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Comic Market to Use Smaller Venue for Record 4 Days for 2019 Events
posted on by Egan Loo
Comic Market, Japan's largest event for selling self-published dōjinshi works, will expand from three days to a record four days in both summer 2019 and winter 2019. It will run from August 9 to August 12 next summer, and then from December 28 to December 31. It will be the first time since Comic Market started in 1975 that the event will run for four days.
Tokyo Big Sight, the home of Comic Market for over two decades, has been undergoing renovations for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. As a result, Comic Market cannot use much of the venue's East Exhibition Hall in 2019. Next year, the event will place the regular dōjinshi circles in the existing West Exhibition Hall and two areas in the South Exhibition Hall (now under construction). However, the booths for commercial companies will be about 1.5 kilometers (about one mile) away, in the Aomi Exhibition Hall (now under construction) near the Rinkai! train line's Tokyo Teleport Station.
Despite having Comic Market in three different exhibition areas next year, their combined area is only about 75% of the event's current area in East and West Exhibition Halls. As a result, the Comic Market Preparatory Committee decided to expand the event to four days in summer and winter 2019, to ensure as many dōjinshi circles can participate as in the past.
Due to the 2020 Summer Olympics, the event organizers had already announced that they will hold the event during the Golden Week holidays in April and May of 2020, instead of during the summer of 2020.
The planned Aomi Exhibition Hall will encompass 24,000 square meters (5.9 acres). By comparison, Tokyo Big Sight's current exhibition area is 80,000 square meters (19.7 acres) in size.
Source: Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web
