Comiket 87 Report!

Comiket 87 was held during the last 3 days, It was my second winter comiket, and once again I can say, Winter comiket is a lot more enjoyable than Summer comiket.

The weather was pretty nice, we did get a little rain on day 2, but not much, and it wasn't too cold (for me anyway). It was cold enough that some cosplayer seems to be really cold, but then again, being almost naked at between 0°C and 10°C would do that.

I didn't have much money this time around so I didn't buy much but I got a circle ticket again for Day 1, so I did most of my shopping in the corporate booths then.
Unfortunately, Kadokawa's line was pretty long, even before opening, so even with the circle ticket, I couldn't go to many booths.

First day shopping took a while, and I was supposed to meet with one of my friend, but because it took her too much time to get changed we could't meet during that day.
Took some cosplay pictures and went back to work D:

During day 2 I didn't have much things to buy, and I went with a Japanese friend, we spent most of the day getting cosplay pictures, and my best Comiket moment happened during day 2, when I got this awesome picture of me doing a princess carry to Misaka Imouto.

I went to Day 3 with a different friend, and I had 2 books to buy, but the line were so long that they left, and we were never able to find each others again, until closing time. We then went to eat dinner together.

Because I spent so much time lining up for stuff on day 3, and because cosplay area close earlier on day 3, I couldn't get many pictures =/

Here are my 3 favourite shots for each days, you can see all my cosplay pictures in the albums linked at the end of this post.

Overall this comiket was very enjoyable, and I'm looking forward to the next one.
Here's this comiket loot:

Cosplay day 1 (Google+/Picasa)
Cosplay day 2 (Google+/Picasa)
Cosplay day 3 (Google+/Picasa)

Comiket 86!

Here the comiket 86 post that should have been done 3 days ago!

From August 15th to the 17th, at the Tokyo Big Sight in Odaiba, the 86th Comiket was held.
As always, There was a crazy amount of people (total attendance of the week-end was 550,000 persons) and as always, it was way too damn hot!
For those who don't know Comiket... I've explained it before so go read there.

*This part of the post might be good information to anyone getting their hands on a circle ticket and who don't know how things will work with them)
This time I was really lucky and got my hands on a circle ticket (circle tickets are given to the members of the circles that will sell goods at the comiket so that they can enter earlier to set up their tables. Sometimes they have too many tickets so some people give it to their friends or sell them). So since I had a circle ticket I tough I wouldn't have to line up at all at first. While walking past the big lines outside I felt really happy to have this ticket. I had one worry though. I wanted to use this ticked to go close to the Corporate booths so I could get hard to get items faster. But would they let me go there? on my ticket, the booth number was in the eastern hall, and the corporate booths are on the western halls. Also a lot of blogs around said that people using these tickets to line up earlier was frowned upon.... well I don't know if that used to be true. but that's clearly not true anymore.

When you arrive at the TBS door with your ticket, they just take it away, so now you're inside, and you can walk anywhere. So I just followed up the directions to the corporate booth, and then I saw... that there's actually a fucking lot of people using those tickets to line up in advance for corporate booths, as there was already big line ups inside the big sight.

Shaft line, at about 8am, 2 hours before the oppening

This is the line I was in, at 9:30, 30 minute before opening.

This made me realize how many people there are, and how useless it is to just "come early". Comiket is crazy.
This is a picture of the top of the outside lines, seen from inside:

The ticket in the end was a great help, In 30 minutes I had already done 3 corporate booths, and that's probably before people who arrived at 7am (1 hour before me) outside, would even have entered the halls.

After the intensive shopping, I met my friend at the cosplay area. She was cosplaying Haruhi, and was cute doing it as always.

This picture is when I realize I got burned pretty badly by the sun on that day,

On day 2 I went with another friend, It was his first comiket, and he's a touhou fan so he came with me on the touhou day.
He said he enjoyed it, and I'm sure he enjoyed it.... as much as you can enjoy it.
Comiket is fun, but it's a really hard event so you kinda hate/love it at the same time.
I was also supposed to meet my other friend who was cosplaying again on day 2, but couldn't because of bad rain timing, and being stuck in a line to ship my stuff home for 2 damn hours (I got out of that line 20 minutes after the end of the event, which gave me the opportunity to take this picture)

Empty Comiket seems so weird O.o

For day two we got there kinda late (11am is the perfect time to arrive if you want to get inside without doing any line up, anytime before that you'll have to wait) and got stuck into that line up after shopping, so I didn't even have time to take cosplay pictures... but I got a picture of one of the 4 areas before it started to rain.

