Nazca as in the mysterious lines found in Peru? Nazca as in the anime series that even made a brief cameo as a poster and clip in the classic sitcom Malcolm in the Middle? For Jonathan Walker of the Nazca Preservation Project, it is the latter. Drawn to the striking artwork and mythological themes featured in the anime Nazca, Walker has spent years searching around the world for original studio materials, with the goal of eventually curating them in a museum in both the United States and Peru. In this article, I will explore the goals, ambitions, and background of a passionate collector dedicated to preserving the legacy of the Nazca anime.
Portions of this interview have been edited for clarity
Q: Could you please tell us what the Nazca Preservation Project is about and why specifically the anime—Nazca?
Jonathan: Yeah, the Nazca preservation project is an initiative that I started earlier this year. The Facebook page started on April 28th, 2025 and it’s really designed—to preserve, promote, and protect this material that was once scattered many years ago, and kind of bring it to a public-facing archive—so people could enjoy and revisit it.
The project is involved with outreach opportunities with academia, museums, art galleries, and that kind of thing. We’re really just here to celebrate the project—the craftsmanship behind it, and also the artistic and cultural side, which is based on Andean and Peruvian mythology. It’s great, it’s a growing community that we’ve got, as we’re trying to continue to grow the page and its awareness. A lot of people still haven’t heard of Nazca. It was a niche anime that came out back in 1998 and released on LaserDisc and VHS. It’s just a wonderful project.
Fun Facts: LaserDisc was a record-sized disc for home entertainment purposes and is considered the grandfather of DVD and Blu-ray. The technology back then, required a bigger size for storage and longer wavelengths, compared to the smaller and modernized Blu-ray.
VHS were video tapes utilized for home entertainment, often used to record TV shows and were immensely popular for size and prices, before DVDs.
Luke: I remember when I first heard about it, and then found out it was on Malcolm in the Middle. When I saw how intertwined the historical culture and fictional inspirations came together, I was like, “wow, this is amazing”. I remember watching another anime, Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds, where they also incorporated some Andean and Peruvian mythology for their antagonists and main plot of season 1 and 2.
Jonathan: Yes, one of the interesting anime out there that’s actually, like you said, it’s loosely based on mythology, reincarnation, and memory, but it’s not strictly based on one geographical location. I do think there was a significant amount of research that went into the creation, but it’s like a lot of other things. You kind of blend some real life elements along with some fiction. It’s like when you go back and look at movies, right, that are based on either historical events or real life stories. There’s an element that blends the real life along with a bit of what the directors want to see, as far as maybe making it a bit more suspenseful or dramatic.
Q: Are there any items that you want to gather for your preservation project? Is there anything you’re trying to get?
Jonathan: There’s always new pieces that I’m looking at as far as, you know, when we break these projects up into the core materials, you’ve got mostly—sketches, Genga and Douga, layouts, production cels, and watercolor backgrounds.
I think of the top tiers being sort of like the studio envelopes, which really adds the providence and the authenticity to the project. Studio envelopes are very dear to my heart because—they’re so scarce. I think I have maybe a dozen or maybe 12 to 15 of those, so I’m always looking for this. They’re jam-packed and I have some studio envelopes that are about 100 pieces of original material. We go through sequential sequences like A1 to A12 that have the matching sketches. We have the timing sheets and the layouts. It’s interesting because I’m still in the process of gathering these up.
Genga (原画, “key frames”) are the initial, detailed drawings of essential poses in anime, acting as the foundation for motion, while Douga (動画, “in-betweens/final frames”) are the clean, refined linework drawings produced from the genga, ready for coloring and filming.
I feel like I’m trying to search the corners of the world. I bought a packet earlier this year from an individual in Germany. It was a set of about 100 pieces of Kyoji getting out of a car. It went through probably just a couple of seconds of the actual animation, but it was so detailed and layered—that I could sit there and try to recreate the scene. There were parts of the car that were layered on the cels, and then there were the sketches. So, it gives you an inside view into what the designers were thinking in terms of the scene, when you buy a complete packet like that. It also shows you how much work it took—to create just a few seconds of an animated series.
Q: Is there someplace where you would want all this displayed?
