Comic Market 89 (C89), 520,000 visitors in 3 days!　MARUI participated for the first time

Comic Market 89 (C89), the world's largest otaku festival, opened on December 29 at Tokyo Big Sight in Ariake, Tokyo. The event will run until December 31.

Comic Market, also known as "Comiket," is the world's largest coterie magazine exhibition held twice a year, in August (commonly known as Summer Comic Market) and December (commonly known as Winter Comic Market). It is a "festival of otaku" held over three days at Tokyo Big Sight, one of the largest convention facilities in Japan, and has become a world-class event. In recent years, the three-day event has attracted 35,000 individual circle exhibitors, around 20,000 cosplayers, and over 500,000 total visitors.

→ Summer Comic in 2015
→ Winter Comic Market 2014

In the blazing hot or extremely cold weather and unimaginably crowded conditions, general attendees headed out to buy the books and goods they were looking for, but queuing for several hours at popular circles and company booths was a common occurrence. In addition, the problem of waiting in line all night to enter the exhibition hall has become a serious problem. During the event, the area around the venue becomes a veritable "holy war for otaku," and the people who attend the event, including those in the vicinity of the venue, are often forced to wait in line. In addition to these harsh conditions, in recent years, a "sophisticated information war*" has been waged even before the event opens.

*This refers to the practice of swaying other participants who are heading to popular booths or circles by spreading "false information" (e.g., "XX is already sold out, so it's no use going there now" or "XX has a lot of items brought in, so you can still buy them in the afternoon") in order to reduce the number of rivals as much as possible. In recent years, information warfare has intensified with the spread of Twitter.