Comiket Report

I couldn't go as far as San Diego Comic Con this year but I did go to Comiket, Japan's version of a Comic Con, and it's actually a much bigger event, in fact the biggest of its kind in the world, typically drawing more than 720,000 people. It's held twice a year, for two days in summer and two days in winter. The number of attendees was down this year because, in view of the covid pandemic, tickets were sold instead of entry being open to everyone. I think they were limited to 55,000 per day. I only went for one day, Saturday, August 13. I wish I'd bought a ticket for Sunday, I'm not sure why I didn't. I did have a nice time.

I didn't take many pictures of cosplayers for the same reason I don't usually at Comic Con anymore. There are too many web sites with exhaustive photo catalogues of cosplayers (like this one). I limited myself to a few characters I actually recognised.

Like Lum from Urusei Yatsura.

But actually, the best cosplay picture I took I can't even show you because the young lady, although she posed and gave me permission to take a picture, asked me not to share it on social media. I refrained from asking what I'm supposed to do with it then. Maybe I'll frame it and put it on my desk one day, I don't know. But for the record, she was cosplaying as the title character from Revolutionary Girl Utena. I chatted with her briefly in my terrible Japanese about what a great show it is.

It's a good thing I didn't decide to dedicate my time to photographing cosplayers because the protocol seems to be a bit different to Comic Con due to the manners Japan is famous for. I walked through a large hall where photographers were lined up in single file to take photos, one at a time, of beautiful cosplayers who posed for each in turn. It's nice everyone's asking for permission but surely it would save everyone a lot of time if they all just took their pictures at the same time? Some of the guys at the back of the queue had expensive telephoto lenses but they were waiting patiently to take photos from a few feet away. There seems to be a kind of ritual aspect to it.

I was truly more interested in seeing some comics, though. Comiket was an event founded to facilitate the sales of independent, or doujin, comics. Unlike Comic Con, I saw no big studios present (and, incidentally, though I've seen plenty of Japanese cosplay characters at Comic Con, I saw absolutely no western characters at Comiket).

There weren't just comics, though. It was a vast sea of self-published music, crafts, guide books, porn, and even gadgets. Walking through a section of music booths, I talked to Robot Head Girl:

I really liked her style. Here's one of her videos:

Most of the music booths were for Vocaloids, the new phenomenon of artificial singers that's very popular in Japan.

There were many booths for military aficionados and for train aficionados. Many of the latter had one or two older guys with self-published books of photos of trains. I do fairly often see guys at train stations just taking pictures of the normal trains. That such a hobby even exists shows how much more hobbies are honoured in Japanese society compared to American society.

In the crafts section, I saw a lot of amazing jewellery but this is the thing I bought:

It's a tiny Nursery Alice! I mean, it's the whole book with full illustrations!

This is the creation of book binder Hataori Dori. She was selling The Nursery Alice and The Call of Cthulu. It was a really tough choice for me but I went for the one with colour illustrations. Also, I'd never seen a copy of The Nursery Alice for sale anywhere before.

Lewis Carroll, author of the original Alice books, wrote The Nursery Alice in 1889--around 23 years after the original was published--as a version for kids under five years old. It contained updated and newly coloured versions of the original John Tenniel illustrations, updated by Tenniel himself, which you can see in my teeny tiny copy.

It was the end of the day so she threw in a free tiny pillow.

So, all in all, a similar but also different experience to Comic Con. The food was certainly better.

I didn't have time to eat there but, unlike the sad little pizza cafe at Comic Con, Comiket has several full restaurants and a convenience store. I saw curry and ramen.

So that's Comiket.