The 76th Comiket begins tomorrow!

Tomorrow the doors open to the 76th Comiket in Tokyo, Japan.

Comiket, also known as Comic Market, is the world’s largest handmade comic book convention, held twice a year, once in August, and once in December. These are referred to typically as Summer Comike and Winter Comike respectively.

History

The first Comiket was held in December 1975, with only about 32 participating circles and an estimated 600 attendees. Attendance has since swelled to over a half million people. It is a grassroots, DIY effort for selling dōjinshi, self-published Japanese works. As items sold in Comiket are considered very rare (because dōjinshi are seldom reprinted), some items sold at Comiket can be found in shops or on the Internet at prices up to 10 times the item’s original price! Below are pictures from the 1978 and 2008 Comiket.

Comiket 76

This years Summer Comike is held on August 14th-16th, in the Tokyo Big Sight convention center near Ariake, in Odaiba, Tokyo. It is estimated that around 35,000 dojinshi publishing circles will be present, seeking to distribute their creations to the estimated 500,000 fellow manga enthusiasts that will be visiting the convention during these three days. But most dojinshi circles do not aim to make a profit from their activities. Their aim is to just simply meet and interact with fellow participants and people who share the same interests as themselves.

Cosplay

As usual there will also be cosplay events during this convention, and according to the official website, recent trends include rock, anime and fighting games. I’ll post pics later!

For now, I’ll leave you with this: