Comiket, Day 3, around 3:05pm

And I got all I wanted from Comiket, flawlessly completed my mission for this Comiket.

This year’s Comiket saw an increase of 10K people compared to the last few years. Estimately 180,000 people attended just on Day 1. And I’m one of it.

Proud? Not really, Satisfying? Not really. But is it one of the best? HELL YES. Personally speaking of course. After running through crowds that broke the heavens, suffered myself from the heat for ongoing 4 hours with barely anything to cover myself from the heat – To get those stuff I wanted is like heading myself for a Touchdown in Amercian Football with a wall preventing me from passing. But still the mission is completed flawlessly…only some not quite.

Came back with sunburnt body and physicially tired body. That’s to be expected. Afterall Comiket is never meant to be fun. It’s war.

Day 1 was rather a relaxing experience. Compared to the last Summer Comiket I had, the weather on Day 1 wasn’t really blazing hot as I expected it to be. Reached the place about almost 10am, it is quite expected that the line will be all the way west of the main entrance (10KM away) because people just keep coming and coming for Comiket. Which are mostly females. (Day 1 is Yaoi Day if you’re wondering)

Sources from 2ch said that there was a real brofist fight at Gonzo booth…really? Must have missed it because I know I’m not going to stay at Commercial Booth anymore longer after seeing the influx of people hording the paths in the hall (especially around the Bushido/Brocolli/K-books area). Plus the smell of sweaty otakus that you can even feel it from miles away doesn’t help. So once I’m done with my purchase, I’m outta here. And that’s what I did.

I love Pixiv’s line. Systematically done and doesn’t let their customers wait for long; Prints enough copies for anyone to buy it (unlike Type Moon dur hur), and no “one item of each merchandise per purchase only” rule means that my friend and I can both own the same stuff at the same time without having to line up again for it. Sadly, Pixiv is just evil – evil for flashing out so many tempting stuff for me to buy.

Good Smile Company line got their queues cleared up super fast because their items of focus all went to Miku plushies AND Reimu Nendroid (and most already sold out), I actually got mixed up with some other company booth (which I didn’t take notice), and lined up there instead of Good Smile line. Thankfully Good Smile already cleared off the queues so I no need to go back and re-line up myself again, so I just ran all the way to the booth and got my Reimu Nendroid, which if I go any later it will be out of stock. Oh god that was dangerous.

Spending the rest walking around the West hall and found some really appealing doujins despite majority of them are yaoi/BL oriented.  But one such prized doujin I got would be “Closet Child Produced #57″ illustration works by Ototsugu Konoe. Hard to show anything about this book, but with luck you might be able to find them online if you know where to find.

Of course Day 1 ended with many pictures and many stuff bought. Am satisfied.

…But one such mistake was NOT camping with the people for Day 2.

Day 2 had a scorching weather. Not even bringing a fan helped because the situation around was blazing hot. But thanks to getting occupied by the thought of must buy Touhou Seireisen I forgot everything about “hot” “heat” and whatsnot.  But the consequences of having such thoughts would be having to suffer massive sunburnt especially on my arms, which I’m still having it now, because I never actually bother to cover myself for protection….

Will this be your fun?

I woke up at 5am, got myself ready with self made food and drinks and all, got out starting 6:30am, took me about 1 hour and 15 minutes to get to Big Sight, and apparently I’m still not EARLY enough to be at the front lines.

Only after Day 2 I realized that people already line up during evening of Day 1. Instant rage there…and here I thought camping the night before rule has been strictly prohibited.

Anyway, rewinding back to Day 2, I had already been lining up since 8:00am in the morning. waited for 2 hours for the queue to start clearing. But apparently too many people have been trying to get past the main entrance to the East Hall. Normally, if without people, you should be able to reach East Hall from main entrance by walking in less than 5 minutes. But, like the picture above. It totally ended up around 45 minutes to 1 hour just to get there. All for the sake of Touhou doujins, and the game itself .

Madness? THIS IS COMIKET!

When I reached ZUN’s booth for Touhou Seireisen, it was already 11:30am but the queue was just plain beyond proportionally long. To give an image of how it’s like. Imagine this scenario (with a diagram) :

* The black box with a white line in between is the escalator.

ZUN’s booth was at East Hall A-28a. Which means his booth was at the East 1 hall. There are 6 East halls, 3 on the left, 3 on the right. East 1 Hall’s entrance was at the right. Since profolic and famous booths usually will station their booths at the very corner of the hall, it is expected that you go all the way outside the hall to find the queue and line up instead. But for ZUN’s case – his booth was at East Hall 1, but the queue outside extends all the way from BELOW East 1 (all the way from the right side escalator)  up to East 6 hall. It is roughly estimated that the distance between East 1 Hall to East 2 Hall is around 50m or so. So, by the queue going up to East 6 Hall it will take around 300 or so (maybe longer). Plus the queues are actually a SNAKE queue, so it means the line can go up from below East 1 to East 6 then snake back all the way to below East 1 again, then only back to East 1. The queues are formed under 2 lines as well so the  people who lined up are in pairs.

