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Jun 5

DOUJIN THOUGHTS PT I

MANGA ICHIBA: MY EXPERIENCE, WHAT YOU CAN TAKE FROM IT TO FURTHER THE DOUJINSHI AGENDA, AND OTHER THOUGHTS ON NURTURING DOUJIN CULTURE OUTSIDE OF JAPAN

By now a lot of people who attended the event will have already shared similar thoughts, but I still wanted to write down my observations and opinions on what made Manga Ichiba a success. My motivation is, of course, that I hope others around the country & the world hoping to organize similar events and grow more spaces for “doujin culture” outside of Japan can take something of value from this! For people who are really context thirsty, I’m going to write down a bunch of details about the event, but if you were there or just want to get to the good part feel free to skip right to TL;DR: WHAT WAS THE MAGIC SAUCE?

Because I know I’m going to write way too much, I want to say upfront an enormous thank you to the organizer Tiara, to anyone behind the scenes at Fanime who helped them make this happen, to the volunteers there that weekend, and to all artists and readers who came together for DOUJIN!!

I may also write up a Part II which is not a dissection of Manga Ichiba and how to make a Big Event happen, but just some thoughts/questions about possible alternative spaces for doujinshi I’ve been mulling over recently.

FACTS

Manga Ichiba was part of FanimeCon 2026 in San Jose, CA. Tabling fee was only $20, but you had to purchase your badge for Fanime separately. (This seems to apply to the main artist alley at Fanime as well, though that table fee is something like $300.) Manga Ichiba was held over 3 days (Friday-Sunday.)

It was located in the Doubletree hotel, which hosts other Fanime programming, but is some distance away from the convention center where the main events of the con are held. There was a free shuttle bus that would take people between the convention center and the hotel (about a 15-20 minute trip.) Notably, the “Night Market,” an 18+ version of the artist alley, is held at this same location from 6PM onwards, and the Manga Ichiba tables were set up in the lobby/hallway basically right in front of that hall.

Each day of the event was split into a “daytime” and “nighttime” slot, and each artist/circle was assigned one of these slots. If you were exhibiting 18+ artwork, you were placed in a “night” slot. 2 slots x 3 days = six different rounds of artists!

Promotion of the event beforehand: There was an informational page on the Fanime website leading up to the convention, but it was very much a description of what the event was conceptually, with few practical details for fans hoping to attend. I believe they officially promoted the event a few times on Fanime social media accounts. And eventually, we got a very cool list of circles up on the website, with useful filter options. This page went up a little more than a week before the con. Artists also did their best to promote not only their own presence but spread the word about the event itself beforehand. Very noteworthy were tomatobird’s flyer and unofficial guides, which were extremely informative!

When you attend Fanime, you also get two handy booklets that list all the programming info. Manga Ichiba was listed in both these booklets, so any attendee of the con flipping through could learn about it on the spot. I will say one wrinkle is that because it was a halfway 18+ event, and hosted at the Doubletree where all the 18+ programming is sequestered, its placement in the program did make it seem like a completely adults-only event, and you’d sorta have to read the fine print to see that it wasn’t. I don’t think this had much of a negative impact on the show, but just was one of the ways in which balancing all the logistics and complexity of the event was a bit tricky.

MY EXPECTATIONS

I knew it was a first-time event. I read about the event being a shuttle ride away from the con proper, and combined that with the fact that there would be SIX separate waves of artists at different times. I did not fully understand, having never been to Fanime before, that Fanime is sort of spread out over a few locations and people might be kinda used to hopping around. And even if I had understood that, I still thought no one but a few die-hard nerds were gonna get on a bus and leave the main con multiple times in a weekend. So to be honest: I went into this mentally prepared for this event to be nothin’ but crickets. But STILL! Something in my heart told me I HAD TO BE THERE!! FOR DOUJINSHI!!

(Oh, and I also thought “this event is trying a little too hard to do everything the way a Japanese event does it. I admire that idea, but we need to adapt things to what people are used to here, right?” Spoiler alert: wrong.)

TURNOUT

It was awesome!

