Tokyo Big Sight, from the left side. No one really takes a shot from its left side, so this one’s quite special.

I took the liberty on Sunday to partake in the Hakurei Shrine Reitaisai 10 event, a unique event where people can showcase their own parodical creations of anything relating to the vast world of Touhou. As the Touhou game itself started as a doujin, this whole event is dedicated to the doujins of this original doujin (as well as the doujin itself). Let’s see your head process that one.

One of the reasons for its inception was that the popularity of Touhou doujin items were just too popular for the main otaku event, Comiket. It was once reported that Touhou circles were taking up about one-third of the circles in the event, causing massive concerns for circles due to the already ‘limited’ numbers. Hakurei Shrine Reitaisai (hereby Reitaisai) was the solution for trying to offload some of the circles into this more specialised event. Though it has generally been quite effective, there is still a very large number of Touhou booths who go to Comiket. Many participants to these otaku events may only be able to attend one or two major events due to location, finance, etc. so still including Touhou in Comiket with benefit those people the most.

I am personally not a huge fan of the Touhou world, though I did have a short phase where I tried (terribly) at the series of games. My favourite character is Youmu Konpaku, which will reflect on my purchase choices in this event.

Entry into Reitaisai was actually not free. Participants were required to purchase the catalog, which could be bought at the event site or at various anime stores. The catalog cost a little below 2000 yen at stores, but strangely only cost 1500 yen at the event itself. The catalog is structured very similarly to that of Comiket, with a few page manga at the front giving a warning message, a list of the circle names afterwards and the circle portraits after that. It was just a little bit thicker than half the Comiket 83 catalog. When entering either the East 1-3 halls or East 4-6 halls, you were required to have the catalog out and visible. This system is indeed quite similar to DreamParty, except the catalog here is a lot heavier. The Reitaisai catalog contained a map with writing space exactly like that in the Comiket catalog and was laid out the same.

The catalog. The design is very nice compared to those of other events I have been to.

Reitaisai utilises the all the East halls, 1-6. The halls are split into two, East 1-3 and 4-6, each about the size of a football field. However, two halls are reserved for cosplays and company booths, leaving four out of the six halls purely for doujinshi creation. With that said, there is a lot of walking space in Reitaisai, and you can navigate quite comfortably without needing to go in contact with other people. The density of participants were a lot less than Comiket, and there were almost no circles that had needed to use the outside of the halls to manage lines; they were all contained inside.

Reitaisai has become the main event for Touhou related doujinshi for obvious reasons, so almost all circles will have something new on sale at the event. The amount of circles selling Touhou related goods during Comiket is still large, but not as large as this event. As a result, we are able to see an interesting situation where some Touhou circles at Comiket would be selling doujinshi that were created for Reitaisai, as oppposed to having it debut at Comiket, though with only three months gap between Reitaisai and Comiket, this is something that can be forgiven.

As mentioned above, company booths also partake in this event, and being a Touhou event, the goods they sell are also all Touhou related. In fact, the Pikatto Anime booth who were at DreamParty were also at Reitaisai, doing the exact same janken auction but with the products having Touhou characters instead of original characters. Knowing it would be wise to avoid spending money on the items (as rare and good as they would be), I kept away from it this time.

The participating company booths included the usual K-BOOKS, Toranoana and Melon-books amongst others, as well as others such as the digital download site D-STAGE who gave event goers a free large and long paper carry bag (with Touhou characters on it) which was very thoughtful. The event committee themselves were selling ‘official’ original goods limited to the event which included clear files, shirts and towels amongst other things. My plans were to buy their paper bag at the event instead of bringing my own, but with so many other items on sale the line for those items were huge, and took a lot of my potential browsing and buying time.

In terms of the experience it was very similar to Comiket, but one of the differences you can see are the cosplay. The characters for Touhou are dominately female, with only a small number of male characters. This of course meant that the ratio of male to female cosplayers were even lower than they already were compared to other events. The number of crossdressing cosplayers were also increased as a result.

One interesting thing about the cosplay area was that there were various props that cosplayers (or the photographers) could use to get better lighting. There was also a stage with a large picture of the Hakurei Shrine gate where you could line up and take photos of with a cosplayer (or your group of friends if you so wish). Photographers were to register with the committee for permission to take photos, but in actuality there were simply so many people that there were many who never bothered obtaining a pass.

As with DreamParty, there were many lines for the cosplayers so once again it was hard to get shots of the very best the event had to offer. Since the whole cosplay area was indoors I feel that it had an effect on the number of ‘mob’ cosplay shots, where swarms of photographers circle the cosplayer and take shots. I had only found one cosplayer who did this during my (limited) time at the cosplay area.

Since I’m running out of things to talk about, how about we move onto the loot?

Left: The paper carry bag sold by the oraganising committee
Middle: A sports towel also part of the official goods and a hat given by Melon books.
Right: A Remelia shirt

Left: East New Sound’s newest CD
Middle, right: Various doujinshi

One of the interesting items I picked up. No, it’s probably not what your dirty mind things, this item is a perfectly normal… Eye mask.

See? Eye mask. The person at the circle was really trying to sell this to me, explaining how you can place it into your refrigerator and cool your eyes for the hot days to come, amongst other things you could use it for. Like covering your eyes.

Overall, I would say Reitaisai10 was the Comiket of Touhou. It functioned almost exactly at the other and aside from the entry fee the rules were practically the same as well. With that said, the fact that this event celebrates the existance of a single doujin game is quite mind boggling.

Have any questions or comments? Leave a message, or feel free to contact me.