The story was that by the time I found ZUN’s booth (The man himself was there as well), I tried to look for the queue that says “last person in line here” sign and intended to line up. But the queue itself is too confusing to look for (don’t forget there are people who line up for other booths as well), I ended up wandering around trying to find the queue to line up but to no avail. After pointlessly wandering around I finally found the position to queue up, only to be halted by the staff because the line is too long and full to the point anymore latecomers will not be able to line up anymore – with the reason told by the staff who is guarding the last queue “Even if you line up all the goods will be sold out as well, so no point trying to line up”. If you think back about it, it’s kind of bullshit as well.

Disappointed, I ended up lingering around the East 1 hall to observe the booth and the people who are lining up filled with excitements and expectations. Along the way I decided that the outside hall was simply too hot to bear, I went inside and did some minor shopping on other booths, bought one nice Touhou doujin, and I was about to actually leave the East Hall with disappointment. But somehow my heart doesn’t felt right doing so, especially after passing by ZUN’s booth and saw that there are still many stocks left, I had this sudden idea of hoping that the staff will let us line up again once the queue is considerably lesser.

Apparently I wasn’t alone in thinking this, the other latecomers as well followed the same method and tried to stalked the last queue and the staff. The staff kept chasing us away, but we just kept stalking. Realizing that this isn’t going to work well, I quit halfway and lingered just outside the East 1 Hall to see the situation instead. That continued all the way up till 12:45pm or so, during the time where the queue is finally cleared and there was still no sign of the staff allowing us to queue up for the game. I almost had the idea of quitting the whole deal and just go take pictures after lunch – yet somehow my heart doesn’t feel right quitting, and I went back to ZUN’s booth again.

Other people did have the right idea as well and gathered up at just outside ZUN’s booth hoping for a chance to actually buy his game, which he actually does have leftovers (which proved that the staff is one big fat liar), I also found out that one of the staff were having talks with ZUN, at the same time getting chased away by the staff for gathering up. Slowly, it went from chased away to regulated instead because the staff kept stressing that “I am not the one who decides the whole deal”, implying that there might still be hope in this. Few minutes later, the staff who talked to ZUN came up to us and announced that there were still stocks left for purchase and ZUN is willing to continue selling, which we ALL cheered and clap hands. Quickly I ran up to the upmost front to get any chance I can take to obtain a copy of the game while at the same time the staff followed up with his announcement saying that 50 person will be selected to buy the game AS LONG AS we behave ourselves (one of them would be no crossing the yellow bar line),  all of us were obidient, and I was the 18th out of the first 50 to get choosen for it.

In the end? I got the game, I actually almost wanted to cry because, seriously, I lined up for about 4 to 5 wonderful hours just to get this one little game and it almost took half of my life for it! Any dedicated otakus will cry for it. I can’t say I’m proud. But more or less I can say that I can understand the feeling of having obtained the things you REALLY want, especially after actually planned for it.

But here’s a good moral lesson folks. “Good things comes to those who wait”.

Happily, I went and proceed with my usual routine : Lunch, take cosplay pictures, and go home.

…

Day 3 was more or less the same as Day 2, but not as hectic. However my only gripe was that lining up for Tony Taka’s doujin was a pain because the queue moved seriously slow. But regardless I still got what I wanted and like usual, Tony always prints enough for purchases.

I was a little disappointed because I expected a doujin of Eva 2.0 from him – Only to found out that it was actually just a compliation of his old stuff with 2 new ones (Asuka from Eva 2.0) slapped with a new illustration cover.

But who cares? Tony was my inspiration for drawing so I bought it anyway.

However, like Day 2, since the weather was seriously blazing hot I couldn’t be bothered trying to walk as much anymore and spent the rest of the day taking more cosplay photos (which is surprisingly much better than Day 1, and slightly better than Day 2…seriously, is it a trend where most S Grade cosplays are always around the last day or something?)

Regardless I still hadsome considerable amount of fun despite the seriously unbearable weather. As I’m typing this entry, my arm feels very “hot” and extremely painful (on the skin). Hopefully this goes down soon.

—

So how’s Comiket?

In a personal point of view, Combining all pros. and cons. – This is by far the most satisfying Comiket I’ve had, yet. I got whatever I wanted without having to rage, sigh, or FFFFFFFFFFF all the way regretting and whining (save for Day 2, that one got me good), and I get to actually enjoy my stuff from time to time. I don’t have that much of money, so whatever I wanted were all planned extensively beforehand. Type Moon was rather disappointing this time round because all their stuff aren’t my cup of tea. Nanoha merchandises never actually appeal me. Real brofist fight at Gonzo booth actually made me relieved that I actually wasn’t there to see it, or else it will be a sight for me to feast on. I never had the interest on dakimakuras or towels with anime girl’s faces slapped on it (to me it’s disgusting having to rub your face with it).

So far, putting aside my numerous rants about hot weather and sunburnt (sorry for that constant whining), I had fun with this hell market.

Until next time, Since Ci will be coming for Comiket 77. I’m definitely looking foward to that since working together to get targetted doujins is actually much better than going through all that alone.

So yeah, until next time…

For pictures, you can view my bought stash, along with the cosplay pictures, here,  here, and here. All 3 Days are included. Password :semantics1314

Tags: C76, Comiket, Cosplay, Doujin, Pixiv, Touhou, ZUN

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