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Ah, and now for Comiket part II.
We woke up at about 9:49 the next morning, having spent the evening prior in Deep and Important discussion. Topics covered included the following:
1) Kou rocks harder than any other Silver Diamond character. I've yet to meet anyone who disagrees with this statement (with the possible exception of myself. I love Narushige with a fiery passion. But seeing as you can't really separate Naru and Kou, my basic statement is still correct). My personal take is that Kou is part of a Divinely-inspired reparations plan to atone for disney's inflicting millions of annoying animal sidekicks on an unsuspecting populace.
2) Over half of the offerings in the Comiket catalogue were from FMA circles. Judging by the art quality in many of the pictures, the catalogue was most likely put together by enemies of the people who draw the doujinshi. It's the visual art equivalent of Western fanficcers writing OCs and calling them Ed and Hughes.
3) ff.net![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
takadainmate is the last in a long line of people (and the first I've met IRL), to be tossed from said website by overzealous pairing haters. In fact, she'd been kicked off two days or so before Comiket. Much commiserating insued. I think that what someone really needs to do is start a fun gimmick site - haveubeentossed.com - to house all of the orphaned fic. It might be good for a metaquote or fandom wank or two before the bandwidth costs become too high to handle.
Comiket: Adventures in Fandom with You and 2.5 Million of Your Closest Friends
And now on to the event itself. For those who aren't familiar with this eventComiket FULL METAL ALCHEMIST and some other fandoms is a huge doujinshi convention held twice a year in this weird pseudo-Masonic convention center in Tokyo.
I'd known it was massive. I'd never known it was this massive. Granted, we attended on the busiest of the three days, but oh my. The only times I've seen such a large gathering of people have been at NHL games, and you could fit several NHL crowds into the group waiting to get into the venue when we showed up. (And don't forget, the doors had been open for over an hour before we arrived). It took us about fifteen minutes to get inside the venue, and the walk isn't that far.
The actual selling of doujins occurs in both wings of both the East and West convention halls, with other vendor booths erected in a third area. Once inside the convention center itself, one has to choose which wing of which hall to go to, and then follow the crowd to get there. I am not exaggerating when I say that there was a wall-to-wall mass of people queuing to enter. I couldn't see where I was going. I could barely see my own feet, and I had to trust the crowd to guide me safely down escalators and staircases without causing me grievous bodily harm. In the 1700 and 1800s, Plains Indians slaughtered bison by corralling them and then stampeding them off of cliffs. The bison at the front who realised there was a drop were helpless to resist the masses pushing them over and down from behind. Crowd movement at Comiket operates on the same principle.
At any rate, we made it to the east hall in one piece and then beelined for kgm - my favorite FMA circle. I adore these guys - their artwork is indistinguishable from the series proper, they have great comedic sense, and they have Ed seme, which you wouldn't think would work, but is, upon examination, surprisingly hot. After a brief wait at their table, I manage to buy all of their doujin which I hadn't already owned, as well as chat them up. kgm are two young women, probably in their middle twenties, cute, very friendly, and amazed to find themselves faced with three white girls elated to get their hands on the circle's stuff.
And then we were off up and down the masses of tables with FMA books. I found a table with some really hot RoyxHughes stuff, including a very nice bathing scene (unfortunately I forgot to go back and buy the books. They have them at Mandarake, but the markup is such that I didn't bother buying them there). I'd been to some Saiyuki-only circle events in Nagoya, but it wasn't until this moment that I was struck with the fact - wow, here I am talking to the women who drew the porn I think is really hot. At the time it seemed rather comical. The artists for their part certainly seemed to enjoy my reactions to their stuff.
We then headed over to the Saiyuki tables, where I spent more money than I should have (no big surprise, that). Unfortunately, the emphasis seemed to be on 39, with most (if not all) of the good 58 coming in novel form. I didn't bother picking any of it up because I've found that unlike some used doujinshi, Mandarake offers used shosetsu for less than the original price.
Then we split up for a bit. I wandered FMA again, then headed over to LotR and HP. The books I was looking for were for the most part sold out at that point, but I did manage to get postal and/or Internet addresses from their respective creators, so that I might order their dj at my leisure.
By this time it was well past two o'clock. After a series of aborted phonecalls, I managed to figure out thattakadainmate was already in the West hall, where the Sugiura Shiho circles lived. I hadn't visited the PotC tables yet, but I also wanted to make it over to the West before the Sugiura groups sold out.