On a side note, there are 4 cosplay areas in Comiket, this is one of the less crowded ones. The 2 closes to the entrance are so crowded (especially the one in the garden) that it's almost impossible to move from one cosplayer to another when taking pictures.
You literally have to push your way through. It's annoying, and exhausting, both as a photograph getting pushed, and as someone trying to move through.

On day 3 I went alone, and had a little less shopping to do.
So I had time to enjoy it more, and check more cosplay and take more pictures.

Here's some of my favourite cosplay pictures of the week-end, you can see the links to the albums at the end of this post.

Matsumoto from Downtown

My friend as Haruhi

Black Hanekawa

Nagato Yuki, this is a Auto-Awesome gif created by google from a couple of pictures I took

Sadako from the Ring

Ui and Yui from K-On!

Jibril from No Game No Life

Persona

Bakemonogatari

Kill la Kill

Windows XP, thank you!

Tamako Market!

Not completly sure, maybe Conan?

2 sides of Hanekawa

Niku

CCHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

Day 1 cosplay pictures: (Google+/Picasa)
Day 3 cosplay pictures: (Google+/Picasa)
Day 1 Google+ Story Version
Day 3 Google+ Story Version

Finally here's a picture of all my C86 loot, including also the stuff I bought for a couple of friends oversea.

And that concludes my Comiket 86 report.
Hope you had fun reading it.

Wonder Festival Winter 2013

This weekend I went to the 2013 Winter Wonder Festival in Chiba (next to Tokyo).
This is an event mostly about figures, pretty much like the comiket(smaller) but instead of fan drawn doujinshi, they sell fan sculpted figures, called Garage Kits (there was also some props, weapons, jewellery, but most of it was figures and dolls).
Some of these works are incredible, and it's impressive to think fans made them.

While this event is a lot smaller than Comiket, it's still a lot bigger than any Anime convention in Canada (and probably US too).
I went there with a friend who was cosplaying so I didn't walk around so much.
I looked at every merchant in the area close to the changing area for cosplayers while I was waiting for her to be ready. This includes the 18+ section.
You can see all my figure pictures here : Wonder Festival Winter 13 figures
but here are some of my favourite figures from what I saw:

You can see the pictures from the 18+ section here, but BE WARNED THEY WILL PROBABLY SHOCK YOU so please don't complain about it here, just don't watch them if you're not open to the perversion of Japanese otaku. Wonder Festival Winter 13 NSFW.

Apparently, Wonder Festival is also a really big Cosplay event. The area for cosplay was bigger than in Comiket, and I think there was more people too. The way people take picture was also different, there was a lot more lines waiting to have a 1 on 1 photo session with the cosplayers, instead of the gigantic mobs of photograph of comiket. While it may sounds better, in fact it just means less picture and more repetitive efforts from the cosplayer. One of my surprise was to see how many Kigurumi was present at the event. There were some at Comiket too, but there was really a LOT at the Wonder Festival.
For those who don't know, a Kigurumi is this:

 A lot of people think they are creepy, and don't like them. Most people who thinks like this mostly think like this because it's impossible to know if the one doing the character is a girl or a guy, because they usually don't speak, wear a false skin, and a mask.
Personally I love them, it's the closest you can get from the Original work most of the time. And yet it can permit you to do cosplays that would be impossible otherwise.

Because I was with a friend, and because of the very long lines for pictures, I didn't take as much as I would have liked, but you can see my pics here: Wonder Festival Winter 13 Cosplay
Here are some of my favourite cosplays from the event:

Overall the event was fun, but really frustrating. Right now I'm on a thigh budget so I couldn't buy anything, but everything looked so nice... It was frustrating to have to just look and not buy. If I would have bought what I wanted I think I would have wasted more than 1K on stuff on that day...
I'm guessing there's also a summer edition of this if this one was called "winter" so hopefully I'll have money then!