Comiket 73 – Part I
I finally found some time to sort through my pictures and scrape together enough content for a short post. This is a report of the first two days of Comiket 73 to give you a general idea what it was like.
I will be posting a more detailed report only after I return from Japan, mainly because I don’t have a lot of photos yet and I will only be able to take more tomorrow. (Photography is technically prohibited in all areas except the designated cosplay zone.)
Toyosu (豊洲) Station on the Yurikamome Line.
Comiket is held at the Tokyo International Exhibition Center, more commonly known as the Big Sight, or “that pyramid thing”. The nearest train station is Kokusai-tenjij-seimon (国際展示場正門) on the Yurikamome monorail that goes around Odaiba.
On the night before Comiket Day 1, we took the last train to Ariake to camp overnight. According to various online sources, overnight queuing for Comiket is prohibited by the organizers. From Wikipedia:
Lining up for hours before the convention is forbidden, as pre-convention “parties” have drawn complaints from local residents in previous years.
We found out that this is all a huge lie perpetuated to fool the naive. By the time we arrived at Ariake, the queue had already reached there, stretching about 500m from the steps leading up to the Big Sight.
It was frigging cold. The temperature was close to zero, it was windy and on top of that it started to rain too. Many people took shelter in the nearby Family Mart and those guys probably make a ton of money selling gloves and hot food stuff.
People arriving by cars and taxis (after the last train)
Tents set up by the police for logistics
There were already hundreds, if not thousands, of people queuing up at 1am in the morning. The event officially starts at 10am.
After a long wait, the organizers slowly directed the queue onto the clear elevated area in front of the trademark inverted pyramid. This formed the front of the main line for the regular participants.
20-minute queues to buy things from Family Mart or visit the washroom
The people at the start of the queue came well-prepared
This is madness
That’s LianYL standing there in white
It rained through the night
I managed to get some sleep (about 2-3 hours) in a sheltered area under the inverted pyramid. We were not prepared for this at all and didn’t bring any foldable stools or picnic sheets, so I made do with a 500-yen poncho from 7-Eleven. Did I mention that it was fricking cold and the ground was all wet?
The initial rush is crazy, especially for the commercial booths. How crazy? Let’s just say that if you happen to drop your camera, you’ll never see it again.
The main queue is divided into two separate queues, one for the doujinshi halls and one for the cosplay area and the commercial hall. The doujinshi queue is then split into three queues, one for West Halls, one for East Halls 1-3 and one for East Halls 4-6.
Comiket can be basically summed up as one huge queuing event. Popular commercial booths, such as Key and Type-Moon, can stretch to over 3-hours long.
The Japanese have basically perfected the art of queue management. Instead of forming long and chaotic queues inside the convention area, blocking everyone’s paths and encouraging queue-cutting, the queues are divided into more manageable segments. Only the front-most segment queues in front of the booth itself. The rest queue outside, where there are additional signboards to indicate where the end of the queue is and what the queue is for. One (or more) staff member will regularly come to bring the first ten or so people in the queue outside to join the small queue inside the convention hall. Popular booths have external queues that are so long that they have to be subdivided into even smaller mini queues.
This is why you’ll often see signs that tell you that it’s not the end of the line, even though it looks like one. Kyo-ani’s line actually stretched one entire round around the commercial booth. Type-Moon and a few other popular studios have special queuing zones in a parking lot nearby.
Popular doujinshi groups can be almost just as bad. I queued two hours for Hiro Suzuhira’s latest releases (pictures when I get home and finish unpacking). I also queued one hour for ５年目の放課後, the artist who drew the blushing Haruhi on my old banner, only to have stocks run out with just seven people left in the queue in front of me. :(
I took a few cosplay shots today, but it started to rain (again) and the cosplayers all left. It’s crazy what these girls wear in near-zero temperature…
Comiket has over half a million participants in three days. I estimate that about 5% of them (including circle participants and event organizers) cosplay while they are there. That’s a lot of cosplayers to take pictures of, and not much time to do so due to all the queuing that needs to be done.
Anyway, I should have some better pictures to show for my next Comiket post. I’m getting a press pass tomorrow that allows me to take pictures anywhere (and enter the venue early via a special express queue to boot). I don’t have to try to hide my DSLR anymore! Yay!
December 31st, 2007 at 12:25 am
THIS IS MADNESS!! THIS IS JAPANNNNNN!!!
