Slightly Belated Fan Event Report: Comic Market 94

Two weeks after Wonder Festival, it was time for Comic Market, or Comiket as it’s colloquially known. In between those events, the temperature had gone up and down like a yo-yo. On the Tuesday prior it had sunk to 25°C due to rain from yet another typhoon, the 13th of the season, and fortunately stayed that way for another day. Alas it didn’t remain that way and shot back up to the mid 30’s again towards the end of the week, just in time for Comiket. I had managed to do a number of things I planned to do this trip, but I think by this stage I had grown weary of the heat and humidity (but had somewhat acclimatised to it) and was ready to head home. I wasn’t exactly all that hyped for it, even though Comiket was the number one fan event I’ve always wanted to check out.

I know every man and his dog have written about the convention and there are endless guides to the event, but I still want to give my views and experience of it. But first I want to talk about this history of the event. In April 1975 at Meiji University in Tokyo, a small group of friends, including renowned manga critic Yoshihiro Yonezawa, formed the circle (i.e. university club) Meikyu (Labyrinth). The circle members were frustrated at the state of commercially published manga in Japan at the time. They felt there wasn’t much diversity in the market and there were few outlets for young authors to create and sell more experimental works. This eventually led to the creation of the first Comiket on 21st December of that year at the Nissho Hall in Minato, Tokyo. That first event had 32 circles (groups of fans) and over 700 attendees showed up.

The event was initially held three times per year and by the early 1980’s 10,000 attendees and over 500 circles participated. As the 1980’s progressed, the event finally found a semi-permanent home at the now defunct Harumi Fairgrounds (Tokyo International Trade Fairgrounds), located in Harumi on reclaimed land in Tokyo Bay, not far from Odaiba. By the end of the 1980’s, over 100,000 people attended the event which was now held over two days and had become biannual. With the demolition of the Harumi Fairgrounds in 1996, the iconic Tokyo Big Sight became Comiket’s permanent home the same year. In the year prior the event was extended from two to three days. In modern times Comiket has over 35,000 circles selling their works (mostly doujinshi, i.e. self-published comic books) and fluctuates between 500,000 and 550,000 in terms of attendance. But the Comiket committee states that if someone comes to the event every day, they aren’t counted as one person, rather as three. Regardless, Comiket is the biggest convention of its type in the world, soundly beating San Diego Comic-Con (aka Comic Con).

My plan was to go to day one and two only. I had planned to go to the Fukagawa Hachiman Festival on the Sunday rather than going to third day of Comiket. On the first day of arriving in Tokyo, I went straight to Akihabara and into Animate to get the paper copy of the Comic Market 94 Catalog for ¥2,500. A DVD-ROM version is also available. People say this all the time and it’s true; you really need the catalog to find where you’re going. B5 sized and literally the thickness of a 1990’s big city phone book (1,420 pages). The first few pages are fold out maps of the east and west halls of Tokyo Big Sight. After that there’s about 60 pages of basic information about the event including four pages each in English, Chinese (simplified and traditional) and Korean. There are additional pdf maps in English on the Comiket website, which aren’t in the catalog, show where the cosplay areas are and the morning line-up areas are (for those silly enough to come before the start time of 10am). I found both maps useful planning tools.

Descending into the area leading to the west halls

The bulk of the catalog lists all the booths for the three days, in Japanese alphabetical order. The circles are also given a small 3cm x 2cm spot in the catalog to advertise their table. Usually genres and franchises are grouped together. For example train, military and food doujinshi appear on the third day in the east halls, with each subject or genre grouped in the same aisles. Some franchises will generally appear only on the one day. An example; circles selling “Tiger & Bunny” doujinshi appear in east halls 4 to 6 on the Saturday. This makes it really easy to collect what you want if you are interested in specific subjects or genres. Each hall (six east halls, two west halls), has the aisles of tables listed in Japanese alphabetical order and English alphabetical order when the Japanese alphabet ends. Each table is numbered in each aisle. The catalog concludes with a list of commercial booths (which are found in the west halls at the higher floors) and several articles and Comiket related manga.

