Well, I just burnt a lot of money on shipping so why not celebrate it by writing the newest long review in this blog ever?? SUMMER IS NOT OVER YET YOU B-

Yes, my dear reader, WE ARE SO BACK haha doing this almost ONE MONTH after the yearly summer doujinshi convention has passed but rest assured, after I'm done dealing with the photos and crediting ALL the people below for their efforts on social media and getting all the likes maybe(lol), I will be sure to give you a more detailed and complete review of what I got for us to talk about this year!!

I am slowly running out of space in my room but WHO CARES we gotta stay in the trend! *dabs*

Shall we start? I have a lot to talk about C104 here.

[**SUPER LONG POST WARNING**]

If you need how all this works, do refer to the previous and first time I talked about Melonbooks and its industry-leading books site and how it essentially saved every artist out there in the pandemic even though it didn't directly contribute to the yearly event which happens in Tokyo Big Sight every year. This time around, it just happened to be with a holiday on a long weekend, so it was held on August 11-12 ending on a Monday. I totally freaked out when I didn't see any stall setup photos on my social feed on Saturday lol

I also will refer to all of them by "-sensei" prefix just because, and they have no gender, stop trying to look it up. *giggles* Okay let's proceed.

A lot has changed in the past year, no surprises. I got richer. *laughs* No that's a lie I can't even match inflation where I live, but that doesn't stop me from trying this again!! *dabs* No really, my attempt at doing this again falls far beyond what has happened since I did this last September by the time it arrived at my hands (hey 1st anniversary lol), so let's talk all about them.

For starters, I joined Bluesky in the new year considering the new slew of doujin artists appearing there in protest to... go read the news I will not talk about what happened to Twitter here *sigh* but suffice it to say this has made me be able to maintain another following list of artists I may or may not know of (it's easy, just look at their followers hehe) which has helped a lot in deciding what candidates I am to shortlist before all of this even started about halfway through the year. From artists I know like (links spam warning) *takes deep breath* Nagyo-sensei, Rosuuri-sensei, Kagachisaku-sensei, Akamoku-sensei who I will feature them this year just because, to Tetto-sensei, Jizell-sensei, Monaka Curl-sensei, Mochitsuki Chisa-sensei etc etc (lol), they have technically jumped the queue (hehe) to get my attention on their artwork (new or old) and definitely did help in making me remember them more than I would on Pixiv because damn are those AI images creeping into our lives I don't even know setting the "see less AI images" on Pixiv will make any difference at this point I just check the rankings now.

Another thing that has changed apart from me viewing less from Pixiv as a result but thank goodness the Twitter side can still show variety and that's good enough, is that I have branched out the stuff which I can't cover all of them because DAMN have I already upped the number of books I am going to buy AND still allow Toranoana to be my new accomplice (see blog post 2 months ago) so that I can talk about more artists I know and discover the... limited ones appearing there because exclusivity is a thing in Melonbooks now and blah blah go read that blog post to find out more. *wink*

As such, the table of artists (as I will call it now) (lol totally original name) will reflect this change on the "Familiarity" column, slightly deviating from the usual Pixiv and Twitter/X path and now including Bluesky if the latter platform has artists posting there often even if you know, it doesn't get much views and/or likes anyways. *cringe* This will all make sense in a while, but before that, let me talk about what I intend to do for this year's order!

I knew the first thing I should do is to not select the same illustrators from last year. Let's talk about what they have for Comiket this year just because, and I will tell you why I avoided most of them:

So yeah, not all of them. We will talk about Komizuki-sensei on why later, and Nakamura-sensei was just revenge for last year so yeah, you're welcome, whoever has stayed for this year's selections. *giggles*

Though not listed as a condition as you will see below, I want to aim for variety instead of just quality, which is also why I went to so much deliberation for this year (last year's is essentially half of them I already knew) because man, the careful selection was harder on this one especially after we did this once, which is how I ended up with a wide range including those from a mix of illustrators we already know even through last year, to literally ones I see refreshing Melonbooks pre-order list of originals every day haha it was just habit for a month and a half, in case you wondered.

But yeah, a combination of a desire to showcase newer stuff (and illustrators we don't know), and wanting to keep the reviews in smaller chunks because not like the guys I knew from last year showed us something that is in a smaller package (GOTTEM), is my target for the year. Oh boy, did this bite me badly after I made that decision. *giggles* And what's why you can't have everything! Haha

I shall take this chance to explain briefly while also defining again, what conditions have to be met in order for me to give a review of:

How is this for a dumb bit, eh? *laughs*

Based on the above commandments (lol why), let's talk about who I have included as they fulfilled the criteria, and what exceptions I made along the way.

For starters, I did not put time frame into the criteria. But ideally I would keep the books to review which were released within the past year so from C103 during last December, and of course this is Comiket 104 which was this year so yes, most of them are from this event itself. Trust me when I say the older ones might be better later on, for they are also selected for noteworthy reasons which will make sense to you real soon.

Also, I stated above already, since Bluesky might gain popularity just like how Twitter/X might lose it at the same rate lol maybe not, but yeah, the social media requirement will fade away in due time as illustrators seek to protect their work from AI and the eyes of sical media who only exploit it to their own benefit without proper credit, making this whole affair more bleak in prospect than we will look forward to, fingers crossed.

