Comic Market 88 – Pre-event digest

In this post I’ll talk about the trends in Comic Market 88 (C88) and various other news in relations to this event. For travel information and information about the event in general, check out my previous post about Comiket.

The Kantai Collection takeover

To start off, unofficial booth counts have already signalled that the moe warship game Kantai Collection (Kancolle) is continuing its hold as the most popular series in C88. However, this increase in gap has mainly been from artists moving out of the Touhou genre, as opposed to more artists joining Kancolle. In fact, it’s interesting to note that the number of Kancolle booths has barely risen despite the fact that the anime has finished airing in Japan. Many series have see a surge in popularity after an anime adaptation but this has not been the case for Kancolle. Are we already witnessing what could be the peak of its popularity?

As many commenters have pointed out, one possible reason for such a drop on the popularity of Touhou booths is the trend for artists to release their latest works during Reitaisai as opposed to Comiket. Kancolle artists on the other hand still mainly release their doujin at Comiket, although Kancolle only events do exist that work similarly to Reitaisai.

Another noticable newcomer is the Toukenranbu online game, a Kancolle equivalent anthropomorphicising famous swords instead of ships and are represented by pretty boys as opposed to girls. The game has seen a burst in popularity similar to Kancolle with a dedicated female fan-base.

In what must be certain hell, the Comiket Committee have decided to put these three series together in the first day which is sure to create huge congestion.

Genre breakdown – Day by Day

AnimeJapan 2014

I must say, that sign does make it look that much more pretty

After putting off this post way longer than I should have, I’ve decided to finally get my fingers working on reporting my trip to AnimeJapan, one of the biggest anime events in Japan, and the world.

AnimeJapan is an event created through the merging to two competing anime events, Tokyo Internation Anime Fair (TAF) and Anime Contents Expo (ACE). Here, companies related to the anime industry showcase their latest anime products, enticing fans with previews for upcoming anime as well as products to come. AnimeJapan 2014 is the first event since the merging, and will almost certainly continue for the years to come. As could be seen from the above picture, AnimeJapan 2014 was hosted at Tokyo Big Sight and took up the entirety of the East Halls. The event was held for two days from March 22 to March 23 and garnered a total of 111,252 people. According to the site, this figure had exceeded their expectations. Though not quite as impressive as the over 500,000 who attend Comiket over it’s three days it is still a massive number as it is. As a note, I only attended on the first day, March 22.

COMITIA – COMITIA107 and its sister events

This time I present an upskirt shot of Big Sight. I am a lewd and terrible person.

COMITIA – What is it?

I had finally managed to attend one of the events I had always wanted to see, COMITIA107! Prior to attending the convention I actually did not know much about this event except that the committee highly stresses that circle participants should create ‘original works’. For some reason that message wasn’t enough for its obvious meaning to click in my head. COMITIA is an event for literally that — original creations. Parodies of any other works are frowned upon (if not forbidden) and from what I saw of the event, even references to other series are avoided altogether (on their covers, anyway). There were roughly 3500 attending circles on the day, though it is currently unknown how many circles had applied and subsequently how many of those were rejected. As the event is a space for originality, cosplay was not allowed. They do, however, allow for attendees to wear clothes that are along a line of fashion, so a very elaborate gothic lolita clothing would still not be a problem as long as it is original.

コミックマーケット８５ – Comic Market 85

Comiket comes full swing again this year

Though it’s taken a long one month after the conclusion of the event to get my post up, it’s time to share my experiences of the world’s largest pop-culture event, Comic Market! As with last time, I was granted the privilege to attend the event as media, meaning I was able to document the details of this event with photography in otherwise prohibited areas, amongst other special rights. However, most of the information collected will be used to update my previous post, “Comic Market – Your complete survival guide” so do have a look there if you are interested in the updates (or have not read it yet!). Just as a note, this post will contain next to no cosplay photos, since there are an abundance of cosplay coverage all over the internet with a simple search. I will instead focus on the trends since my last Comiket, as well as other general information.

Comic Market – Your complete survival guide

Introduction

So I thought it was finally time to create my own comprehensive guide on Comic Market (hereon ‘Comiket’) as experienced by myself. This article will cover everything I believe is useful to know about the event, such as how to purchase goods, a list of key phrases, the common method used to organise people lining overnight both and on the day, as well how the booths are set up amongst many other things. This guide is designed to be comprehensive and detailed and is a load to take in. If you ever do end up in a situation where you have no idea where you are or what you’re doing, just gaijin smash your way through, but it is important to create as little problems for others as you can.