Jonathan: In terms of where I wanted it to end up, I’m actually in conversations with an individual out of Peru—a pop culture expert. We’ve talked about looking at doing a museum exhibit in Peru. I’m also in contact with an anime producer out of Japan—working on licensing rights and is actually in contact with the Nazca original staff, specifically the costume designer.
We’re working on a couple of different areas and don’t know where this is going to end up. I’m working on some different museum opportunities here in the United States and can’t say where—because this is still a project that’s still in process. But we’re gathering attention, and really want to have this in a facility or an exhibition where people can walk up, look at it, and appreciate it.
The archive that I’ve got on Facebook is wonderful, and I know I have a lot of people who appreciate that. I’ve been invited to Peru, but it really needs to be viewed in person because there’s one thing to look at something on the screen, but another thing to see it physically. When I hold the artwork, it looks completely different than when you’re looking at it on the screen. There’s so much artistic design that goes into it, especially when you’re looking at the headgear of Kyoji and you’re looking at these colors, these themes—It’s just brilliant artwork. I mean, even if you haven’t watched the anime, you can appreciate it from an artistic and color perspective.
Q: When this project first begun, did the studio staff reach out to you first or were you the one to reach out?
Jonathan: When I first started this, I did a global ad campaign on Facebook and I targeted Africa, Asia, Canada, and South America. The first contact with the project was a Peruvian newspaper—El Comercio. They did a little Zoom call with me—talking about the archive, a little bit about me, and why I put it together. It got published out of El Comercio, back in June.
That editor from the newspaper relayed my project to a colleague of his, who reached out to me and said, “hey, you’ve got a really interesting project. I’d like to help”. From there, he introduced me to an anime producer out of Japan, so you could see how that’s kind of like piggyback. One person talks to somebody else, he talks to somebody else, and that individual ends up talking to the original staff and says, “Hey, Jonathan has this preservation project. What do you think about this? Can we get licensed rights to this?”
I’ve mentioned to that group that I want to do an art book, right? Either hardcover or digital because the artwork, again, it’s beautiful. So I want to get something physical out to the world—for those people who want to appreciate it in that physical form, or if we can do a digital art book. So that’s why we need license rights. We want to approach that in the right way because I am a regulatory manager. I want to make sure things are done legally, ethically, and with all of the right steps attached, so we’re looking at that.
Q: Are there maybe any other preservation projects you would like to have alongside Nazca?
Jonathan: I would love to do an LP project because—I have like 200 Japanese LPs, but with the time constraints, there’s only one of me. I don’t have a staff yet. I have people who work with me and enjoy the project, but if I had more people and funding, then there would be others.
So right now, it’s just Nazca, but then maybe someday we’ll do LPs, soundtracks, and that kind of thing. I’ve got records from the late 70s to the 80s. We’ve got Space Battleship Yamato, Galaxy Express 999, and Magical Mako. I have a couple of boxes that need to be checked again, I forget. If I was never involved with the Nazca project, I would have gotten involved in music because I’m a musician, too.
Fun Fact: Anime LPs (Long-Playing records) are vinyl records featuring soundtracks, opening/ending themes, or scores from Japanese animation. They offer a high-fidelity, nostalgic, and often artistic way for fans to listen to music from shows like Cowboy Bebop, Studio Ghibli films, or Evangelion. They are popular collectibles featuring unique packaging, colored vinyl, and high-quality sound.
Q: Are there any goals right now that the preservation project has accomplished and are aiming towards?
Jonathan: I am still trying to gather materials. I just ended up with a recent acquisition out of Japan with probably—another 100 pieces or so total. The latest acquisition was a series of storyboards from Episode 8 and it was really rare—because you could see the foxing of the page on the main page and it had the original binder clip. So that’s really special when you can kind of find something like that. It doesn’t appear in the marketplace very well.
I just picked up some design sheets from the characters and that’s going to eventually be scanned in: more cels and sketches. The more that I can add to the archive, the more complete the production archive will be. There are still parts missing and I know there’s still parts out there. There’s individuals who have collected this project for many years and maybe just have it stored somewhere and wait for those individuals to come out and say, “hey, you know what? I want to either donate it or sell it”.
