Atarashii Prelude

Shin Goes to Comiket

This is it. This is the fabled mountaintop, the event to end all events for Japanese cartoon and comic enthusiasts everywhere, as far as I'm concerned. I've only ever heard and read tales about the bi-annual Comic Market (or Comikè, if you say it like a local) event at the Tokyo Big Sight, and despite being able to finally fulfill the pilgrimage, the experience still feels so unreal.

As much as I wanted to head over to Ariake for all three days, I was still in Osaka when Day 1 commenced. In hindsight, a preliminary scan of the circles that were present that day suggested that it was going to be a fujoshi sausage buffet, with all that Tiger and Bunny doujins and whatnot, although it meant that I would also miss out on Kantoku's new artbook. The day started with absolutely no sleep whatsover, with me and friend heading out for the event on the very first train of the day.

It wasn't much of a head-start anyway, since our starting point was in Chiba. When we did reach our destination however, we were greeted with the biggest crowd I have ever seen in my life. And if you know me personally, you would know that I have too much pride to outwardly exhibit signs of excitement in public, but even that veneer of calm cracked the moment I stepped foot out of the 'main entrance'. Pilgrims like myself as far as the eye can see, were converging and heading towards their respective entrances for the event of the year. And there I was with the rest of them, about to partake in the insanity of it all.

For the uninitiated, the exhibition centre is split into the East and West halls - the latter is where the corporate booths set up shop on the fourth floor, with a number of circles present as well, on the first floor.  I had no real plans in the East hall today, so I decided to check out what the companies themselves had to offer. As I marched to the fourth floor with everyone, it was only then I realised the true horror of what it means to queue up at Comiket.

The space leading into the corporate hall was an open area, with enough attendees to fill up an average anime convention here in Malaysia. While intimidating as it is, it was only later that I understood what the significance was. Going in to window-shop is fine and all, but if you actually intend on buying something from the big names like Aniplex, Type Moon, Nanoha or Hibiki Radio, you're going to have to join a queue...

"Yeah, no problem." I mean, I already queued up earlier for 3 hours just to come into the hall anyway, so what's a little more waiting in line anyway, right? Then it hit me - the long-ass lines by the booths weren't even the actual lines. The massive crowd out in the scorching sun I saw earlier was in fact, made up of several queues for different booths. So that's why they were all so organised! Despite the insane number of people, the organisers had in place an archaic yet effective system of making sure things didn't get out of hand. From the tail-end of the Hibiki Radio queue, I counted roughly 300 or so ahead of me. This number is reduced about 20 people at a time, who are then escorted into the halls. Aptly so as prisoners of consumerism, we were instructed to raise our hands surrender style until we got to the booth.

For my 2 hour long effort of standing out in the hot sun, I was rewarded with an advanced sale of iDOLM@STER goods. Stocks were nearly depleted by the time I got to the cashier too, so I definitely lucked out. Everything from that point onwards was pretty much a leisurely stroll to see I could get my hands on without having to queue. Even by midday, the crowds for the big names still showed no sign of dwindling, so I gave all those a miss. That said, the Nanoha booth was surprisingly quiet with everything already gone. But to be honest, none of it was of any interest to me, until I got to ASCII Media's booth where they had Ro-kyu-bu goods on sale. Without even checking what was in the goodie bag, I just told the booth attendant to shut up and take my yens when I caught a glimpse on Hina on the bag. I hate myself sometimes.

With the corporate hall pretty much covered, I decided to go to East hall just for a quick scout of the location, since this is where the battlefield really takes place for me...

And on to Day 2. Equipped with knowledge from the previous day, I had a better idea on how to navigate through the halls, although I was a bit too ambitious and had well over 50 circles marked. Seeing as how the regular attendee had about a third of that, I would soon find out the hard way that things weren't going to end well for me.

This is the 7am line. To give you a sense of how crowded it got, imagine this photographe entirely filled up by 10.

There comes a time when even the Japanese leave the civility they are so known for at the door, and Comiket is just the place to witness it taking place; I lost count of the times I was rammed into and shoved aside. Rather than getting upset over it, I was even more pumped up than before as I came to a revelation. When you come to Japan, there is an expectation for you to put on your best behaviour due to how all that politeness is so ingrained into their culture. When all that's thrown out of the window, I couldn't have been more elated since it meant I could ditch that faux gaijin decorum and become one of them. These people wanted their porn as badly as I do.

While this may be my first time on their home turf, the Japanese have nothing on me. I mean, these people are only assholes for the duration of Comiket, whereas I am an asshole everyday - I take public transportation in Malaysia; we practically wrote the book on how to be commuters from hell. With that limiter taken off, I pushed, rammed and shoved my way past the horde and made my way to my first objective of the day, Taka Tony's.

