Day 7: Comiket Day 1: Heaven or Hell

So I got up at around 5am to head to the line to get into Comiket. Another one of my party had already left to get into line at 5am. I was going with another friend to relieve him.

On the way there, we saw this:

IT’S A GUNDAM!

It’s the famous Gundam statue in Odaiba, eerily lit. Looks kinda like a launch sequence at this time of day, except there’s no people whatsoever around.

We walked about 20min over to Tokyo Big Sight where there already were a whole bunch of determined otaku in line.

In front of Big Sight at 5am

Apparently, there were 3 different lines to get in: East Hall, West Hall, and Corporate Booths. We were in the corporate booth line as that was what we were mostly going for today. Apparently the rules to hold the line are pretty lax: as long as you have stuff there, you get to hold the spot, as long as you get back around 10am or so (the venue actually opens at 11am). This means you can do stuff like go to the nearby convienence store or use the restroom there (even though the line is hella long).

As it got brighter, you could see just how long the line stretched for:

Huddled otaku masses

Keep in mind that this is actually 1/3 lines and that this line continues way past the white building in the background.

At around 11am, everybody is standing and clapping, signaling the opening of the venue. Then, the huddled masses become a sea of people, streaming into Big Sight.

Massing into Big Sight

The crowd is seriously massive, you can kinda give yourself up to the flow and not even walk if you want to. Well, up until you get to the stairs anyway:

Damn stairs.

Up there are the corporate booths, which feature the official booths of a bunch of different anime, game, record, etc. companies. My personal goal was to get into the official Nanoha booth line and buy whatever they were selling.

When I actually got up there, I saw a sign pointing the way to the Nanoha booth line and went straight for it. It actually led back down a 2nd set of stairs towards the back courtyard of Big Sight.

The LONG corporate booth lines

If nothing else, Comiket is actually extremely well-managed in terms of human traffic and indirection. In the picture above are the lines for some of the more popular corporate booths (including Nanoha in my case). Shaft, Visual Arts, Type Moon, and a few others also have their lines down there.  They separate them out so the lines can snake around more and be easier to manage. The Nanoha line is the left-most on the edge of the above pic, and  I hurried up to get in it.

In the Nanoha line

This line is hella long. As you can see in the above pic, it snakes around and continues past the cars in the background. I ended up waiting in this part of the line for… maybe 1-2 hrs? Eventually, the line leads back to the stairs I originally went down:

Back around the line’

Sharp-eyed readers might notice that in the above pic, there are people walking with their hand raised. This is a pretty common example of indirection that they do in Comiket to manage traffic. To prevent huge lines in from a particularly popular booth, the main line is actually much farther way. Then, the front chunk of the line is sectioned-off, they all raise their hand, and then walk over to the booth.

In the case of the Nanoha booth, I thought that there was only level of indirection, but it turns out that when you go up the stairs, you actually get into another line. At least this line is close the actual corporate booths.

Midday Comiket

By the time I was going back up the stairs (still in the Nanoha line of course), the courtyard area had exploded in people. At this point I had been in the line for 2-2.5hrs. Up the stairs, I got into another line and waited there for a while. Eventually, I actually made it indoors and finally saw this:

The actual booth!!!

Of course, there’s an indirect line in front of the booth too. At about the 3-hour mark, I finally made it to the actual booth. They were selling a deskmat calendar, dakimakura covers of Nanoha, Fate, and Hayate, and a parka in the colors/design of Vita. Unfortunately, by the time I got there, the Vita parka and Hayate dakimakura cover were sold out. Originally, I was planning on buying the calendar, Nanoha cover, and parka, but now… dammit,  I waited in this line for 3 whole hours… just do it! So, I ended up buying the calendar and both the Nanoha and Fate dakis.

After finally getting out of that line, I wandered around the corporate booths for a bit since I was there anyway. Went to pixiv and got their illustration books. They had this interesting one about the Mahou Shoujo wars or something that I bought. I also went to the Yurin Yurin booth and bought the newest Sono Hanabira game that’s the first one under their new brand.

I had a few non-corporate booths I wanted to hit too, so I made my way into the East Hall to try to hit up Eretto’s booth (the guy who did all the Nyoro~n stuff). When I actually got there, everything was sold out. Damn. Oh well. Ended up wandering around the West Hall and buying a bunch of Hidamari Sketch and Yuru Yuri doujins.

Eventually, I ran into different members of my party, in various states of fatigue:

Tired horse is tired.

A funny thing about the above pic is that at least 3 different Comiket staff members came by and tried to see what was going on. There were a bunch of people sitting in this area, resting, but they singled out my friend (for some reason, lol) and told him that he couldn’t sit there. One of the staff members was trying to explain to him that it was because he was sprawled out and wearing the mask and they were worried about him.

It turns out that I was pretty lucky with my day, but the rest of my party didn’t really get what they really wanted. Here’s a quick comic done by the above friend that succiently describes my party’s Day 1 experience:

Day 1 in a 4koma nutshell