With Pixiv and social media sites like Twitter and Tumblr, it’s pretty easy to find and follow Japanese doujinshi artists you like. When it’s close to Comiket, the artist will usually let you know what they have to offer and where they’ll be located. For example they might include their location at Comiket in their Twitter name, as an example; C94(日)西め-18a. So C94 is of course the event, 日is Nichiyobi (Sunday), 西 is nishi (west), め is me in hiragana and 18a is the table number. So the artist is in West Hall, Row me (め), table 18a on Sunday. Simple huh? OK, not really. You may have to learn a bit of hiragana and know the kanji for east and west and also Friday to Sunday to know where circles are. To make it easier, I look up the table on the map in the catalogue to see which number hall the table is in. In the example above the table is in the first hall.

With my list of artists locations written on a piece of paper, I was ready for day one, Friday 10th August. I decided to arrive a little early, around 11:30am, just to see if I had to wait in line. It is generally recommended to arrive after 12pm if you want to avoid standing in line in the sun. Once I arrived at Oimachi station to change trains to the Rinkai line, I noticed the crowds on the platform were similar to morning weekday peak hour on the Yamanote line; i.e. it was really crowded. Station staff were on the platform directing passengers onto the train. At Kokusai-tenjijo station (near Big Sight), it was even worse. The station was filled with possibly close to a couple of thousand people or more. The station staff were doing their best to herd people out of and into trains and in and out of the station itself.

Day one was a sunny 35°C (with the apparent temperature being 47°C when you factor in the humidity). Outside the station the hard sell was already in swing hundreds of meters before you reach Big Sight, with various companies giving away promotional material and trucks with large advertisements spanning the entire length of the truck and loudspeakers advertising games, anime and whatever else. Local restaurants and various food sellers also lined the path to Big Sight selling food, drinks and ice cream. Like Wonder Festival, my survival kit was the same; two bottles of water, two bottles of Pocari Sweat, salty snacks and a small hand towel to wipe off the sweat. Heatstroke is no joke. 30 people were treated for heatstroke on day one. Finally arriving at Big Sight, it was barely controlled chaos. I was rather surprised and glad there was no line up. I saw that the cosplay areas were full to overflowing with people and decided it was too hot to screw around lining up in the boiling sun just to take photos of them. Priority one was getting doujinshi.

Table with circle selling jewelry

I followed the crowd inside with the goal of getting to the west halls. While outside in the shade it was surprisingly pleasant with a coolish breeze blowing in from the bay, inside it was incredibly hot and stuffy. You soon end up drenched with sweat. The connecting covered bridge section between the entrance and the main building was particularly hellish, almost like a sauna. From there it’s down the escalators into the halls. As you can imagine it’s quite crowded and somewhat difficult to get where you want at times. Despite all the planning I did, I still found it a bit difficult to find the specific tables where circles were. Some of the columns in the halls do have maps and show where you are in relation to the map. They were really useful. Rather than tearing out the maps in the catalog, I photographed them with my phone and referred to them when I needed to. This seemed to work well.

The sellers were rather nice and really appreciative of people buying their work. I had saved up as many ¥100 and ¥500 coins as well as ¥1,000 notes as I could beforehand to make transactions as easy as possible. Most doujinshi are usually in the ¥500 to ¥1,000 range, especially for the full colour illustration collections which I was interested in the most. Some sellers really tried to get you in to read their work and get a sale, but most were laid back and a bit passive. I discovered that the west halls generally have a lot of niche stuff, while the east halls have more popular titles are therefore more crowded. After I got the books I wanted in the west halls, I headed to the east halls. “Fate/Grand Order” was insanely popular. So much so I began to think every table in east halls would be “Fate/Grand Order” only. However the “Love Live!”, “THE iDOLM@STER” and “Kantai Collection (KanColle)” franchises were also well represented. I soon discovered that any of the circles situated around the walls of the halls most likely meant they were incredibly popular. The reason they are situated there is so Comiket staff can herd buyers in lines outside the halls so as not disrupt the flow of human traffic inside.

A line outside for one of the more popular circles

Contrary to popular belief most of the sellers are female artists, at least 60% to 75%. I also noted that a lot of the ero stuff, perhaps near 40%, was from female artists. And I don’t mean the Boys Love stuff, I’m talking about the graphic heterosexual stuff. I also think the amount of ero material on sale is vastly overstated by people. Taking to consideration everything that is available such as doujinshi on trains, computer programs, electronics, rock and pop bands, food etc., as well as other items such as music CDs, software, jewellery, cosplay accessories etc., I would guess only 25% to 30% would be considered 18+ pornographic material. The assertion that over half of the attendees are male seems to ring true. However I was surprised at the amount of women present to buy stuff. And it just wasn’t the stereotypical fujoshi, I saw several groups of women dressed to the nines buying stuff and really enjoying themselves. There was a wide range of ages, both male and female buying and selling. Some parents even bought their kids which I thought was a bit silly considering the crowds.