Well, when I say me, I actually meant my friend - an ill-informed individual who tagged along because he was curious as to how Comiket was like. Word of advice, folks: If you plan on going to Comiket just to look around, don't even bother. Just don't. Comiket is war, and Big Sight is an unforgiving battlefield that will push you to your physical and mental limits, so you need to preempt your mind with the goal of actually getting stuff. Putting mind over matter was the only way I could do to alleviate some of that pain. It was only post-event that I realised I got cuts on my fingers and loss of sensation in several of my toes.

Anyway, back to actual doujin-hunting. I had my friend queue up for the T2 stuff as I headed to the smaller circles first. I got lucky with a couple more circles until I hit abgrund's, which was when the shit started hitting the fan. The pushing and shoving didn't end at entering the halls, of course. There I was lining up for my trap porn, when a sudden surge of people slammed into me from a 45 degree angle, causing me to be swept far from the line. That's what I get for rolling a skinny Asian build. Either way, I wasn't going to allow myself to give up on my smut, and lining up all over again was out of the question, with the queue having bulged up considerably since I got ejected. I was already at a brink of panic, so I took a chance and tried to jump in line, and miraculously enough, it actually worked! I simply waited for the next wave of people to walk past the abgrund line and joined them as they did. Then I merely crept into the queue and pretended nothing happened. I'm not sure if the guy behind me actually realised anything, but since he kept quiet, I'll just assume that he didn't notice. That or he couldn't tell Asians apart, I don't know.

90 minutes in and I have only managed 1 heavyweight circle and a couple of smaller ones. There seems to be some form of time dilation in effect here at Big Sight, because I honestly have no idea where the time went with how little ground I managed to cover. Just to give you an idea, refer to the cut-out of the map below:

Full map here

What you see here is just East Hall 1 of 6, sizeable in its own right.  Basically if you're allocated any booths along row A, you've made it into the major league. That's not to say you're small fry otherwise of course, because I noticed some popular names in the... normal lanes too, like Takemura Sessyu and Shiwasu no Okina. Anyway for starters, I had my friend head towards A29, which is where T2 is located (abgrund's at A13). There real reason why people like him are placed at the outer edges is because that is where the exits are as well. Remember that queuing mechanism I was referring to earlier at the corporate hall? It's in effect here as well, although with a minor changes. Queues are still segmented as before to ease the flow of traffic, although this time around, attendees are expected to hold a "line ends here" placard above their heads. It doesn't sound too bad until I was at the end of the line for one circle which used a rather tasteless placard of a random underage-looking girl covered in semen. Ironic, considering where I was.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, Plum is one of the few circles that can easily rival T2 in terms of size, with the queue for their merchandise stretching all the way outside. Not even 'outside the hall' outside mind you, but 'outside the exhibition centre all the way to the main road' outside. I did a Tracy Morgan "No." and reluctantly decided to get the Yukikaze doujin I wanted elsewhere. And moving from booth to booth can get really excruciating too, as you would most likely be shuffling your way around, with what little room you have to move about. Don't even get me started on the sweat and stench. The organisers somehow decided it was a good idea to not turn on central air conditioning at a place packed with 200,000 people in close proximity. In retrospect, being lubricated by otaku grease probably eased movement somewhat.

Although Comiket officially ends at 5 in the evening (4 on the Day 3), you really only have until 2 in the afternoon to finish your rounds before everything gets sold out. Through a two-man effort, I managed about ten or so circles by the end of it. Not bad for my first time, but I know I could have done better. Either way, this was the best time to actually do some 'sightseeing' of the halls since things were no longer hectic. It was also a great opportunity to take a better look at the faces behind the smut I have consumed at the comfort of my own home on so many occasions.

While it is no secret that there are plenty of females artists that serve H for the male audience, actually meeting some of them in person was a real ドキドキ moment. Also, if you haven't been keeping up to date with the scene, there was a really good reason why I had to queue up for abgrund or die trying. Comiket 82 was to be the author's final appearance as a trap artist. That's right. Years of blackmail finally mindbroke her, so to speak, and she's through with the gay stuff. As a connoisseur of the ladyboys, I was genuinely upset by the news, which you can read about here. I guess the only consolation is that my abgrund set is going to fetch a handsome price on the auction sites because of this w

But I digress. Resuming my rounds around the halls, virtually all the big circles had deserted their booths, with only a 完売 sign welcoming slowpokes like me. However, I did get lucky and met the head honcho of Mitarashi Club himself, who was stationed at his booth. There was no real reason for me to approach him until I noticed that he placed a sign asking to trade 3DS friend codes. I jumped at the chance, and with my friend's help, I managed to introduce myself to him, saying I came all the way from Malaysia just to meet him(not really), although he had no idea what that was. To be precise, he doesn't of its existence, nor that of Singapore, for that matter. He does however know where Thailand was, with everything beyond that a blur. He was probably under the impression that Sagat's kingdom stretches all the way to the southern tip, I suppose. Later on, I also managed to chance upon Unagimaru's booth and there were still copies of his compilation on sale (the Suomi doujin was also there, but I didn't care for it, and neither did anyone else for that matter). I did the whole process of introducing myself to him as well, though this time I snagged an autograph along with a copy of his book. His geography was somewhat better than Mitarashi Club's, since he was still at least able to recognise Malaysia by its old name.