To clarify, this guide is written for those who are planning on going to the event and contains information useful to help you navigate/survive through the chaos. A more general article about the event itself will be written in a separate article. There are many links in this post that link back to the original locations I found the pictures, as well as the sites of the circles I have used in my examples. Most of these sites are safe, though there may be a few that contain material not suitable for minors. Please click them at your own risk.

I myself am in no way affiliated with the Comic Market Committee. The information presented here reflects the experiences as seen by me and as such can vary between other individuals.

I will update this post from time to time so the contents may vary between each viewing. I intend to add more links and pictures in the few days after I first publish this post.

Please note that I use the phrase company booths and commercial booths interchangeably. Company booths are there for the profits, therefore ‘commercial’ is another way to explain them, though doujinshi are technically supposed to be only a way for them to share their ideas, therefore profit is not a main goal (ideally, anyway).

Changed blog to new domain!

Hey guys, I should have done this BEFORE changing it, but I’ve updated the site domain to theotareport.wordpress from se7ennightz.wordpress.

I apologise to everyone who’ll become confused by this but I wanted to update the address itself, which seemed unrelated to the name of this blog. Just for a side note, my username often goes by Se7enNightz, which is why it was named that. However, as my blog has nothing to do with that, I decided to keep it consistent with the blog name rather than my online persona.

To celebrate this change though, I have what will probably be my biggest blog post for a long, long time.
It’s about a large event taking place next month, so if you’ve an inkling to what it may be, stay tuned to read a massive post about it!

Xperia feat. Hatsune Miku – SO-04E by Sony

A video I’ve already uploaded on YouTube talking about the phone

Here’s a hugely delayed post on the SO-04E, Hatsune Miku phone! As this was posted so late, I’ve done and provided a lot more screenshots of the features that I had planned to make up for it. This phone is part of the Xperia A series of phones, which is a range only sold within Japan. Unlike other phone collaborations with popular media, this Hatsune Miku-themed phone has been specifically tailored to the needs of their target market; Hatsune Miku fans. This post will detail all the specific functions the phone carries, as well as weigh it’s positives and negatives. As promised, I will provide more information on its features that I have had a better look at since the video. There were a reported 39,000 units of this phone created. At the time of writing, stocks were still available via the distributor, NTT DoCoMo.

大電撃文庫展 – Dengeki 20th Anniversary Exhibition

Not quite the entrance, but hey you get to see the logo

This article has somehow eluded me for the past many months, but here it is now. The Dengeki Exhibition was held at the World Import Mart Building in Ikebukuro, the same building that also hosts Sunshine Creation. The building is actually a connected building to Sunshine City, which is a 60 floor shopping/office complex with an aquarium located at the top floor. Getting there requires you to navigate your way through Sunshine City, snaking through the complex and going up certain escalators to end up at the World Import Mart at the fourth floor. Unlike with Sunshine Creation, the Exhibition had some convenient signs that led towards the slightly confusing event location (a very thankful addition, I will add!).

マジカルミライ – Magical Mirai @ Yokohama Arena

Yokohama Arena, the location of the event, at night

Magical Mirai was held on the 30th of August, at Yokohama Arena, closest to Shin-Yokohama station. The event was described as “a cultural festival for everything Hatsune Miku!”. Indeed, Miku was the key character for this event but not in coincidence; her birthday was the day after this event!

The event was split into three sections: Maji (Magic), Karu (Culture) and Mirai (Future). The three combined spell Magical Mirai. Each of these sections showcase their own separate things, and I will talk about each of these events separately based on the probable order you would enter. Do note that this event took place on a Friday, meaning it would have still been a standard work day for most salarymen and therefore quite impossible for some to attend.

With that, let’s look into the first area: Mirai!

ワンダーフェスティバル2013（夏） – Wonder Festival 2013 (Summer)

The site itself has a multitude of halls for a number of exhibitions

I was able to attend one of the largest events in Japan for fans of the otaku world, Wonder Festival! Held at Makuhari Messe, the theme for this event is figurines, though it incorporates practically anything that would fall into DIY and is otaku related. There are three halls to this event, two of which are self-created (doujin) and one for the companies. This event is particularly popular to those around the world and Japan because it is a time where the companies are able to show off their latest developments and tease their next products. All of the most popular (and relevant) companies are present at this event, such as KOTOBUKIYA, AmiAmi, Cospa, KAIYODO(Revoltec), etc. This blog will feature information on the lesser known side of Wonder Festival; the doujin halls.