I'd like to wish our readers a happy and healthy new years. As we move into 2007 we'll continue to update here at Genvid with the latest Sailor Moon-related news and happenings around the world.

Earlier today I attended the 71st Comic Market, the bi-annual doujinshi sales event that has become the major event of the Japanese otaku's year, and the largest comic book marketplace in the world. Occurring once in August and once in December, hundreds of thousands(!!) of Japanese fans of video games, anime, manga, sci-fi, and more descend upon the Tokyo Big Sight in Odaiba, a convention center on the man-made island in the center of Tokyo Bay that the Rainbow Bridge connects to. (And if you don't know what I'm talking about when I mention those places, you should pick up a copy of Warriors of Legend already.)

The Tokyo Big Sight

Begun in the 1970s as a small doujinshi sales convention, Comic Market (known to many in Japan as simply "Comiket") has grown into a massive gathering of cosplayers, doujinshi artists, and people looking for rare items and deals sold exclusively at the convention by professional companies and doujinshi artists alike. Doujinshi are still the highlight- small events like those Sailor Moon doujinshi gatherings I've covered in the last year are extraordinary but the dozen or so people whose works appear there pale in comparison to the 35,000+ doujinshi authors (known as "circles") that come to sell their home-made comics at Comic Market.

For those who are still puzzled about doujinshi, let me clear up a few things here. They are self-produced comics that are typically 20-50 pages in length sold by the authors, generally not for profit and with limited print runs of 10-30 copies. It is a way for a fan to express their creativity, either with their favourite series like Sailor Moon, or in some cases, to produce original works on their own. Many doujinshi are pornographic, which is indicative of otaku culture having long been a bastion of the lonely male geek. Doujinshi have gained both fame and infamy in the last few years: fame for the bourgeoning creative culture, infamy for the significance of pedophilic (e.g. lolicon) artists that produce such works. Doujinshi are not mainstream, and at their core, individually oriented outlets for artists.

To give you an example of what I mean by that, in the last few months I've become friends with a doujinshi artist whose books I bought at one of the fall Sailor Moon events. He draws Minako x Usagi lemon doujinshi, which have very cute artwork and rarely go past the point of kissing. (He told me once that the "Hentai purists" are offended by his works, which are not pornographic.) Since I didn't know when I'd next be at an event that he participated in, I asked if I could get some of his back issues via mail order. He told me he'd never done mail order before because he didn't like the idea of a reader not being able to check the doujinshi before purchasing. He didn't care about making a sale, he wanted to know that whoever was buying his doujinshi was someone who would enjoy it. But I convinced him to do mail order, and not only did he include the one I wanted to buy, but paid for shipping and gave me (for free) the last copy of another back issue. The fact that I enjoyed his work and sent him comments was enough.

Doujinshi artists are not all like that- many now are able to make a handsome profit, but many of the sellers at comic market, who simply sit at a table reading a book while tens of thousands walk right past them, do it for the sake of those few people who'll stop, look through, and perhaps purchase their book. The 500 yen (~$4.85) they're charging for twenty pages of bound, printed matter only barely covers cost, and most artists are probably losing money, having spent cash on supplies, printing the books, and registering a table at comic market. But it's the way fandom works and I know all too well what it's like; we invested thousands of dollars into the Warriors of Legend series while self-publishing book royalties are a pittance.

Comic Market is free to attend, but the organizers recommend you purchase their catalog, which helps to fund the event. Most of the anime stores in Akihabara have been selling it in the last week, some offering special bonuses to purchase the catalog at their store. Since I wanted a memento, I spent the 2400 yen (~$23) to buy a copy of the printed catalog. (There's also a version on CD.) As you can see, it's enormous. Most of the catalog is taken up by small 1" by 1" squares where each participating author gets to add a little doodle.

Catalog cover

This book is huge and heavy

The event takes place over three days, with participation changing each day. A person doesn't necessarily sell three days in a row, and may only participate in one day over the course of the event. The first day is really busy since a lot of companies and major doujinshi authors are selling rare goods. Tokyo Big Sight being on an island, the transportation methods to there are quite limited and the monorail to there I expected to be quite packed. Not being a big fan of sardine can train rides, I decided not to be there when the event opened (thus skipping huge long lines and mad rushes) and instead took the noon ferry from the harbor to the convention center, also skipping the mid-day crushes at the monorail. A couple other people on the boat seemed to have the same idea as me to get to Comiket, and it was a beautiful ride through Tokyo's harbor for only slightly longer and 30 yen more than it would have cost me to take the monorail.

The Rainbow Bridge and Odaiba as seen from the bay

The boat arrived across the street from the Tokyo Big Sight. The atmosphere at the convention center was hurried and excited, fans holding large bags with anime characters printed on them, and cosplayers around every corner. Walking around, I was surprised by the gender ratio; I had expected (somewhat similar to what the situation is at E3) a lot more guys than girls. But not only were there droves of female cosplayers, but many attendees, and even more participant doujinshi authors, were girls. I started to wonder if there were in fact more females than males in the Tokyo Big Sight that day.

I've been the Tokyo Big Sight several times before, one of which was for the Tokyo Anime Festival in April. It is HUGE, and Comiket uses every square inch of it. There are around a dozen enormous halls and each one of them was packed to the brim with doujinshi sellers. Unfortunately photography outside of the cosplay area was forbidden and in the end I was only able to sneak in one brief shot of what part of one hall looked like.

Just one part of one hall...

