October 20th 2024, Kyoto Pulse Plaza
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Another Kansai Comitia to leave the comfy confines of Osaka harbourside (aka pretty much the middle of Kansai) and be held in Kyoto. Given that it was further away, I did of course wake up bright and early to get there in time for the opening right... right? Did I fuck, eh? I got there when it only had an hour and a half left to run. I didn't even have the excuse of being pissed the night before, this time. Also I'd recently (semi-)quit my job and not yet secured anything new, so had to strictly budget and not go bonkers buying everything. Anyway, I went to JR Kyoto station, then changed to the Kintetsu Line (which also has a station close to me, but doesn't "connect" to Kyoto well). As time was getting on budgeting had to be temporarily damned, and I got a bus to the venue.
I only now notice it is actually "Tia's Magazine" and not "Tears Magazine" Luckily plenty of catalogues were left, so I was able to pay my sen easily and go in. For once, being on a budget, I didn't start buying straight away and began just walking the aisles, memorising the letters of ones where I saw interesting tables. As it was getting near the end, a few people I saw on the first go-round had closed up and left by my second. Luckily Comitia is not like Comic City, and people stay until the end. If you get to a comic city with 90 minutes remaining, you'll find it empty! After that, I began the buying mission! On my way round a woman handed a small, cute artbook to me. I thought it was free and went to walk away, but it wasn't XD. Anyway I went back there and that's what I bought first.
Various cities (or just "Hawaii", a place a lot of Japanese people seem to have trouble with the actual status of!) around the world rendered as cute anime girls. After that I did the usual wander. Still not re-found the makers of that cute yuri comic I got back at K-Comitia 67 anywhere. Also the guy who did the cool Steve Galacci-a-like furry comic last time it was in Kyoto. I then passed by a large double-table, and saw a name I "knew"... well, knew of tangenitally, through my search for another manga... BELNE! She was one of a handful of BL doujinshi artists who were picked up by moribund porn comic publisher Hit Comics, in the late 90's.
Not bought at this Comitia, bought at Book-off a few months ago! Hit Comics had been making porn comics for men, up to that point; straight and lesbian ones. Then they seem to have done this pivot in the late 90's, then died. I found this out through the Red Dragon series, by Marino Satoh, whom I have been chasing around the late 80's / early 90's doujin scene ever since! She seems to have dropped off the face of the earth, leaving Red Dragon "unifinished" by Hit Comics. Apparently Red Dragon WAS finished as a doujinshi (though machine translation of a website about it says it was "finished in a fanzine", IE by somebody else, I think they just translated "doujinshi" as "fanzine"), but Hit Comics went bust before they could print the last volume. Still, Red Dragon was considered good enough at the time that the Hit Comics version even saw print over in Korea! Anyway, here was Belne, in person, to ask if she remembered Marino Satoh and Red Dragon... buuut, she didn't. So that's another dead end! Anyway, as I was there, I thought I may as well buy some more Belne comics. That Hit Comic from 1998 up there is about a long-haired blonde guy who lives in a luxury flat in London and gets his way with numerous brunette hotties, from fellow members of the idle rich, to the bloke who comes to fix the lights. Belne's modern-day output is about a long-haired blonde guy who lives in a luxury flat in London, and gets his way with numerous brunette hotties. But this time he has loads of cats! She obviously beleives in not fixin' what ain't broke.
The rest of the purchasing mission was pretty uneventful. At the end I remembered I'd seen a shy girl just sitting there with a bowed head, and a single copy-bon on a bare table. So of course I had to go and buy her book... except by this point nobody had any change! So I had to buy a bottle of coke first. Luckily the change box in the vending machine hadn't been cleaned out, so then I was good to go. And that was it! Except for a breif visit to the table o' selected books from other Comitias, which is always there. I wasn't going to spend any more... but then I saw it!
A book about the history of doujinshi events from the first Comiket in 1975, up to 2022! Rather steep (for my present finances) at ¥1250, but I had to have it!
It goes through year-by-year, talking about prominent doujinshi events, there's also boxouts listing world events happening at the same time (1994 mentions Ayrton Senna dying). It's written vertically but I was able to "read" bits of it, however awkwardly, with camera translate. I also discovered though it that the original Tokyo Comitia is about 4 months younger than me! The day was over and it was time to take off, but first a small sit down to arrange the haul neatly and drink some water. There were a bunch of simpering Brits just outside the door going "oh maw gawwwwd". One of them also said "Come with us!", dunno if they were talking to me or not, but I suddenly became a monolingual Pole and strolled on by.
Lovely weather in Kyoto that day. Pretty much two and a half weeks of solid cloud and rain over Kansai since! OK, Let's look at the haul! Belne Let's start ourselves off with the star of the show. Now that I know who she is, I see she also has a regular column in Tia's Magazine, the "ticket" to Comitia, where she talks about doujinshi she has been sent. Why does she do that? Because she's also the professor of anime and manga at Kaisei University!
As the previous Belne comic I bought was published by a porn publisher, it had plenty of hot action. The three books I bought at K-Comitia 71 are just romantic, with nothing sexy. I got two books of a series called (are you ready for this?) "Lon'don sat'is.fyday!". There's also a "Belne Anthology" which seems to be about the same character(s), a rich hot blonde guy who lives in a swanky flat in Mayfair.
French Line
A good-looking, fully-coloured comic about a liner between-the-wars. I was partly attracted to it by the art, but the deal was sealed by the name "French Line", which was also the name of a series of gay erotica paperbacks from the USA in the 70's. With glorious names like "Chamber of Homos" and "Chocolate Speedway". Come to think of it, why haven't I bought any of those, yet?
Kikai shikake no tōhi-sō
This one's a kind of cyberpunk / biopunk sort of thing. Seems to have magic, too. I guess it's kind of like what a "steampunk fantasy" setting would be like if they upgraded to today's technology. The guy also had a world-building book with character profiles, maps, art of the city etc. But I only got this one.
Fialfloga Vol. 1 Seems like I didn't even take any pictures of this one. It's half comic, half character profiles. The back has a parody ad for a mobile game with an excessively long name and an alleged 7 trillion downloads. Mrs Gaskell's Garden
"Mrs Gaskell" (Elizabeth Gaskell) was a Victorian novelist, but I forgot that at the time and the association of "Gaskell" and "Victorian" in my mind made me think this was a Charles Dickens doujinshi they'd slipped under the radar of Comitia's "Originals Only" policy. Anyway, it's actually about a horrifying bio-warfare experiment where they're trying to grow "human" plants. It came with a "newspaper" too. Dunno
This is the copy-bon the girl had on her plain table. It has no title page, just goes right into the story! Good art, actually, it's semi-"furry" Brave New Lettuce
That's actually the back cover, but I'm too lazy to re-photo it, I just want to get this thing uploaded! Anyway it's name is Re:T Vol. 3 - FETISH. The fetish in quesion being one-piece swimsuits. Yes, please! It's fairly chaste, actually. At least from what you'd normally expect. There's not even erect nipples or cameltoes in most of the pictures (it's a full-colour artbook). Also it has the same "silky" cover stock as used on The Lost Pages. Ogata Joint Manga
A fantasy set in old Japan. Like a lot of doujinshi with such a setting, moden buildings and technology randomly show up too. Also has anthropomorphic characters, but, in contrast to the "realistic" (by manga standards) humans (and demons), they are full-on cartoons! So that's another Kansai Comitia finished! As I said, I'm (semi-)between jobs right now. The next one's in Osaka in January, I have absolutely no idea if I'll be able to afford to go at all, at the moment. In an extreme case, I might not even be in Japan any more! We'll have to see... |
