As some of you will have noticed, I started a crowdfunding project for a Comiket 101 trip report.  I’m grateful to everyone that pledged, but unfortunately we didn’t hit the number.  However, friends of the site Christel and Matteo very kindly offered to let me use their place in the Tokyo area – needless to say I appreciate their generosity very much indeed.  As a result I was able to attend for the first time in about nine years.

So while I’m not able to do a full-scale guide to Comiket, I can offer a sort of mini report on the event in the pandemic era.  And it’s changed in some very important ways.  Firstly the event is now two days rather than three.  At Comiket which day you go (and exhibit) means everything.  I had the old pattern pretty much down – if you told me the series I could tell you with reasonable certainly on which day the circles would be there.  As best I can tell the current system is Day 1 for men, Day 2 for women – but there were some outliers so there may be some other factors at play there which I’m not aware of.

The biggest change to be sure is that Comiket is now a ticketed event (in order to reduce the numbers).  In the old days you just showed up and queued (and if you were chasing sought-after doujins that meant two hours or more before opening).  Now you have to buy a ticket, through an online system that basically excludes anyone not living in Japan.  There are several options – single-day, both days, morning admission, afternoon admission, cosplay.  All tickets get you admission to all areas except the cosplay section, which requires that specific ticket, though they each enter from different parts of the venue.

My general take on the Comiket organizers in prior years was that they were nice people in way over their heads.  The ticketing system more than confirmed that impression – it was a real clusterfrick.  Once on-site though, it did seem slightly better organized than I remembered it (which is should be, since they’re bringing in more money).  As ever there are three areas at Tokyo Big Sight, the event venue.  The South Halls are for corporate exhibitors, and will seem very familiar to anyone who’s attended a major anime convention (apart from the sheer number of people).  The West Halls are mainly for original doujin circles, and the East Halls are for fandoms (anime, manga, and literally almost anything else you can imagine – and some you can’t).

As ever, my favorite among these is the East Halls.  The corporate area is a mad crush of people (and it seemed just as frighteningly packed as ever) desperate to buy the latest swag from Type-Moon or Kadokawa (the lines are comically huge), and I generally find the stuff I enjoy unrepresented.  The doujinshi halls are far more upbeat – a celebration of the massive pool of talented artists in Japan.  My preference is the East, because the folks there seem genuinely happy to be with others who share their passion.  When I referred to Comiket as a “choose your own adventure book for fetishes” years ago, this is the part of the event that really exemplifies that.  If you can imagine a kink, it probably has at least a few circles indulging it.

I’d love to do a full-scale guide to attending Comiket, complete with videos about transportation, lodging, navigating Big Sight, et al – maybe someday that will be possible.  But for now it was interesting to be back there after so many years, if nothing else, though it’s still an awful lot of people.  And as ever, it totally kicked my ass – Comiket always does (and the summer one is even worse – bigger and smellier).  The East Halls are especially daunting (they combine what are normally six spaces into two giant halls).  If you go, prepare to be pretty worn down by the time you’re back at your hotel.