December 31st, 2007 at 12:39 am
lol hope I dun sound ignorant here but…how come you can get a press pass lol?
December 31st, 2007 at 12:59 am
OMG that bunny-girl looks so cute!
I gotta be there once I am out of NS!
December 31st, 2007 at 1:08 am
The doujins and stuff they have on sales inside is definitely worth waiting.. But 10 hours do seem kinda extreme =/
How’d get a press pass? :0
December 31st, 2007 at 1:41 am
As i alway say “I want to go japan”
Anyway, i think is good to celebrate new year at japan, Right?
December 31st, 2007 at 1:48 am
Shit. I would have wanted you to help grab Kontaku’s book. But it ran out of stock T A T.
Time to hit the second-hand bookstores I guess
December 31st, 2007 at 3:30 am
Fascinating pictures. I’m not sure anything, not even chocolate or Milton’s autography, could motivate me to que that long.
December 31st, 2007 at 4:33 am
I still prefer american cons. The dealer’s room we have is pathetic in comparison but the atmosphere is far more relaxed and friendly. The thing also lasts more than just one day.
December 31st, 2007 at 4:49 am
Last time I lined up at 5:30am and got within the first 200 people at least, but damn it’s a long wait. I fear that I may have to do that next year for Comiket74
December 31st, 2007 at 7:36 am
But NOTHING beats Comiket!!!
Hmm… if I’m not mistaken, you can take photos of cosplayers in the Cosplay Zone, you just need a sticker that you get from some registration booth which only requires your name and contact… otherwise, photography is not allowed at any other locations (who would stop you from taking photos of queues?).
December 31st, 2007 at 7:41 am
Cute bunny girl :D
Thank’s for sharing this, I’m planning to do early 6am line up for comiket 74. :D
December 31st, 2007 at 10:59 am
lol are you gonna skip the first day of school or something?
December 31st, 2007 at 3:12 pm
And we thought that Singaporeans were bad enough (in terms of long queues). Seriously though, the saying that good things lie at the end of long queues is severely underrated. Look at Comiket! Agh, I’m so jealous. Yeah, even of the temperature and the wet floors.
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Kickinekos :: Moé~rry X-Mas 2 :: Los Rostros de la Comiket 73 [Parte III] :: December :: 2007December 31st, 2007 at 3:47 pm
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December 31st, 2007 at 3:52 pm
DM-san, ^o^) I think I was in the line before you; I managed to get the 5年目 new releases before they were sold out (though the bags were long gone)… I happened to hear some English being spoken by a few people who entered the line after me, maybe perhaps that could have been you (o.o? — Shin met with Shinjo(from HD today) too! *claps at the end of comike*
December 31st, 2007 at 7:44 pm
I wish I could have gone this looks really good, must start saving now to try and go next year.
December 31st, 2007 at 10:25 pm
ron~: 6am is too late because it’s after the first train (at around 5am). You’ll end up with thousands of people in front of you.
Plaid_Knight: It’s not really a convention, just a sales event. Also, Comiket lasts for three days.
Hiyuu: You don’t need any registration for taking pictures inside the cosplay area.
Shin-Kun: I want it. :( I don’t think that’s me, though. I was queuing for it alone because no one else in my group has ever heard of gonenme no houkago.
January 1st, 2008 at 6:28 am
Hey DM, did you manage to get a press pass because of your blog? What kind of requirements are there for us enterprizing types?
April 25th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Hey, that’s a nice writeup you did there! I’ve linked to it from my own article on Comiket #73 ( http://www.kilala.nl/index.php?id=985 ).
I went to Comiket around 11:00 in the morning, on the second day. I -really- didn’t want to spend a whole night waiting in line and I didn’t have any specific priorities for the day either. Therefore, my visit was a lot more relaxed than yours. I’m glad that you enjoyed yourself though :)
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Code Geass R2 | happy anime lifeSeptember 20th, 2008 at 7:21 am
[...] C.C. is all cute and innocent now. After losing all her memories of being old and cranky, she’s now Lelouch’s willing sex slave. It’s like in Chobits—which incidentally is by CLAMP—except that, unlike Chii, C.C. is actually anatomically correct. (Probably.) Vulnerable C.C. will surely prove to be great doujinshi material for the coming Comiket. [...]