Even if I'm kinda down with a flu and have to fulfil my obligations and please don't tell anyone I'm doing this outside of work but not really I am done with my work for the day every day for this week tbh and even so don't tell my real boss-

Yes, the time is here and the time is now, not one week later you stupid idiot- Because I'll strike while the iron is hot... two weeks from summer Comiket this year lol, so let's look through these so I can then do up this post before I use these for my loner weekend!! *giggles*

Nah, I'm just going to make myself happy and look back at this post for the rest of this month. Yes, and we are in September which is 2 weeks too late SO LET US GET TO IT, BOIS!!!

I hope you are ready. Because I am. *dabs*

Wow, what IS this even after we have done this for the past couple of years??? *giggles*

This review is typically central around the one and only summer Comic Market event in Japan where all if not the best of indie illustrators gather around the one and only Tokyo Big Sight, an event location large enough to cater to hundreds of artists, for the past couple of decades ever since the event started back in... 1976??!!! Yup, they be turning 50 soon, and looks like they are kicking it off in this summer event which happened in the weekend of August 16-17 2025, and extending into the winter event which will be when they have actually started their very first so I'll prepare for something larger compared to last year's to celebrate. There are also other events today even overseas ones but we be taking about Japan which includes the latest Comitia held back in June and I will feature some of the books here just because there are SO MANY ARTISTS TO TALK ABOUT we need to give them more space, dude. *laughs*

Speaking of them, this isn't much of an event if we don't talk about the indie artists themselves! Sprawling from the love for manga, anime, video games and its original characters and making fan art out of them (you might have seen them before lol), they quickly extended to art with original characters, and I would argue if not for the originals the industry itself wouldn't have grown so huge, so take my word when I rather give the latter more recognition than whatever next Blue Archive or Zenless Zone Zero thing is liked by kids who can't pay or whatever. *shrugs* And sadly, designing of characters for VTubers nowadays count as originals. *sob*

With many going into VTuber character design, it's hard to even know if this is for work or just out of their own passion to create new characters and scenarios which stretch the imagination of the human mind- I know right, it's harder to say this now that AI-generated art is all the fab, even I'm into PixAI just so I can express myself here and there without lifting a pen. *silence* Still, I'm here precisely because I don't want to see them die just because their content is just ripped off social media and made into training data... Yeah, THAT is why I'm constantly impressed by human artists and what they can do. Always. *wink*

Oh, and we don't refer to the artists by their gender, so I'll always refer as "them". They have no gender, trust me, stop finding out more. *giggles*

As mentioned earlier, blah blah VTubers as original characters are ruining my family and friends lol what is this, an addiction? *laughs* But yeah, I was also hardly on a lookout on anything interesting to be real frank with you after doing this for a while now. Apart from the usual follows on X and exploring in Pixiv and recently Bluesky just for the sake of it lol, whatever that was shared through the people I follow is mostly what I see today, and there is a lot. This number will only increase every year and extend my network further, but that is assuming if they don't just make non-original characters as you might notice some of them transitioning to there in recent years, because more recognition, dude. *sigh*

Oh also ASMR, there have been plenty of original character ASMR from these artists too, and I'm not talking about VTubers now, and it's even cooler when it's voiced by someone I know, like Isobe Karin and Marinka-chan which isn't even out yet. Thanks, Rangu-sensei's Idol-chan. *giggles* Some also made the (I would argue wrong) choice of starting new serializations with original characters (so Amamine-sensei) which wiiiiiilllll make me want to walk away from just because we can't talk about numbers on the cover here. (I'll elaborate on that again in a bit, but they could've NOT put a number on book no.1)

As such, this year's listing is mostly dependent on what I see on the one Melonbooks link which I catered for myself and have been monitoring for the past month and a half leading up into the event so start of July which will touch on Comitia's after event sales- Eh if you want to see everything though, then you will have to tweak the filters a bit, because despite what I say here, I have to ensure they are due to release for C106 and Comitia 152 only... but also, this is specifically used for the pre-order period which will NOT work after the event is over. So yeah, much tuning was needed over time on the link in order to give as much chance as possible to artists I know or do not know or may have missed, and it's not perfect because some of them kinda label them wrongly too tbh as I found out from the ones I know. (Yukine Neru-sensei you are literally in the wrong category bro)