First of all, as tomatobird put very well, it’s not like “selling the max amount of books” is the full picture of what makes a doujin event a success. I personally thought that the way this event brought together “seasoned” doujin-slingers, first-time comic makers, and everyone in between was really beautiful. Because each section was fairly small (you could probably get a good look at everyone’s table within 15 minutes) it didn’t have the overwhelming, overstimulating feeling of big artist alleys. I felt like people were often approaching artists and chatting with them/picking up their books even if they had no clue what their fanart was for, and that was pretty special. There was so much willingness to strike up conversations with artists, tons of interest in both people’s art and the overall concept of the event, and lots of time to chat with enthusiastic people (especially after I sold out of all my books & was just sitting there LOOOOOL ahem)

So yes, I sold out of every single book I brought. I think many people did. Now, lest we get carried away by our hubris, let me point out: because this was a new event and we were managing expectations, most of us did not BRING that many BOOKS. We were all DEEPLY UNPREAPARED for the enthusiasm and attendance. So “selling out of everything” in a matter of hours is not necessarily a shocking data point on its own. I don’t want people tragically overdoing it next year, lmaooo. HOWEVER!! It was an almost universal sentiment that both the amount of people who showed up and the amount of books they bought exceeded expectations. Speaking for myself, I sold in just a few hours what my circle usually sells at a whole weekend-long show that goes “pretty good,” and I would have sold a lot more

That’s actually the part I want to stress the most: several of us who frequently table at other anime artist alleys/indie comics festivals observed that we usually do not sell as many books as fast or as thoroughly as we did at this show. Often, we do not sell *THE SAME EXACT BOOKS* as fast as they were snatched up at this show, when we have taken THE SAME EXACT BOOKS to other shows repeatedly in different contexts. So clearly Something Was Working.

TL;DR: WHAT WAS THE MAGIC SAUCE?

Limitations on what you could sell and how you could display it kept the focus firmly on comics/zines.

Tabling fee was cheap.

Being attached to a larger, established event was a game changer…

…However, some friction/separation narrowed that huge audience down to those who actively wanted to seek out doujinshi, or were predisposed to be interested in it.

People just really really want this and are ready for it!!!

Ok now allow me to yap about each of these points.

KEEPING THE FOCUS ON BOOKS & CREATING A PLACE FOR “DOUJINSHI”

Everyone who got excited hearing about Manga Ichiba had the same THING burning in their heart. It’s not like there’s no other way & no other avenues to share fanbooks and zines and whatnot in the U.S. But we do not yet have a place to celebrate and nurture THIS specific KIND of artist-and-fan-practice. If you get it, you get it! And so the number one thing you have to do if you want to make a space for it is to really laser focus onto that practice.

Manga Ichiba achieved this by

1. Doggedly sticking to the lingo & structure of a Japanese event, effectively sending out the bat signal to the doujin-obsessed

2. Limiting what could be sold & displayed by participants.

I’m not going to explicitly report on all the exact rules, and honestly for this first go-round they were kept a little loose and honor-system anyway, but it boiled down to this:

You were not allowed to have too many “merch” items. People were allowed to have stickers, charms, prints, etc only in proportion to the amount of books they were accompanying.

You were not allowed to construct a display above a certain height. The tallest and most complex displays were people like me, who brought upright wooden book stands to help display several books on one table, or a few modular panels to hang signs on. Still quite simple. Plenty of people just set the books out flat on the table along with a few info signs! [Example, Example, Example, Example]

Limitations like this kept the focus on books, with guard rails against people feeling like they had to sink time, effort, and money into “competing” against more established artists or more elaborate displays. Even Manga Ichiba’s insistence on using Japanese lingo, using terms like “circle” for each artist/group of artist – which one could argue is a little goofy to do at a U.S. con – I believe all served to create the right expectations for the event, and attract people who were looking for this specific experience.

Because the tabling fee at ManIchi was extremely cheap compared to Fanime artist alley as well (see below) I can also see these rules becoming important in the long run to make sure that there is no incentive for artists who *aren’t* truly prioritizing books to try to use it as an alternate tabling option for cost-saving purposes, which would eventually dilute the focus of the event.

TABLING FEE WAS CHEAP

This was quite important imo. First of all, this makes it easier for any artist with the drive to share a comic to participate. You shouldn’t have to be a con-circuit pro, and you shouldn’t have to have already built up a lage catalog of books.

Also, if it’s affordable to participate, it becomes acceptable to risk, expect, or even intend to sell your books at a loss. I think that’s pretty essential for a proper doujin ecosystem, and it’s one of the biggest barriers in both a practical and cultural sense to doujin stuff fitting in to existing U.S. fan market… places.

IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME, BUT IT’S EASIER TO GO WHERE THEY ALREADY BUILT IT

By being attached to a large, well-established, pre-existing event (FanimeCon) Manga Ichiba was able to have amazing attendance despite limited promo beforehand, and logistical obstacles at the con itself. I think it’s a no-brainer for anyone hoping to start a similar event in their area to look at whatever established anime/comic* conventions are near you, and start by trying to work with them.

*In the past I would have thought it definitely needs to be an anime con, but anime/manga/manhwa is so mainstream now, the lines are all blurring, nerds are converging, it’s a whole new world baby who knows

QUALITY OVER QUANTITY!!! OF GEEKS!

Even within general nerd/otaku world, doujinshi and zines are something that depend on all parties “getting it.” If I had set my table up in the middle of the main Fanime artists alley, thousands more people would have physically walked by me all weekend, but I don’t think I would have sold all of my books, and I certainly wouldn’t have had such a positive experience.

The thing that I had assumed might throttle this event – having to take a shuttle 15 minutes away from the main convention – I believe actually served to focus the attendees. Basically, the majority of people who bothered to come out there came BECAUSE they heard “doujinshi” and said “SIGN ME UP!!” and/or (for the nighttime timeslots) they were people interested in the Night Market (essentially a NSFW-focused Artist’s Alley) in which case they may not have been there for doujin/comics specifically, but still had a good chance of being familiar or interested in doujin... for a variety of reasons. Namely that most people here first learned about doujin via the porn ones, lol.

This “insiders only” vibe is something essential to the “culture” of doujinshi, but even I had underestimated it, or perhaps I simply assumed it was too abstract and touchy-feely to be actively worked into event planning. But I’m now here to tell you that it IS part of the magic sauce and you CAN try to control certain factors with this in mind. So if someone does succeed in setting up a similar event attached to another existing anime con, I think it is actually key that there is some physical separation from the “normal” artist alley. Finding the balance of what is too far away depends on the layout of the event. But I believe that simply trying to direct the maximum amount of traffic to wander by is NOT an ideal setup, counterintuitive as that may seem.

THE PEOPLE ARE READY, THE PEOPLE ARE HUNGRY

What was shocking to me was that so many different tables seemed to have a pretty amazing response. Allow me to explain why my mind was boggled so bogglingly.

At doujin events in Japan, tables are sorted by fandom/pairing, and that information is well known ahead of time. This typically holds true whether it’s something massive like Comiket or a smaller event. At a giant event, there will be a whole section of the hall for [fandom] and that will then have sub-groupings of [pairing] etc etc. Or you might have “only” events where the entire thing is organized around one fandom/ship/etc. Sometimes these are events-within-events. The point being, at such an event you can kind of EXPECT people to just walk up to your table and immediately buy your newest book, or everything you have, with no hesitation. They came there FOR that stuff and maybe even specifically for you and your book. This is also why these events are packed into a way shorter time period, and why you’ll see artists packing up and posting on social media about their delicious post-event meal celebration with friends at like, 2pm. Everyone comes and buys the books in a frenzy for a few hours, and then you call it a day!

It stunned me that we replicated a similar experience at Manga Ichiba when a) the event itself was relatively small b) there wasn’t too much in the way of grouping tables, and c) there wasn’t a ton of promo. The organization that did exist was: obviously anyone who had 18+ works were grouped in a night slot. And there was an unofficial attempt at sorting *a lot* of the BL and *most* of the yuri onto certain days. But there was still tons of overlap! There was a totally ecclectic spread of fandoms and pairings, of fanwork and original work. There were tables with only original work. There were tables with nothing but 5 books of the same OTP. There were tables with like 5 different fandoms (me.)

And yet, people from all these categories managed to sell books. I even sold all (ten) copics of shmuffalo’s Yuri On Ice rarepair doujin about the American and Chinese skaters working out their gay bi feelings. We usually have to explicitly point this book out to DIEHARD YOI fans at other cons, and most of them still don’t pick it up. What this tells me is, people were showing up just THIRSTY AS HELL to support DOUJINSHI IN GENERAL and to get their hands on whatever cool art caught their eye. I certainly was!! And damn… ISN’T THAT FUCKING COOOOOOL

OTHER THOUGHTS… YEAH SORRY I’M GOING TO KEEP TALKING YOU CAN LEAVE NOW IF YOU WANT

HANDLING R18/ADULT ARTWORK

As I mentioned, artists with 18+ works were all scheduled for the 6pm-start “night” slots, which overlapped with the “Night Market.” At that time, Fanime volunteers would be posted at the entrance hall that led into all Manga Ichiba tables/the Night Market/other 18+ Fanime programming, to check IDs and distribute wristbands.