After five minutes spent on the phone trying to locate the Inmate (we were standing not fifteen feet from each other the entire time), we went to look briefly at the Get Backers tables before I was dispatched to locatecienna. I couldn't find her, so I headed over to the second West wing to grab the Sugiura dj, running into cienna on my way, ironically enough.
We wended our way through the (thinning) crowds to the Sugiura groups, where I bought every Koori and Silver Diamond book available, minus the novels. Then it was back to Get Backers, then Yami, Sugiura again, and DNAngel. Some of the stuff looked cute, but I was exhausted, hot, and sweaty, and not that into buying things anymore.
Eventually we made it out to the roof, where we met up with (cue drumroll)girl_starfish, caithion and Nicola (livejournal sold seperately). Much comparing and contrasting of fandom preferences and doujinshi ensued.
Then we were off on a massive adventure through downtown Tokyo, up and down the monorail line (we walked one station up, then rode the line down to the terminal, and then back up again to avoid theComiket FULL METAL ALCHEMIST and some other fandoms crowds, and ended with a meal at a Chinese place in Shinjuku (where we were the most amusing thing on the menu, judging by the hostess' reaction) and karaoke, where we paid to sing for an hour and were given 45 minutes instead.
We got back to the hotel at about eight pm. Plans had included clubbing and alcohol, but instead consisted of dj perusal until the wee hours of the morning.
Random thoughts:
Cosplay:
I'll be the first to admit that I never really got cosplay. Or rather, I could see why it might be fun for the players, but never understood why non-participants were so enthusiastic about it.
I get it now. Cosplay's a lot more interesting at multi-fandom events, where you aren't just seeing the Sanzou-tachi over and over and over (and over). Not surprisingly, most of the cosplayers atComiket FULL METAL ALCHEMIST and some other fandoms were cosplaying FMA characters, but several other fandoms - Saiyuki, Chobits, LotR - were represented as well. I saw a bunch of Sanzous, a few complete Sanzou-tachis, and even a Tempou. There were loads of Eds, as is to be expected, with the best one getting the details right down to the little brown suitcase.
A lot of the FMA cosplayers came in groups, one of which included Izumi and her hubby, Roy, Ed, Hughes, Hawkeye, Winry, and a darling boy (he couldn't have been more than eight or so) as Ed.
The best costume, however, was a haloed Hughes, who was perfect right down to the five o'clock shadow.
Gaijin!
From everything I've read, I expected to see a lot more foreigners atComiket FULL METAL ALCHEMIST and some other fandoms . Aside from the six in our little group, I spotted three other Westerners, and know of one or two more who attended. Of course, the crowd was massive, and of course it's difficult to spot other Asian gaijin until one hears them speaking, but really, there weren't that many foreigners about as far as I could see.
This surprised me, because I'd been given to understand that foreigners were a problem atComiket FULL METAL ALCHEMIST and some other fandoms past, particularly in regards to line-cutting. (Although anyone who's ever dealt with Japanese tourists in America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Japan itself knows that few nationalities produce tourists whose behaviour is as rude and obnoxious as that of the Japanese.)
And many of the circles seemed genuinely surprised to see westerners buying their books, although on further consideration, many of those circles were probably first time attendees too.
Fandom Firsts:
I had a lot of these atComiket FULL METAL ALCHEMIST and some other fandoms. At six people, our post-buying dinner and karaoke group was the largest group of like-minded fen I've ever met in the flesh. It was quite fun comparing notes on fandoms, authors, and reactions to fandom in general.
It's also quite humorous, as when the group of us sat about the dinner table bitching about all the fandom - FMA, One Piece, Kyou Kara Maoh - we were missing to go participate in Comiket (also fandom).
And I also met my first person who'se read my fics in the flesh, which was a strange experience, because with the exception of my high school roommate and best friend, I associate people who read my fics with The Source Of Those Words In The Chat Program.
So that is the story, more or less in brief, of Comiket. Of course, we did more doujin buying on Sunday as well, but that's a story for another post.
これで以上です。
We woke up at about 9:49 the next morning, having spent the evening prior in Deep and Important discussion. Topics covered included the following:
1) Kou rocks harder than any other Silver Diamond character. I've yet to meet anyone who disagrees with this statement (with the possible exception of myself. I love Narushige with a fiery passion. But seeing as you can't really separate Naru and Kou, my basic statement is still correct). My personal take is that Kou is part of a Divinely-inspired reparations plan to atone for disney's inflicting millions of annoying animal sidekicks on an unsuspecting populace.