This was originally a 25 year creation project from another individual. There was a series of email discussions and I ended up wanting to create this project for myself, as I ended up buying the materials and acquiring the entire project, over a period of about four to five months at that time. I think it’s a little over 5000 pieces right now. It looks like it’s about 6000 total, which puts it in the very rare category in terms of total of a production archive. There’s not a lot of material left on the market.
I pretty much have cleaned out Yahoo! Japan. Was it Yahoo! Auctions Japan? I think there’s a couple of pieces left that don’t really fit into my archive because there’s an isolated sketch or sale. I’m trying to build sequences. I like continuity. When you can line up the sketches and see character motion, to me—that’s really interesting to see and think “Ok, how are the frames put together so we get motion?”
Q: What tips would you have for first time viewers for the Nazca anime?
Jonathan: I do think that back in the day and maybe now—you have some slow burn anime where they build up characters and then they have to set the story in the timeline. Now, again, I haven’t seen the whole thing, but I understand enough to know that if you give the anime time, then the characters that develop the mythology develop and you get further into it—then you find out you want to know what happens.
I don’t know how it ends, but I know that the anime is beautiful and that—the music and the characters have definitely kept me engaged on those episodes. Now, I have to decide, “do I want to watch the DVD, the Japanese VHS or do I want to watch the US VHS”? — Because they have all three versions. Well, it’s probably just going to and they have a LaserDisc, at least the first three volumes.
The VHS or the Laser Disc collection is absolutely beautiful—because it came with a special limited edition hardcover special design case. But of course, a lot of LaserDisc products that came out years ago were just beautiful. They took a medium that was really large and it’s very similar to the size of a record. They took the artwork and put it on there as a promotional tool. I think that’s one of the things that’s kind of lost to streaming now is the artwork, the design, and the craftsmanship behind that.
Q: What is your first anime experience?
Jonathan: My first experience with anime was back when Fushigi Yuugi was out on VHS. It was in a Sam Goody store or some sort, and I say, “well, I’ve never seen that before”. So I picked it up. Why? Because it had a front cover art. If it was just a blank tape, I probably would have said, “oh, I don’t care about that”. You pick it up, look at the back, and read the visual and the text. You understand the story and you can look at the credits and say, “oh, that looks like something I might want to try”.
Now, I think that we’ve got a situation with streaming media. We have the opportunity to watch anime online, but at the same time, sometimes we’re a little less patient because we have such availability of titles. We are quick to say, “oh, I’ve given this show two minutes. Let me go ahead and just click to the next one”, because it grabbed my attention, as opposed to the past, where if you spent twenty dollars on the VHS tape, you may watch five minutes, you may watch ten minutes. But you know what? I’ve spent twenty bucks on this. Heck, I’m going to watch more of it to see if I like it and maybe at the 15 minute mark, you actually start to enjoy the show. Then you’re glad you bought the tape. There’s just a difference in perspective.
Q: Is there a specific item that continues to elude you?
Jonathan: Yeah, but I’m never going to find it. I don’t know the name of it. What is the type of artwork where it’s created as a promotional tool? It starts with an H and I thought I saw it on Yahoo Auctions but I can’t remember what it was. I would say maybe promotional artwork, if there is any out there. But in terms of unique items, I don’t know if there’s anything specific. I guess I haven’t run across anything on the web that says, “oh, I’ve got to have that, because if it’s on there, I already have it”.
Oh, you know what? Malcolm in the Middle—because people have asked me, “hey, you have the Malcolm in the Middle shot?”, and I’m thinking, “I don’t know. I have like 200 cels. I don’t think it’s in the collection”. It’s kind of funny because I’ve watched the episodes, and three or four seconds in. I’m thinking, “hey, I have that cel. I have that background”. I can’t stop just thinking about that because sometimes I just want to enjoy the show, but I can’t stop thinking about, “oh, it’s in the collection already”. But then there are some that think “I don’t have that and I need it”. But then the question is,
- Where do I find it?
- Where do I go?
- Does that exist somewhere?
- Was that dumped by the studio back in 1998?
If you go to that place I think it’s Worthpoint—an online site that gives you the value of certain things. There are cels and studio envelopes of material there that I don’t have, but I have seen some of that and I’m thinking, “well, where is that?” I can’t reach out to these individuals and say, “hey, are you interested in making a transaction?”—Because I don’t know who they are. But I had some people reach out to me. It was an individual from France who reached out several months ago and he wanted to sell me a collection. It was a really nice set, but he wanted like 2500 dollars.