How an event handles a mix of general audiences & adult books is always going to be a unique decision that depends on the laws where you are, the rules of the venue you’re at, the rules of the con if you’re hosted by a bigger con like Fanime, etc etc. Manga Ichiba itself was far from perfect; though I don’t think they suffered too much for it, the daytime-slot exhibitors may have been at a disadvantage because they didn’t have the traffic of the thirsty hordes of people coming over there for the night market. But I definitely think splitting the event up geographically would have been a terrible move, so all in all I think the right compromises were made.

I just want to reflect that this was my first time tabling at a space that was totally adult-restricted, and it was pretty freeing haha. Usually we sell a mix of comics at shows where the responsibility is on us to check IDs before people browse or buy our 18+ books. It’s always fine, but it just takes a bit of mental energy and vigilance to stay aware of who is reaching for what. So that was neat for me!

WHAT MAKES A U.S. DOUJIN EVENT DIFFERENT FROM AN INDIE COMICS EVENT?

There was a bit of discussion in the event planning Discord about requiring books to be “manga”-like or manga-inspired. The intention as I understood it was to ensure books desperately looking for a place to belong found it, and books that already have a place at indie comics fests don’t take up those spots.

My 2 cents on that topic is this: It only matters that the way an event is described by the organizers helps guide the right people to find it & come into it with the right expectations. But I don’t think much good can come of maintaining rules that attempt to scrutinize an individual artists’ style. And for Manga Ichiba, being attached to an anime con, my feeling is that this is probably a non-issue. As someone who straddles the fanart and original-indie-comics world myself, I know there’s a ton of overlap with artists walking both “worlds”, and what makes a doujin a doujin is less about the visual “style” of the artwork and more about the “style” and intention of the book itself… in a way that is hard to define. Obviously any book that is fanwork, or any artist who has a large percentage of fanwork, is likely going to fit in great, regardless of what their art looks like. And when it comes to original work… I guess I don’t expect too many people to be clamoring to get into an event like this if their comic is a total vibe mismatch. And if they are a total mismatch, they probably just won’t have a great turnout or an incentive to come back.

So I think if an event is juried, it’s best to be clear about event priorities but vague about art-style specific “rules”, keep an open mind and “know it when you see it.” And if an event is not juried, it’s fine to trust that the people who think they belong probably do. Shrug!

JUST BECAUSE JAPAN DOES IT, DOESN’T MEAN IT’S GOOD

I mentioned that I went into this thinking “we can’t just COPY a Japanese event like that, it won’t necessarily WORK HERE” and I was WRONG and I now see that it was actually IMPORTANT to use Japanese-event terms and structure in order to attract people who understand it already, and thereby SUMMON the spirit of a different kind of event into being.

But that being said! I do still think that while we are nourishing a new budding subculture, we have an opportunity to pick and choose what we are missing, what we admire, and what works best. Both logistics and culture wise, some things might need adapting. And thats okay. Just wanted to put that out there lol

DOUJIN AND LEGAL STUFF

I’m not going to go into this deeply because I am by no means informed enough to educate other people. But I really want to bring this up as something that too often gets left unsaid when people start conversations about “man, why can’t we have Comiket too!”

When it comes to selling and/or exhibiting fanwork, there is always going to be both a legal and cultural landscape determining what you can do. In as general terms as I can put it, not only are doujin artists in Japan operating under different copyright/IP laws than your country probably has, but perhaps more importantly, they are operating under a set of different expectations about what is cool and what is crossing the line. What people new-ish to doujin may not realize is that these expectations are not always even unspoken ones, and that events like Comiket AND individual IP holders have a variety of guidelines that artists are expected to follow and basically self-enforce. And because it’s in Japan… they do.