2) Over half of the offerings in the Comiket catalogue were from FMA circles. Judging by the art quality in many of the pictures, the catalogue was most likely put together by enemies of the people who draw the doujinshi. It's the visual art equivalent of Western fanficcers writing OCs and calling them Ed and Hughes.
3) ff.net
takadainmate is the last in a long line of people (and the first I've met IRL), to be tossed from said website by overzealous pairing haters. In fact, she'd been kicked off two days or so before Comiket. Much commiserating insued. I think that what someone really needs to do is start a fun gimmick site - haveubeentossed.com - to house all of the orphaned fic. It might be good for a metaquote or fandom wank or two before the bandwidth costs become too high to handle. Comiket: Adventures in Fandom with You and 2.5 Million of Your Closest Friends
And now on to the event itself. For those who aren't familiar with this event
I'd known it was massive. I'd never known it was this massive. Granted, we attended on the busiest of the three days, but oh my. The only times I've seen such a large gathering of people have been at NHL games, and you could fit several NHL crowds into the group waiting to get into the venue when we showed up. (And don't forget, the doors had been open for over an hour before we arrived). It took us about fifteen minutes to get inside the venue, and the walk isn't that far.
The actual selling of doujins occurs in both wings of both the East and West convention halls, with other vendor booths erected in a third area. Once inside the convention center itself, one has to choose which wing of which hall to go to, and then follow the crowd to get there. I am not exaggerating when I say that there was a wall-to-wall mass of people queuing to enter. I couldn't see where I was going. I could barely see my own feet, and I had to trust the crowd to guide me safely down escalators and staircases without causing me grievous bodily harm. In the 1700 and 1800s, Plains Indians slaughtered bison by corralling them and then stampeding them off of cliffs. The bison at the front who realised there was a drop were helpless to resist the masses pushing them over and down from behind. Crowd movement at Comiket operates on the same principle.
At any rate, we made it to the east hall in one piece and then beelined for kgm - my favorite FMA circle. I adore these guys - their artwork is indistinguishable from the series proper, they have great comedic sense, and they have Ed seme, which you wouldn't think would work, but is, upon examination, surprisingly hot. After a brief wait at their table, I manage to buy all of their doujin which I hadn't already owned, as well as chat them up. kgm are two young women, probably in their middle twenties, cute, very friendly, and amazed to find themselves faced with three white girls elated to get their hands on the circle's stuff.
And then we were off up and down the masses of tables with FMA books. I found a table with some really hot RoyxHughes stuff, including a very nice bathing scene (unfortunately I forgot to go back and buy the books. They have them at Mandarake, but the markup is such that I didn't bother buying them there). I'd been to some Saiyuki-only circle events in Nagoya, but it wasn't until this moment that I was struck with the fact - wow, here I am talking to the women who drew the porn I think is really hot. At the time it seemed rather comical. The artists for their part certainly seemed to enjoy my reactions to their stuff.
We then headed over to the Saiyuki tables, where I spent more money than I should have (no big surprise, that). Unfortunately, the emphasis seemed to be on 39, with most (if not all) of the good 58 coming in novel form. I didn't bother picking any of it up because I've found that unlike some used doujinshi, Mandarake offers used shosetsu for less than the original price.
Then we split up for a bit. I wandered FMA again, then headed over to LotR and HP. The books I was looking for were for the most part sold out at that point, but I did manage to get postal and/or Internet addresses from their respective creators, so that I might order their dj at my leisure.
By this time it was well past two o'clock. After a series of aborted phonecalls, I managed to figure out that
takadainmate was already in the West hall, where the Sugiura Shiho circles lived. I hadn't visited the PotC tables yet, but I also wanted to make it over to the West before the Sugiura groups sold out.After five minutes spent on the phone trying to locate the Inmate (we were standing not fifteen feet from each other the entire time), we went to look briefly at the Get Backers tables before I was dispatched to locate
cienna. I couldn't find her, so I headed over to the second West wing to grab the Sugiura dj, running into cienna on my way, ironically enough. We wended our way through the (thinning) crowds to the Sugiura groups, where I bought every Koori and Silver Diamond book available, minus the novels. Then it was back to Get Backers, then Yami, Sugiura again, and DNAngel. Some of the stuff looked cute, but I was exhausted, hot, and sweaty, and not that into buying things anymore.
