbor Totoro Catbus cel $46,360; an Akira cel of Tetsuo, Kaori and Kaneda's bike made $73,200, per Heritage's release carried by Anime News Network (May 20). At Vol. VI (March 22 to 24, 2025), a $1.49 million sale, a Kiki's Delivery Service cel made $48,000 and a Totoro Catbus cel $13,000, with Castle in the Sky lots among those that sold out at unstated prices, per Animation Scoop (March 31, 2025). Christie's first anime sale in March 2026 made about $1.4 million with fees, led on the anime side by an Ito Ikuko Sailor Moon sketch at $88,900, per The Art Newspaper (September 22); its second sale closed October 22 with results not yet published.

Against those marks, ¥3.6 million for twelve sheets with the director's corrections is about a third of Heritage's best Ghibli cel, and the drawings are the rarer object: a cel is one painted frame of which a film has tens of thousands, while a corrected genga set is the director's hand on a specific cut. The gap is the story. US auction demand for anime art has been built on cels, the image a buyer recognizes, and drawings have sold at a discount to them even when the hand is Miyazaki's. Mandarake's buyers are largely domestic, bidding in yen at a rate that has made Japanese prices look cheap in dollars all year, and the sale's current bid is six bids deep with 16 days to run.

What it means for the market

Director-corrected genga from a Ghibli film is a category with almost no public comps; this lot will set one, in yen, and the dollar figure will be read against Heritage's cel results by every US bidder who sees it.
The yen rate is part of the price. At $0.0063 per yen, a ¥3.6 million bid is $22,700; a bidder paying in dollars gets the 10% fee and shipping on top, and the warranty from a Japanese dealer rather than a US grader.
Mandarake's site answered our tool for the first time this week; it runs the Big Web Auction six times a year (January, March, May, July, September and November), so November's catalogue follows this one.

What to watch next

The Dragon Ball Z genga closes November 2; the Laputa lot closes November 7 at 8 PM Japan time, with payment due by November 30.
Christie's second anime and manga sale closed October 22 on an estimate of $344,350 to $523,200 for about 130 lots; results will show whether the March debut was a one-off.

Figures are as reported by the sources below on the dates shown. This is market data and commentary, not investment advice.

Sources

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