Comiket 76 Day 1

So I just got back from Comiket 76, Day 1. It was a wild time. I left the hotel just after 8am, got to the Rinkai line, Kokusai-Tenjijou station around 8:45 or so. The crowds weren’t bad until I saw the actual line. Then I followed the traffic around to the end of the line, almost a kilometer away!


I was slightly daunted, but knew that I had to stay strong, even though it was hot, and I didn’t bring my DS with me. So I watched some HS baseball at Koshien on my cell for a while, until it started moving.

The important thing here is that it wasn’t a line per say, there were giant blocks of people, and they had you move as groups. The Japanese are great at organizing things like these, and it worked very well, also because the Japanese are good at dealing with things like that. In the US this sort of system would have been a disaster.

I finally got closer, around 11am.

I should back up at this point. I spent an hour last night going to every anime/manga related store in Akihabara trying to find a Comiket catalog, but they were all sold out. Well once I got to the top of the steps they had a booth selling lots of them, so I finally got one. Armed with a catalog and absolutely no knowledge of any circles or what I was actually in the market for, I headed for the East Halls.

I went through all the halls, found that 75% of all the doujin manga and novels were yaoi or shonen-ai, and made some purchases. I had budgeted like $30 a day for Comiket, and spent $80 just today. A bit over budget. But I got some interesting ones. Here are just a few descriiptions (I’ve only read the first one so far):

1. “Dragon Ball Yoko” – A R18 slash where grief-stricken Yoko encounters Dende the Namek, as he’s wishing for youth, and in exchange for using the 2nd wish to bring Kamina back, agrees to have sex with him.
2. “Miss Claymore” – A bunch of shorts featuring the girls of Claymore.
3. “Fantasia” – A novel billed as the “Last Story” of “The Melody of Oblivion”.
4. “Ninjya Young Men” – A spoof on Saint Young Men, but with two young ninjas.
5. A Shonen-Ai with Neil and Lyle paired with Tieria from Gundam 00, for the female listeners.
6. “Kumo no Namae” – A Shikamaru x Temari Doujin, found in the entire quarter-hall dedicated to Naruto.

That’s just a saampling of the things I picked up. I saw doujin manga and novels for everything you could think of, even things like Star Trek, OZ, Prison Break, etc… It was crazy. Except for 5 minutes when I sat on the floor to eat some Yakisoba for lunch, I was standing and walking the whole time. Fun but tiring. I also got told by a circle of women (circle is the word for a group of mangaka who draw doujin) who specializes in Gintama doujin that I look a lot like Gintoki and next time I should come dressed as him and I will get mobbed by all the girls (exact words, only in Japanese).

There is new stuff every day, and I still haven’t hit the industry hall, so still more to do, look forward to that.

I also went to see the Gundam last night, and took a lot of photos and video, but until I get back to my real laptop to filter out the bad ones, you’ll have to wait to see it.

Here are the rest of the pics:

Comiket 76 Day 1

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