Because of this, I also made the bold decision to do only ONE pre-order batch instead of the usual 2, and one HUGE order batch after the event so I can save some money for local shipping since Melonbooks provides free shipping for orders above 10k yen which is applicable for the latter. So essentially the pre-order batch is now used for... impulse buys haha or those that may be out of stock and I will have to wait for restock *PTSD Akamoku-sensei* (lol that one is not stocked in the first place) and you know, be a little more patient when it comes to getting what I want and maybe see things get out of order. Yeah, I'm sorry, Ashima-sensei, I can't wait for 2nd pre-order phase after seeing it go out of stock. *shrugs*

No, not as in firing of weapons (yes this is not CoD or real life) but just me setting limits on what I can and cannot buy due to preference, and my motivations for taking them into consideration:

These will somewhat be true for all events going forward except for pages which can scale depending on how many books I bought versus how I can give artists some recognition because they REFUSE to bend into any of these rules (lol), so we'll put that aside for now.

And to explain why the rules don't matter this time around (lmao they are in the trash already), let me show you what has changed from the above requirements while still trying to engage in the artists I want to talk about as I observed their works appear in Melonbooks:

The process for that month and a half was anxiety all around as I started to monitor from 1st July. It also took a long time before we get any good stuff appearing which will explain why the 1st (and now only) pre-order batch was only confirmed at the start of August which was the time where the 2nd pre-order batch was confirmed (yeah), but since I already decided to be a little more patient and it paid off, I'm glad the next thing I had to worry about was WHEN it will be shipped, which is another problem in itself. Due to not having direct access to Melonbooks (which required a Japanese phone number) I would not know when EXACTLY they will ship out even if the pre-order range is estimated to be after the end of the event so 17th August this time around to around 23rd apparently, which ended up being slightly slower to appear in the forwarding service warehouse than expected even though they were rather close to ship together, and that gave me the last week of August to even consider - at least for a couple of days - whether to add more into this year's order increasing it to 18 instead of the usual 15 because did you even see Rangu-sensei's book?? *giggles* Maybe we do a proper mix of new and familiar artists next time, yes? And try to hit above the 16618 yen total item price for this time?

Side note to whether I did this right for the pre-order batch, 3 of the 5 books ordered during that period were sold out when I had to do the order batch after the event 2 weeks later so not Nannung and Motsunuki apparently, but that was also because it looked like they had plenty of stock for them to do post sales. This is unlike other artists who had to create post-event pre-order periods so Ashima-sensei once again and learning that even "mid August" pre-order period can also mean a week late, I decided to not take that leap, and hope that this will appear a week earlier in my 2-week leave which, as you can see, has all happened according to plan. *dabs*

Okay this is long enough lol, let's talk about our contestants this time!!

(*Stats accurate as of 5 Sep 2025)

Without further ado, let's un- BRING UP THE DISCLAIMER!! *laughs*

(Phew, that was close)

Okay Japan, summer can end now. *laughs* Maybe next time we do, we just be there in location. *dabs* Nah, I will never, no matter what you say to me- With a girlfriend who likes this too?? LET'S GOOOOO *laughs* Alright stop dreaming I am here on a mission and it's supporting indie artists in Japan and also, don't forget, we have to pay tribute to EVERY SINGLE ONE I HAVE MISSED in this order for the event.

Yes, this is the public media apology event even though I did nothing wrong lol let's start with those that were in the inner circle! As in, I didn't hate them but we only have 14 slots excluding the catalogue so... we had to disqualify someone. *shrugs*

And then we can talk about those that failed the requirements or just sold out! *dabs*

Now, for the ones who didn't do anything wrong but just offended me somehow!! Or made me laugh, whichever came first. *giggles*

That shall be it guys, it's getting late on the THIRD day of doing this, so if I have to fix anything, it'll be tomorrow in the weekend. And next week. *giggles* See you guys next time, and until then... I just watched Nan-chan play the new Harvest Moon (Story of Seasons series apparently it's called I keep mixing them up) video game which released last week, and like, Naobou is in it?

I think I know what to do next week. *laughs*