I would be very proud to take it off that person’s hands, but I need to make things that are financially smart for the project—because this is a nonprofit initiative. I’m not sitting here trying to commercialize something that is going to make a lot of money. This is more of a preservation effort, a passion project. I don’t have the donors here giving me thousands of dollars to go and buy more material. But if there were grants or opportunities, to make that work, then fine. But right now it’s just me, myself and I.
Q: What do you love most about obtaining any physical works?
Jonathan: I think the interesting thing is that cel animation and sketches in general, have a limited amount of material that was out there, before almost all of it transferred to computer generated. Let’s say we go back to the early 2000s when pretty much all your hand animation dropped off, and you have the beginning of time until, let’s say 2002. We’re never going to experience that situation again—where there was an excess of material to be able to go back and collect.
That’s one of the things I really like about hand animation. It’s not always about the quality of the sketch. What’s really special is that somebody had to take the time to conceptualize that art. There was a designer and a skilled person who actually drew it. Now, I mean, there is a skill set that I’m not really familiar with that goes into digital creation, but there’s no physical object to hold unless you print it out.
And to me, there’s a difference between drawing something that’s hand drawn and drawing something that’s printed, even if they look really, really similar. There’s an emotional attachment to me—that goes into that physical aspect because I know somebody had to sit there and draw it. They went to school, they took classes, they might have been mentored. But then there’s still that same sort of skill set that translates over to the digital side. It’s just not as strong because there’s one thing about the physical side is you can put that in front of somebody and look at it. But if you want the digital side, it has to be on a screen. It has to be reproduced somewhere.
It’s similar to my Facebook page because you have pictures on a screen. But then there’s the physical art book. You open up a book. People used to hold books. Now, people don’t even know what a book is. You open a book, you flip through the pages, you smell the pages, you see the gloss, you look at the colors. To me, it helps you conceptualize more of the detail around the production process. When you look at something on screen, I don’t think that we really grasp anything other than the image.
We don’t smell the paper, we don’t feel the stock, we don’t see the gloss, we don’t see the publisher’s notes, we don’t see the writer’s information, we don’t see the company that printed it. We just see a finished image. And we see that image and we look at it for a couple of seconds and guess what? Most of us, and I’m guilty, we go to the next image, right? “Oh, that looks nice”. We go to the next image. When you buy the book, just like when you buy the DVD, it forces you to sit there and look at it, right? You flip to the next page, you actually look at it. Why would you buy the book if you didn’t want to look at every page? You don’t buy a book and look at half the pages.
Luke: Yeah, definitely, for sure. Every time there’s some work that just grabs my attention, I always go for the behind the scenes books. The directors’ and various teams of notes, as I’m reading and conceptualizing what it means to be passionate about a project and the amount of respect into the time and energy.
Q: What other options and goals is the Nazca Preservation project looking into?
Jonathan: The first one that I’m looking into is documenting the project. The documentary project is flexible. It could be on site-filming of the archive, materials, storage, video of individual pieces. That is one idea.
The larger, and more preferred version would be to tell the entire story of how the project came about from the material acquisitions, Facebook launch, El Comercio publication, Retrocrush podcast, and interviews with the people behind the scenes like Cole (original curator), my Peru pop culture expert, anime producer in Japan, and even the original Nazca staff members since they are aware of my project. That would be a much longer, and more expensive project, but much more rewarding, and would increase visibility and value of the project.
My second option is about the appraisal, I’m looking for someone to provide an estimate of value for the collection, including branding and social media presence. That would require multiple on-site visits and I’m guessing might take upwards to a year due to travel and research.
Conclusion
I would like to thank Jonathan Walker once again for providing such an insightful interview about his ambitions for the Nazca Preservation Project. Readers interested in learning more can follow updates about the archive on Facebook and Historypin.
Images: Nazca
© Yoshihiko Inamoto / Nazca Production Committee (Genco, Radix, Pioneer LDC, TV Tokyo). Materials preserved via the Nazca Preservation Project™
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