Eventually we made it out to the roof, where we met up with (cue drumroll)
girl_starfish, caithion and Nicola (livejournal sold seperately). Much comparing and contrasting of fandom preferences and doujinshi ensued. Then we were off on a massive adventure through downtown Tokyo, up and down the monorail line (we walked one station up, then rode the line down to the terminal, and then back up again to avoid the
We got back to the hotel at about eight pm. Plans had included clubbing and alcohol, but instead consisted of dj perusal until the wee hours of the morning.
Random thoughts:
Cosplay:
I'll be the first to admit that I never really got cosplay. Or rather, I could see why it might be fun for the players, but never understood why non-participants were so enthusiastic about it.
I get it now. Cosplay's a lot more interesting at multi-fandom events, where you aren't just seeing the Sanzou-tachi over and over and over (and over). Not surprisingly, most of the cosplayers at
A lot of the FMA cosplayers came in groups, one of which included Izumi and her hubby, Roy, Ed, Hughes, Hawkeye, Winry, and a darling boy (he couldn't have been more than eight or so) as Ed.
The best costume, however, was a haloed Hughes, who was perfect right down to the five o'clock shadow.
Gaijin!
From everything I've read, I expected to see a lot more foreigners at
This surprised me, because I'd been given to understand that foreigners were a problem at
And many of the circles seemed genuinely surprised to see westerners buying their books, although on further consideration, many of those circles were probably first time attendees too.
Fandom Firsts:
I had a lot of these at
It's also quite humorous, as when the group of us sat about the dinner table bitching about all the fandom - FMA, One Piece, Kyou Kara Maoh - we were missing to go participate in Comiket (also fandom).
And I also met my first person who'se read my fics in the flesh, which was a strange experience, because with the exception of my high school roommate and best friend, I associate people who read my fics with The Source Of Those Words In The Chat Program.
So that is the story, more or less in brief, of Comiket. Of course, we did more doujin buying on Sunday as well, but that's a story for another post.
これで以上です。
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From:
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I knew there was a reason I loved you. It's Tris! Now, with added Historical Comparisons!
Cosplay? Is that like dressing up?
At six people, our post-buying dinner and karaoke group was the largest group of like-minded fen I've ever met in the flesh.
That's very cool. I've never had anyone into fandom really so I imagine that to be a very cool experience. :D
From:
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Only one? Don't be stingy now! And yeah, Cosplay (costume playing) is when people dress up like their favorite anime/manga characters. It's big at cons on both sides of the Big Water, although I can't quite summon up the enthusiasm others have for it.
Yeah, it was a cool experience. Too bad they all live several-hundred-dollar train rides away. But that's what the net's for, right?
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From:
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http://www.aizuwinter.bravehost.com
It's sure to keep you amused for about a minute.
From:
FULL METAL ALCHEMIST and some other fandoms cosplay
When a series is still new or still rare, seeing people cosplaying from that and recognizing them gives a certain sense of connection. When you cosplay a series, you become a walking billboard for that series. You're saying, "Hey, I've seen this series, I enjoyed this series, and I love it enough to put this much work into the costume." The more work you put in, whether it's the little details or the big impressive monster costumes, the more it says, "I thought this character was worth putting this much time and effort into cosplaying."
Pardon me for barging in, girl_starfish sent me. V. amused by your rename for the con.
From:
Re: FULL METAL ALCHEMIST and some other fandoms cosplay
When a series is still new or still rare, seeing people cosplaying from that and recognizing them gives a certain sense of connection.
I get what you're saying, but again, I'd rather go to fandom-only or chara-only circle events.
Don't worry, I don't mind that you 'barged in' at all. And I'm glad you like my new name for the con!
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(Although anyone who's ever dealt with Japanese tourists in America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Japan itself knows that few nationalities produce tourists whose behaviour is as rude and obnoxious as that of the Japanese.)
Germans. And the Chinese. Or I've just always been around the minority? o.0
And the Sugiura stuff? How is it? xD
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Or even if you don't. Just seeing that many other fen in one place was grand. And they do have English-, Chinese-, and Korean-speaking staff.
I dunno about tourists. I've found old Italian women to be brutal, but Japanese tourists take the cake in my experience.
The Sugiura stuff is LOVELY, especially the SD parodies.