With so many people looking to buy doujinshi, you would think it's hard NOT to make a sale. The most popular groups are situated in a ring around each hall, and people line up in droves to buy their wares. They even have people holding signs that say where the end of a line is. But everyone else (the vast, vast majority of authors) have a small table that's only one in a long line of other tables, and it's very hard to make yourself stand out. The crowds- which move like oil on water- can slip right past you. The most successful artists in the galleries were those who did something to catch your eye, like one guy who had a huge posterboard mockup of his doujinshi's cover with flashing lights around it, standing on his chair and holding it up for everyone to see- I was not at all interested in his work but I was drawn to look like a moth to flame.

I began trolling the aisles for Sailor Moon goods, first briefly skimming through and finding a lot of books on Haruhi and other currently popular series, but no sailor-suited senshi. I decided that I'd have to be a bit more careful, and began going aisle by aisle, giving a quick glance at each table, staring downward but moving as fast as I could through a crowd that would give you a shove and walk on without apologizing (a somewhat rude but very common habit here in the city of human congestion). After forty minutes of it I began to get a sense of vertigo and was going to quit by the time I got to the end of the hall, when I finally spotted a hand-drawn headshot of Sailor Mercury.

For the most part, authors drawing doujinshi based on a similar show or game or manga were crowded together in one area. There was an entire hall of Final Fantasy (at least that's what it seemed like.) Finally, at the end of one hall, I found a number of Sailor Moon doujinshi artists scattered across two rows. Several of them were people I'd seen at the various doujinshi events. The people who ran October's Happy Halloween had a table there, which was not surprising. I took a few runs through the area before deciding on two comics I wanted to buy, the first a Mars comic with an interesting looking cover and nice artwork, the second a comic about Professor Tomoe that says "We love Professor Souichi Tomoe." Indeeds we do.

Two doujinshi

One thing I've learned is to always first ask if I can check the doujinshi before buying it. I usually decide based on cover artwork alone (I'd feel pretty guilty about looking through and then not buying; that's a kind of harsh direct rejection), but the artists seem to appreciate it more if you ask, look, and then decide to buy based on the contents. While I was looking through the Mars comic the author was talking with a friend who commented (with me standing right next to them, they were talking to each as if I didn't just speak Japanese to them or wasn't flipping through a Japanese-language comic) on the fact that I knew to ask first.

Making one more round before I left, I spotted a table with an interesting set of pamphlets (they were hardly doujinshi so that's the best descriptor I could think of). I'd seen them before at one of the doujinshi events but hadn't really paid attention to them at the time; this time I asked to flip through them. They were color laser-copies stapled together but contained a lot of photos and descriptions of Sailor Moon items, some I knew about but others I'd never seen. It seems the authors tried to catalog as many of the more unique items as they could, even traveling around Asia to find goods, and doing a book on Sailor Moon items around the world (including USA, Germany, etc.)

Lots of small pamphlets with interesting info on Sailor Moon goods

Each book was 200-300 yen and there were seven or eight of them. Not knowing when I'd run into this group again, I asked for a copy of every book. They went wide-eyed, thanked me, and proceeded to count it up- 2600 yen. ($24.) I asked for their e-mail address and when I got home sent them a mail introducing myself and asking if it was okay to send further questions, to which I've already received a positive response. Some of the information in these books is new to me and may end up being useful for WoL 2, so I want to ask for permission.

I left the east halls (this all took place in just HALF of the event center's open halls), and headed west. On the upper deck of the west halls, various retail stores had booths with huge lines that wound around the outside of the building. If you wanted to buy some of their comiket-exclusive goods, you'd have quite a wait, but many people braved the cold to stand in line. On the upper-deck patio was the cosplay area, which was a maze. It was difficult to find an entrance (they had separate ones for people taking photos and for people actually cosplaying; you also had to take a pamphlet explaining proper procedure in the cosplay area) and even difficult to find the right exit. It was so packed that it was more difficult to move there than it was in the halls.

I didn't stick too long in the cosplay area but I did see a Sailor Mercury cosplayer pass by, and I spotted this Sailor V cosplayer. I'm pretty sure she's been at previous doujinshi events.

Nice costume!

Next to her was this weird pair. I wasn't interested in taking lots of photos but they were a must, so I stood on the short line that was waiting to take pictures of them, and got my turn. After I took the photo they handed me a poster (everyone who took their picture got the poster, you can see it in their hand and in the sack behind them.) I didn't open it, just put it in my bag. When I got back to my apartment I unrolled the poster.

Are they men? Women?

Imagine the worst thing you could ever have on a calendar, and then think about who it was that gave me this poster. I debated whether to actually put it up on the website and have decided to censor it. Warning, this is very not-work-safe and may even be illegal in some countries. (I mean what the hell, why did they GIVE THIS OUT TO PEOPLE.)

On my way out I spotted this pretty neat Full Metal Alchemist pair and got a shot.

And these two had a lot of people taking their picture so I joined in.

From the cosplay square I went into the lower west hall decks, which were primarily video game-related doujinshi. Lots of Final Fantasy. LOTS.OF.Final.Fantasy.

After checking that area out I was pretty tired and didn't want to see what the exit crush of people would be like once the event ended for the day, and so headed out around 3pm when the line for the bus to go across the Rainbow Bridge was still pretty short. The girl sitting next to me had a big bag of doujinshi on the floor, fell asleep, and as a result of the bus shaking, they fell on my feet (and subsequently on the floor.) Such is life with Comiket.

The event goes on for two more days but I've had my fill at this point. In North America we have major anime conventions that are similar to this, but are regional. Comic Market is a whole different ball game, it has a national, center-of-the-otaku-universe flavor to it that you can only pull off in a capital like Tokyo. It was those small Sailor Moon doujinshi events I went to, blown up by several thousand percent. An interesting but crazy place.