So I just wanna say: don’t be afraid, be free, make transformative art, because it rules and it should always exist. But stay smart, protect yourselves and the wider community of fanartists, and always keep some humility when you’re making creative work with other people’s characters and ideas. And be aware that doing this stuff in the U.S. right now is more or less the wild west (heh) simply because it’s too small and niche to rustle anyones feathers. If things were to grow significantly, feathers will surely be rustled, one day.

Oh, and one practical PSA: You may notice that JP doujin often have a boilerplate disclaimer in the back of the book that says stuff like “don’t redistribute or post this online.” It’s also standard to write something like “[xyz] unofficial fanbook” as a subtitle on the front or back cover. Can you “Disclaimer: I don’t own this” out of trouble? No. But should you do these things anyway? Yes. It makes your intentions clear, which a) helps people who are new to doujin understand what they are looking at, and b) removes any ambiguity that you are trying to pass your book off as “official,” which definitely helps keep you out of hot water. PUT THAT SHIT ON THERE SOMEWHERE

MONEY MONEY MONEY

How much you sell fanwork for, or if you even “sell” it at all, is always a complicated topic. My general view is, it’s pretty clear at a glance who is doing something out of passion and who is trying to grift off of whatever IP is hot right now. By and large, the latter won’t get a warm reception from real-ass nerds, and the former can do whatever they feel is appropriate based on… what I can only describe as “the organically-formed community-agreed upon ethics of the nerddom they reside in.” Personally, I tend to price my fanbooks a bit lower than original work of a similar length, and/or offer them digitally as “pay what you want” either simultaneously or at some point after I start taking them to shows as physical books. There’s a ton of different philosophies on this and the unique situation around each artist and their project also factors in a lot. My hope is that we always give each other grace and good faith, and only keep an eye out for people who ignorantly/recklessly put everyone at risk. I want to shout out this event report by faiell for sharing thoughts on pricing and its effect on the overall culture and health of doujin events. I especially want to draw attention to it because the push to keep doujin affordable and profits slim, which I strongly agree with, runs counter to deep sentiments in the *cartoonist* community that artists are harmed by under-valuing their own work, which I ALSO strongly agree with! Doujin in the U.S. is currently in an awkward spot because it has had to make a home in general “comics” spaces, and therefore be treated the way we want “comics” to be treated. Big thanks for opening up this discussion.

MY FEEDBACK / HOPES FOR MANGA ICHIBA SPECIFICALLY

While my doubts were thoroughly smashed, it WAS a big hurdle that there were *six* separate slots of artists at a location physically removed from the rest of the con. Even I, who came specifically to participate and support this event with my whole ass, missed a few groups entirely because I had to like… go eat food and stuff. I think it might be best if ManIchi was condensed down to a two-day event with only four rounds, if there was a feasible way to fit a greater number of tables into those days. From what I can tell each individual group still had a good turnout, but as an attendee it’s a shame to have to miss any section of artists completely!

Being camped outside the night market was pretty major. So moving away from that hallway in search of a more wide-open area to stuff more tables in (upstairs?) also has its drawbacks. But hey, maybe after a year or two of establishing the event, that trade-off will no longer be so important!

The more artists and organizers can coordinate to sort into groups by genre/fandom beforehand, and get their info out about what books they will have on what day, then the more attendees can prioritize when they absolutely gotta make it there. I gotta say again that that filterable circle page is rad. And it only works if we artists SEND IN OUR SHIT haha

Since I wasn’t tabling until Sunday night it worked out fine for me, but it would definitely help people out if they could pick up their badge for Fanime at the same time & place as checking in with Manga Ichiba.

This year you could only do a full table. I thought this would be an easy win for the future re: fitting more artists in less time, but honestly, having now confirmed the size of the Doubletree’s tables (a normal 6 feet) I’m not so sure. Half tables would work out ok for those artists who only have a few books each! But when the crowds and lines were at peak, it would have been really hard to manage. Like, it does suck if a ton of people want your neighbor’s book and are blocking off your table for hours, and I can see that becoming an issue were we squished more tightly together. It was actually really nice that multiple people could browse and flip through without obstructing the whole table. Still! Everything is a trade-off. I think it could be a good option for some percentage of artists if ManIchi has the organziational bandwidth to pull it off in the future.

I don’t know if this is at all feasible for Fanime to support, but if people stay as thirsty for books as they were, and if this event starts GROWING and getting even THIRSTIER, then being able to ship books directly to the con ahead of time starts to become a much-needed option for artists!

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