tokyo big sight – Ramblings of DarkMirage http://2pwn.tk/websites/www.darkmirage.com Anime, Games, J-Pop and Whatever Else Tue, 02 Aug 2011 10:59:35 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.7.2 Comiket 73 – Part I http://2pwn.tk/websites/www.darkmirage.com/2007/12/30/comiket-73-part-1/ http://2pwn.tk/websites/www.darkmirage.com/2007/12/30/comiket-73-part-1/#comments Sun, 30 Dec 2007 11:55:42 +0000 http://2pwn.tk/websites/www.darkmirage.com/2007/12/30/comiket-73-part-1/ Continue reading ]]> 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.

Comiket 73

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.)

Comiket 73
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.

Comiket 73

Comiket 73

Comiket 73

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.

Comiket 73

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.

Comiket 73

Comiket 73
People arriving by cars and taxis (after the last train)

Comiket 73

Comiket 73
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.

Comiket 73

Comiket 73

Comiket 73
20-minute queues to buy things from Family Mart or visit the washroom

Comiket 73
The people at the start of the queue came well-prepared

Comiket 73
This is madness

Comiket 73
That’s LianYL standing there in white

Comiket 73
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?

Comiket 73

Comiket 73

Comiket 73

Comiket 73

Comiket 73

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 73

Comiket 73

Comiket 73

Comiket 73

Comiket 73

Comiket 73

Comiket 73

Comiket 73

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!

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Comic Market 70 http://2pwn.tk/websites/www.darkmirage.com/2006/08/11/comic-market-70/ http://2pwn.tk/websites/www.darkmirage.com/2006/08/11/comic-market-70/#comments Thu, 10 Aug 2006 16:10:08 +0000 http://2pwn.tk/websites/www.darkmirage.com/2006/08/11/comic-market-70/ Continue reading ]]> Comiket 70 is starting tomorrow. Three days of sinful and possibly moé dealings centered around the Tokyo Big Sight convention area. Shingo from HD looks like he’s all ready to take on the entire otaku population of Japan. Three channel members, zima, sek and nivek (the infamous “nivek-raws” are from him, yup) of SOS-dan @ irc.rizon.net will be there.

C70 catalog cover by Naru Nanao

So why the hell am I stucked in Singapore. ;_; Well, I did pass a 13-page shopping list to zima before he left, though. Items on my list include Tony Taka’s new work, Shuffle! aritst Hiro Suzuhira’s new sketch compilation and this event limited Saber that’s carrying Excalibur instead of the retail version Caliburn.

Still, wish I was there… Gao.

Next year… I swear…

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