Term · Anime fandom
Comiket
Twice a year, hundreds of thousands of people queue in Tokyo to buy comics that no publisher printed.
In Otakana the clue reads: Twice-yearly self-published comics fair in Tokyo
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- 7 · Hard
Comic Market began in December 1975 with about thirty circles and a few hundred visitors in a small hall. It now fills Tokyo Big Sight, the convention centre out on the bay, for three or four days each August and December, and attendance runs into the hundreds of thousands. The event exists so that people who made something can sell it directly to people who want it, with no distributor standing in between.
Circles apply for tables and a lottery decides who gets one, because demand has outrun the floor space for decades. What they bring is doujinshi: fan comics about existing series, original work, art books, music, games. Professional artists set up under pen names next to people printing their first thirty copies. Queues form before dawn, and the organisers publish floor maps and heat warnings the way a small city would.
The fair matters well beyond its weekend. Touhou began as one man's doujin games and grew into a music and art economy of its own. Type-Moon sold Tsukihime here before turning professional. Publishers watch the halls for artists worth signing, and plenty of serialised manga started as something someone photocopied and wheeled in on a hand truck.
Spelling COMIKET
COMIKET compresses Comic Market, taking the front of one word and the back of the other. The Japanese abbreviation is コミケ, Komike, and the longer コミケット is Komiketto, so the sound you hear at the venue starts with a K. On the tiles it is a C. Seven letters, one M, and it ends KET rather than KIT.