Manga Tour Day 3: Comitia, Ginza and a Manga-ka Meet 'n' Greet

Day 3 of my Pop Japan Travel "Mind Over Manga" Tour experience was all about Comitia and manga creators, with a visit to Tokyo Big Sight in Odaiba, then Ginza, and a meet and greet with shojo / boys love manga artist Kaimu Tachibana.

Comitia, as I mentioned earlier, is a comics / graphic novel festival that features hundreds of amateur and semi-professional manga creators all showing and selling their original comics, artwork and even some other quirky creations. It's a different breed of comics show than Comic Market / a.k.a. Comiket (which was earlier this month, and held in Tokyo Big Sight, the same venue as Comitia), in that it's much less crowded and crazy, much more intimate, friendly and creator-driven, and much less hentai (uh... perverse), content-wise.

Comitia is also a lot smaller than Comiket, taking up only two halls of Tokyo Big Sight, compared to Comiket, which takes over the entire venue (which is immense -- and believe me, I've seen LOTS of convention centers lately.) But still, Comitia is at least 5x larger than comparable U.S. shows featuring original comics by creators like Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco or Small Press Expo in Bethesda.

Another major difference: there are no mega publishers' booths (other than the portfolio reviews by manga and game publishers at the end of the hall, including Digital Manga Publishing (parent company of Pop Japan Travel), who is using this opportunity to find new talent to import to the U.S.). There are also no dealers selling toys or books, and the only cosplay I saw was a few girls in casual Lolita styles and a few guys and girls in yukata (summer kimono). Comitia is like one GIANT artists alley.

Many of the tables feature "circles" or groups of artists who publish their own mini-anthologies as well as showing their own work. I've also seen handmade dolls, hand-bound and hand-printed books, bags and tees. Some work looks amateurish, and some look generic in that "I've seen other artists do this before" way. But overall, the level of work mostly falls in the range between above average and pretty darn amazing. There's also a lot of distinctive, personal and creative expressions here -- some that remind me more of American indie comics than mainstream manga.

As part of the tour, Pop Japan Travel arranged to translate and print my 20-page comic story to show and sell at the show. This was one of the main reasons why I opted to take this tour -- to be able to check out a Japanese comics show as a participant, not just as a visitor.

My book was translated into Japanese, prepped for print, sent to a Japanese print shop and then the finished copies were delivered to our table at the show. Pretty painless and easy -- all I had to do was show up. My only regret was that more artists weren't a part of this experience, because it was really memorable and fun to meet other artists and sell my book to Japanese comic readers. Perhaps I'll do it again next year?

After the show, we caught a ferry from Odaiba, headed to Ginza for dinner, then met manga artist Kaimu Tachibana for a meet and greet session. DMP has published a shojo manga how-to book featuring art by Tachibana-sensei. In 2009, DMP will be publishing her full-length boys love manga entitled Boys Love.

Tachibana-sensei came across as an easy-going professional who seemed to enjoy answering our questions and signing books for us. I'll try to post the transcript of her comments later, but for now, I'll just say that this was a nice postscript to a manga-filled day.

Next! A visit to the Ghibli Museum, Nakano Broadway, then movie night in Shibuya to see Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea.

Image credit: © Deb Aoki