Trying to find a spot to have rest inside the halls can be difficult but not impossible. The volunteer staff have some areas taped off with red tape which are no go zones for attendees. I assume that these areas are for boxes and other material they need to move around and temporarily store, however the vast majority of time they were vacant. Generally they don’t mind if one or two people are in these areas, however if a group of people starts milling about in them, they angrily hunt them away. I had read that it was impossible to get into the toilets inside the halls, though I saw no line ups outside them. I didn’t use them to find out for sure, but if you go to this event do be aware that they could be hard or near impossible to get into. There are also a number of restaurants inside Tokyo Big Sight, but are pretty much running at full capacity all the time. It’s far easier to bring your own lunch.

After two and half hours I was done. I was rather surprised that despite the heat and humidly the experience was tolerable to certain degree. It was definitely uncomfortable, unbelievably sweaty and a bit smelly. The train journey back was a bit nightmarish. It was really crowed and some jackass stereotypical looking overweight otaku almost wouldn't let me get on the train even though there was clearly enough room for me to be let on. My original plan to get a taxi to Tamachi station (which was on the direct line back to my accommodation) was scuttled when I saw the line up at the taxi rank. Day two, Saturday 11th August, was little rougher for me. I think I was bit drained from the first day and the cumulative effect of the exhaustion over a day and half really kicked in. I realised a lot of the circles I wanted to see were unbelievably popular with close to a hundred people waiting in line. I also wanted to buy some of the cosplayer’s photobooks and DVD-ROMs but soon realised they were also really popular and had extreme difficulty navigating the incredibly crowded aisles and ended up frustrated and empty handed.

After an hour and half, I decided I had enough. Lucky the train journey back this time (I left about 1pm) wasn’t all that crowded. Over the two days I had bought just over a dozen doujinshi (I bought another 15 online afterwards, mostly of the circles that had sold out or had massive line ups). According to Comiket’s twitter account, the total attendees for the first two days was 160,000 each day, with the third day, which I didn’t attend, bringing in a hellish 210,000 people. Total attendance equaled the record for a summer Comiket despite the record breaking heat. I did enjoy the experience to a degree and was glad I went, however I think this is a one off. I don’t think I’ll be going again. I doubt I could survive all three days, especially in summer. In the end I didn’t go see the cosplay or go to the area where the corporate booths were, but I’m more than OK with this.

My meager haul

Over the last few years, there has been talk about Comiket being no longer relevant. Doujinshi are pretty easy to find now days with two large chains, Toranoana and Melonbooks, almost exclusively selling books and related merchandise. Even Animate sells a fairly large range of doujinshi. You can see most artists work on Pixiv and buy it on affiliate website Booth. Coupled with the modern ubiquity of doujinshi, the issues and problems with Comiket are so numerous that Japanese Wikipedia has an entire page dedicated to them, separate from the main Comiket article. However I still think the event is still relevant. Putting aside the commercial aspect of it (and I don’t think you could argue that the modern doujinshi market isn’t highly commercial), there still are segments of Comiket which are very niche and are not of that nature. Fans of artists can and do interact in a way at Comiket that they can’t do online. Also while you can order much of what is on sale at Comiket online or buy in store on the Monday afterwards (unofficially known as the 4th day of Comiket), reprints of artists books are usually only made available at the event.

Next year will see some changes as Comiket moves some of its events to the smaller Aomi Exhibition Hall while renovation work takes place at Tokyo Big Sight. The event is also set to take place over four days instead of three. To conclude this absurdly long post; as I said before, I mostly enjoyed the experience. It has always been something I wanted to do. I got a fairly decent selection of doujinshi and had a bit of fun. But I don’t think I want to do it again. Once is more than enough. Please note I have nicked some images of booths off Twitter to illustrate this post as I only took a handful of photos. If the circles have any problems which this I am more than willing to remove them.