#Comiket 99 to Go Forward in Golden Week 2021

“#Comiket 99 to Go Forward in Golden Week 2021”

Comiket 96

Tokyo Big Sight for Comiket 96 (photo: Daryl Harding)

The Comic Market Preparatory Committee announced yesterday that Comiket 99 is being prepared to go ahead during Golden Week 2021, from May 2 to May 5, 2021. The committee said that unless they start getting ready to put the event on now, they wouldn't be able to have it ready for Golden Week next year.

While usually Summer Comiket is usually held in August at Tokyo Big Sight, the event was moved in 2020 for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic games, which will be taking over the exhibition center. But due to the coronavirus pandemic, both events were postponed, with the Olympic games scheduled for July 2021. Comiket 98 (the 2020 Golden Week event) was then canceled for the virtual Air Comiket event, which was held in its place. The committee had already planned for the Golden Week 2021 event to go ahead, but needed more time to start prepartions due to the Olympics and what would happen with Winter Comiket.

The post confirmed that Winter Comiket this year would no be occurring in December, but another Air Comiket event will be held in its place for the 45th anniversary of the event. This marks the first year in the event's history where not only was one event canceled, but there was no live event held. A special "non-air" (physical) commemorative book will be published in December to celebrate the anniversary.

Comiket 99 will see new measures in place for both attendees and circle participants to combat the spread of COVID-19. Spots for both will be limited with the committee aiming for "around 10,000 people" per day, rather than the 100,000's of people that usually go to the event at Tokyo Big Sight. Both participants and attendees will have to go into a lottery to win a place at the event. The Aomi Exhibition Hall, which was being used for corporate booths while Tokyo Big Sight went through Tokyo 2020 renovations, will not be in use.

Comiket 97

The line for Comiket with Tokyo Tower in the background (Photo: Daryl Harding)

The committee noted that "the social situation is still unstable, we have chosen to prepare for the event while keeping an eye on how the situation will improve, bearing in mind the possibility of having to make some bigger decisions in the future", possibly canceling the event should the situation in Tokyo become worse.

On November 18, Tokyo recorded 493 new cases of the coronavirus on the back of 1,292 tests, the highest ever reported in the prefecture, with the Kanto region in general reporting 917 cases of the exceeding 2,000 cases in all of Japan – again the highest amount recorded for Japan. Tokyo is increasing its COVID warning level to the highest level on November 19, though won't be imposing any new lockdown measures as of reporting.

Sources: Comiket on Twitter, The Japan Times, NHK

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Daryl Harding is a Japan Correspondent for Crunchyroll News. He also runs a YouTube channel about Japan stuff called TheDoctorDazza, tweets at @DoctorDazza, and posts photos of his travels on Instagram.

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