The crowd leaving en masse after the event had officially ended

I was about to finally call it a day, before I suddenly remembered that there was a certain iDOLM@STER doujin that had caught my attention prior to Comiket. OGI☆STAR MEMORIES is a 112 page artbook doujin which has contributions by staff who had worked on the anime, including its director, Nishigori Atsushi. If it sounds awesome, that's because it fucking is. However, the problem, and a major one at that, is that the booth itself is located at the West halls, meaning if I had made this a priority, I would have had to sacrifice literally everything I had planned for in the East halls. It just didn't seem worth it. Even so, I sauntered over to the West hall anyway, just to see how things were going on there. As expected, the booth was pretty much abandoned, with no signs of the doujin ever being sold here other than empty boxes and a promotional bunting. I also managed to spot Kishida Mel, since his booth was just right next to it w

Realising that we had not eaten anything since 5 in the morning, I decided that we would go grab a bite until I was tapped on the shoulders by some random Japanese. He said something along the lines of whether or not I wanted to get something or other off his hands, but I didn't know what he was actually talking about, until I directed him to my friend. Who would have guessed that the person who approached me was one of the many individuals that had queued up for a copy of OGI☆STAR MEMORIES.

He seemed really desperate in wanting to get rid of his copy so I asked him to name his price. He wouldn't do so at first, so we walked out the halls to the parking lot where he would then start off his pitch by showing me a photograph of the line. I think I almost crapped my pants when I saw it because it looked as if half of Comiket was lining up for the book. He then went on to say how he had queued for 3 hours before finally getting his hands on it. "Cool story aniki, but how much?" The book originally retails for 1500 yen and the chap wanted ten times for it. "Shit son, I love iDOLM@STER, but not THAT much." Still, it was something I would just love to have, and it in my blood to haggle with him. Well, not that negotiations went on for very long anyway. I basically just knocked the price to half of he had initially offered, and he agreed on the spot. I was actually quite disappointed that he didn't put up much of a fight. In fact, he was so grateful to me for taking the book off him that he shook my hands several times, before and after money had exchanged hands, and bowed many times even as we parted ways. It's safe to say that no one has been this grateful to me for anything in my life. For the people asking me about it, that's how I became the proud owner of what I think is the ultimate collector's item for iM@Sfags everywhere, and for 7500 yen, it was a steal. I would later find copies of the book at places like Mandarake for 30,000 yen and online auction sites for 20 to 40K. If that wasn't the equivalent of having a dozen trays' worth of pachinko balls land on your lap, I don't know what is.

I think pretty much everyone who's reading this post is really here to look at my loot anyway, so here it is. If you noticed the distinct lack of loli, that's because there aren't any to begin with. My favourites such as Higashiyama Show, Aoyama Reo and Onizuka Naoshi are pretty much exclusive to magazines, although I did miss Okada Kou who was actually present at the event with an original work. Also, as much as I like to collect doujins, tanks are really the way to go, because at an average of 1000 yen a copy for over 400 pages of content, it offers the best fap per yen ratio.

I can now cross Comiket off my weeaboo to-do list, and would gladly do it all over again, but in Winter. Summer had its fair share of challenges, though the most obvious one has got to be the weather. I did get rather lucky since it was cloudy on both the days I was there. You can never be too prepared of course, so ready a checklist of obvious items that you think you're going to need. As for the Comiket catalogue, I was too cheap to buy it, and had resorted to just printing out the map and marking points of interest. There's also the fact that it's the size of a standard phonebook, and lugging it around will just wear you down. For the dosh, prepare a fanny pack and have only 1000 yens in it (500 yens are better since it's the most common denominator used). Also huge spoiler ahead: If you do somehow find yourself failing to get something you really wanted, you can always Show ▼

But please, for your own sake, try not to do it as it takes the fun out of the actually going to Comiket in the first place, not to mention the fact you also miss out on the occasional omakes. There are guides you can refer to out there, but feel free to ask me anything.

That's pretty much it from me having popped my Comiket cherry. I hope I'll get to cover the Winter one sometime down the line, or least convince my former co-writer to post his experience of the upcoming C83...