{"id":151,"date":"2008-10-27T21:34:05","date_gmt":"2008-10-28T02:34:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2chan.us\/wordpress\/2008\/10\/27\/super-belated-event-report-comitia-85\/"},"modified":"2008-10-27T21:34:05","modified_gmt":"2008-10-28T02:34:05","slug":"super-belated-event-report-comitia-85","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/2chan.us\/wordpress\/2008\/10\/27\/super-belated-event-report-comitia-85\/","title":{"rendered":"Super-belated event report: Comitia 85"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Or as one of the circle cuts put it, &#8220;doesn&#8217;t it feel like we were just here?&#8221; 85. Comitia opened its doors this time around just one week after C74, on the upper level of Big Sight, so basically it was just a big ol&#8217; PTSD-inducing funfest for me. I decided I&#8217;d only get there an hour early and brave out the line, and pick out whatever circles I wanted to hit up on the trip to the event. Actually, I had already decided on one circle to visit. In fact, the main reason I was making the trek out to Odaiba yet again was primarily to pick up <a href=\"http:\/\/huke.blog.shinobi.jp\/\">huke&#8217;s<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nicovideo.jp\/watch\/sm3761595\">Black Rock Shooter<\/a> Visual Works, which apparently sold out in a matter of minutes at c74. <\/p>\n<p>Some people (especially those who have read about the event <a href=\"http:\/\/otakuusamagazine.com\/ME2\/Audiences\/dirmod.asp?sid=&#038;nm=&#038;type=news&#038;mod=News&#038;mid=9A02E3B96F2A415ABC72CB5F516B4C10&#038;tier=3&#038;nid=8F9398E64C214460BAB487574CA8BC89&#038;AudID=38FF7921A87449C7BF134B0B4A312B2F\">elsewhere<\/a>) may realize that this is a really rotten reason to go to Comitia, since the point of the event is that it&#8217;s all original (as opposed to parody\/derivative) comics, and you&#8217;d have a very tough time convincing me that the girl in the BRS video is not Hatsune Miku. Anyway, I got to Big Sight a little less than an hour before doors and was greeted by big signs for&#8230; the JAPAN HAM FAIR 2008. I was actually more excited at the prospect of an all-you-can-ham lunch than buying some comic books, but quickly realized that the event was not about the delicious kind of ham, but rather about the &#8220;60 year old nerds fiddling with radios walking around aimlessly&#8221; kind of ham. This was a fairly disappointing turn of events, but I did not let that deter me. <\/p>\n<p>I got up to the top floor where all the folks with dollies of boxes of comics were going, and suddenly realized that the line that I had planned on sitting in didn&#8217;t actually exist in any form beyond &#8220;a small handful of folks playing ds on the benches outside the halls.&#8221; Turns out that the trend of original works tending towards higher quality but lower sales continues in this case as well! A modest line formed without me noticing, a whopping 100 people or so, and I made my way in and realized that there were already multiple thousand people inside buying things. (circle tickets!! :argh:) Compared to basically any other doujin event I have been to, the feeling of the place was incredibly laid-back. No shoving, no running, no screams of pain. I spent a good hour or so just browsing, especially around the area that huke was located, since that was more illustration gallery-style doujins, since I don&#8217;t trust doujin narratives. <\/p>\n<p><center><a href='http:\/\/2chan.us\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/img_0538.jpg' title='comitia haul'><img src='http:\/\/2chan.us\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/img_0538.thumbnail.jpg' alt='comitia haul' \/><\/a><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Ended up with a very modest haul, especially since I skipped out on Range Murata&#8217;s offerings. BRS Visual Works is every bit as excellent as I hoped it would be, and moe zombie\/amputee gag manga is always an added bonus. Interestingly enough, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.popjapantravel.com\">Pop Japan Travel<\/a> had a presence there in the form of an industry booth, and I believe they had also unleashed one of their very well-mannered tours onto the convention. I have to say that they are definitely doing the smart thing taking a tour to Comitia over Comiket, since doing otherwise would seem akin to dropping a group of tourists interested in Korea into Pyongyang. I tried to make small talk to them while frantically looking for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/1569709424\/?tag=comicsworthreadi&#038;link_code=as3&#038;creative=373489&#038;camp=211189\">the best oel manga<\/a> but unfortunately I did not see it for sale at the table. <\/p>\n<p>All in all, Comitia was a very enjoyable event, and I&#8217;m definitely going back if I&#8217;m in the area, though I can&#8217;t say I&#8217;ll be making any comiket-style pilgrimages there. It&#8217;s probably also a great event to show to friends what a doujin convention is like, since that way they won&#8217;t think that you&#8217;re insane. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Or as one of the circle cuts put it, &#8220;doesn&#8217;t it feel like we were just here?&#8221; 85. Comitia opened its doors this time around just one week after C74, on the upper level of Big Sight, so basically it was just a big ol&#8217; PTSD-inducing funfest for me. I decided I&#8217;d only get there [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,4,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-convention","category-doujin","category-japan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/2chan.us\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/2chan.us\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/2chan.us\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/2chan.us\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/2chan.us\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/2chan.us\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/2chan.us\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/2chan.us\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/2chan.us\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}