The Melonbooks exclusive thing I don't know if it will make much sense (see Rosuuri-sensei later) but suffice it to say they just need to stay within during the time we have seen it, so I guess Hiten-sensei counts last year until they published it somewhere else. *wink* Toranoana *wink* Haha alright, me. 

I kept thinking that setting 20 pages which is the average of these books is a stretch until you realize many of the books I reviewed last year were so thick, my own UI components can't fit them all in one overview screen lol, so this is the new limit now. No thanks Ragu-sensei, 50 pages is just a little too much, even if half the pages were just text. *giggles* Oh, and the catalog will be the exception. Legit thought last year's was that short until I saw it again and it isn't, I just skipped a lot of stuff I can't show or didn't like. *laughs*

And lastly, we don't talk about budget anymore. Even with 3 more new books I am still WAY within range. Until you ignore item price and talk about shipping. *laughs* Because last but not least, I will talk about how I actually paid more on that even just on local shipping. (I promise you, we are close to looking at the goods. *wink*)

So, this year, basically to not take any chances of losing to pre-order timing considering once again I am using Buyee as my accomplice my forwarding and proxy service for this screw you Zenmarket lol (I am so sorry that I am scared of change), I decided to do this in not two, but THREE PHASES which of course first problem is, that I paid more in local shipping to ship them all into the warehouse. Well, actually way more, somehow last year's order only charged me once. *silence* Don't narc. *laughs*

Anyways, this means doing 2 pre-order batches (as I will call them from here on) and 1 normal order batch in which the first of pre-order batches is done mid July if I recall, securing Nakamura-sensei which we TOTALLY missed last year and Rosuuri-sensei, both of which are out of stock by the time I did the 2nd batch start August, and the normal back a week after the event, with two week breaks in between. The downside of doing this besides paying more for shipping which I clearly understand *sob* is that, just by browsing Melonbooks for nearly a month and a half (I actually love this unbiased method of browsing, here is the link if you want to use it) (yeah just burnt that into my browser history), regret becomes a very big thing when you click that button and realize there are better options down the road. *silence* Yeah, so lucky you Riri-sensei and Haruhiruri-sensei haha, but we will still talk about why you all still managed to make it to the list despite that fact. *wink* Still, to cover as many of them illustrators especially of those I mentioned last year, my next option was to up the limit for review, from 12 last year to a whopping 15 BOOKS this year. *dabs* Yeah, plus the 3 from Toranoana a couple of months ago?? NOW I'm truly supporting Japanese arts. *giggles*

Then came August and I had to plan for my 2nd pre-order batch. This one was a lot more harder as I really have to narrow the selection of candidates this is technically the batch before pre-orders end, so I chose who I was familiar with. That is also why despite Morikura En-sensei coming in on top and sold out its free gift for their new book real quick, I still did not care to give them since, apart from half of the book being on credit to other works, they also aren't as worthy to talk about compared to Amamine-sensei and Akamoku-sensei which DAMN the latter I have a lot to talk about tbh. *giggles*

Because even if I got the things right this time, I ran into new problems. Well, just 2 of them I can recall. First, the store listing for Akamoku-sensei's book was unavailable, so it rejected ejected me out from my 2nd pre-order batch, leading me to choose other options which... isn't that great but hey we can still talk about them- Oh, what is this?? The store listed the item as out of stock so no one can buy them (see repost) and it's not because Buyee's response for order was slower than a main guy noticing some girl likes him in a romance Anime? *laughs* (GOTTEM) So yeah, sorry, Hatsuno-sensei, maybe next time. *wink* Then, there's the delay. Yeah me, you thought last year was bad when you almost did not meet all the orders on time on the last day of August? It's September already and nothing happened even last week, and the latest release here isn't even on the last day of August!! *laughs* So I had to email Buyee to help me out, thank goodness they responded real quick, and that's how I get to do this now instead of say, last week the earliest.

Haha capitalism problems amirite fellas?

And so, the time has come I may have went too far, here are our final candidates this year who made the cut!

*Data accurate as of writing

**Bluesky accounts are only for active and/or to show my following on the platform

Okay this really is a lot of illustrators!! (On Bluesky too!)

I think we can start now... but first!!! *giggles*

Oh boy what a week this has been. *giggles* Yes, it might be just minutes to you here but it is a whole week of effort for me, and I'll probably continue to update this until it reaches perfection which frankly speaking might never happen considering these guys did it better, so I will get close enough that AI can't copy my level of dedication. *dabs* 

I would also like to express my regrets to the many, MANY ILLUSTRATORS who I said I have wanted to talk about them but have not even this year since last year and whoever jumped the ship at the wrong time including *takes deep breath* okay I'm not going to do that a bunch of links look like cr*p so IF you see a table below means I have listed them accordingly in order to not offend them since I didn't support them even through online means I AM SO SORRY maybe next year don't cancel me:

*Assume all C104 books unless specified, with links to social

Not Shortlisted for C104

Not Qualified for This Order

Maybe I just go back to bulk buying used bromides haha the review is also way faster. *laughs*

P.S. As with all the stuff here, I like to think that one must leverage between "the subtle and the obvious", as quoted by my beloved British sitcom. You can't be too subtle until I just stare at it and not be impressed, and you can't be too obvious for me to think it's just rack. *laughs* So you see, there is an art in balancing that, though that doesn't mean it has to be.

No, not going to put them on a scale I'm too tired for that thanks