From the end of 2024 into the end of 2025, there were a lot of things happened in my life. The journey of being a full-time circle participant started in this year and so was for the other journeys. 2025 marks the initial release of sirkel.id and as I progressed more and more into the world of art market events, I have gained a substantial amount of experiences and stories that I ought to share. This is not an article for educational purpose, like the previous one. This is a casual, blog-styled article which I should probably post somewhere else but hey I have the freedom because this is my... our website 😂

In total, I participated in several art market events throughout 2025, let it be as a participant or as a circle participant. I attended Comic Market 105 (C105) in the end of 2024 as your regular visitor, which sparked the curiosity into joining C106 as circle participant, in which I did. I joined Comic Frontier for the second and third time as circle participant in CF20 and CF21, which sparked ideas into what would I create next time. And additionally, joined Comic Paradise 5 for the first time. Lots of stories behind each, and sit down because this is going to be a hell of a ride.

Comic Market 105 (C105)

While it happened in the end of 2024, I'll just give it a honorary place in my "2025 Rewind". Comic Market 105 is the first Comiket event in which I attended ever in my life. I'll be honest, it felt weird with suddenly "jumping" from Comic Frontier, which is just around 40k-50k attendees at best, into a whopping 400k-500k attendees event. My experience of being a so-called "veteran visitor" in Comifuro wasn't even relevant. We're talking about a grand total of 9 halls filled with circle participants, and the rest 3 halls for exhibition and company booths. It was, chaos.

Truly, the experience was an eye-opening one. The difference of the culture is beyond outstanding, and it really takes a lot of mental energy just to fit in.

First, the pre-event preparation, which includes planning on which side to get in first. Tokyo Big Sight is roughly divided into two "entrances", the so called "East side" and "West side". From east, you'll start from the area between Hall 7-8 or Hall 1-6, whereas west entrance will get you into the Hall 1-2 (for circles) and Hall 3-4 (for company booths). As I wasn't any familiar with the layout, the best I could do was to buy the subscription for the web catalogue. For 550 yen, you'll get an interactive map that can be real useful when you want to plan for the routes.

The D-Day is hectic but also heart-pumping as I was introduced with the Comiket crowds! Taking east hall entrace, I was greeted with queue spanning almost the entire parking area, which blew my mind. The super long queue for Yuu Kamiya (No Game No Life'a author), and how everything was just so efficient in term of transaction. I learned a lot and ever since I put Comiket as my frame of reference for my future art market participations.

I think I should make separate posts, talking about the experience as visitor and also as circle participant.

Comic Frontier 20 (CF20)

The first event I participated in 2025, although I aimed on participating in Comic Paradise 4, but didn't get accepted.

Honestly, I was still a little bit "shy" in term of my preparation because previously, I had a joint circle with my friend's circle (SoraSoft), and they didn't go for CF20. So I instead joining my friend's circle (Corocoro Shoten) later and participate for CF20. At first, I planned to make another manga, which is about the shupogaki from Blue Archive (Tachibana Hikari + Tachibana Nozomi), but a lot of things happened preventing me from finishing it, so I instead weaved an artbook filled with my not-so-safe drawings. I believe I could do better, but at least I was happy with how it turned out.

Together with folks from Corocoro Shoten, we released our first artbook project called "Summer Spectrum". It was a 86-pages full-color artbook in which a really ambitious project. It was finished with a lot of efforts, and I was particularly happy with my submissions.

CF20 left a hanging feeling as I didn't manage to make something "grand", as Comifuro is currently Indonesia's largest doujin market event. I promised myself that I would come with new stuffs in every single major event. But with that being said, the sales on CF20 was satisfactory, and I aim to grow even bigger.

Genshiken Creative Festival 2025

This was an event hosted by Genshiken ITB, a student activity unit...organization within Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB), which focuses on broad range of creative stuffs on pop cultures.

My participation was a hasty one, as I was being invited by my friend to join the event about one week before the event. I didn't manage to prepare properly so I just "recycled" my past works and make an artbook. I wasn't really satisfied with the result, so I shifted my focus to just enjoy the event.

The event itself was a great one. You can feel the festivity and it was nice meeting my friends in Bandung as well. But it wasn't the type of an event I was prepared with since at that time, most of my stuffs were artbooks and it didn't fully match the buying power of the visitors. Most of the visitors were looking for small merchandises, like those of acrylic merchandises and stickers and artprints. It gave me a slap that I'll need to increase the variety of my products into those categories.

All in all, it was a pretty fun event.

Comic Market 106 (C106)

Alright, let me tell a small story on how this particular event went down.

Back in February 2025, my friend were half-joking half-serious about "how about we apply as circle participant?". That went way more serious than I thought and we ended up applying for C106. At that time, I wasn't even sure on what, or which character I would draw. Though, I have grown my interest far into this vixen named Yurizono Seia from Blue Archive and so I put her as my circle cut.

Fast forward, in the midst of Anime Festival Asia Indonesia 2025, I was in the local bank's booth, signing up for their credit card as part of their promotion. I was told to check my email for confirmation and in-between the confirmation email from the bank, there were the email from コミケ準備会. I was in shock to find that I actually got the circle position.

And there was I, doing a pretty long term plan and progress for my Seia manga for C106, which in turn kinda jeopardized my plan for CF20. Was it worthed? Great question!

Fast forward again to August 2025, I was there, participating as circle participant in Comic Market 2025, the world largest doujin market event. Too many new things that I learned that again, I should put as a different article to fully detail the experience.

But to shorten up, the meta of Comiket is to really have a great count of followers. The behavior of Comiket con-goers can be summarized into "they already have their list of circles to visit". This is due to how big the venue, how short the time (only from 10.30 AM to 4.00 PM), and how big the count of circles (almost 12k). There is simply too short time (and money) if you want to do 100% exploration.

So, for those that doesn't have their niche established already, participating in Comiket will end up with almost no one buying your stuff. You cannot rely on window shopping, and you'll need something super attractive to at least pull their attention. You can only rely on marketing through Twitter or Pixiv, which is where follower count really matters.

But all in all, C106 experience was really something. It was awesome, and it was really terrible for my pockets. I spent too much than I should and it turned into a big domino effect on my financial situation for the rest of the month :'D

Comic Paradise 5 (COMIPARA 5)

The decision on going for Comipara was a tough one. Mostly because

1. It was the first event in I needed to attend located in Yogyakarta.
2. Most of my stuffs were rendered unsellable since any raunchy stuffs (even the R15 ones) are not allowed.
3. I was alone

Joining events in Jakarta, at least I can get or hire some helpers, and since I'm living in Jakarta, it wasn't a hard thing to "return" in case of emergency. Compared to C106, my mental stress was higher in Comipara since I was practically alone. It served as a great challenge and great experience as I would need to solve the mentioned problems.

Luckily, and with great amount of gratitude, my friend from another circle were up to help me when I was in great dire situation (read: need to go to toilet). After all things happened, I managed to really enjoy the event. It was awesome, the con-goers were amazing.

I need to talk about the resolution for number 2. Since I have a friend that is REALLY good at programming (in fact, he created this website), we talked about making book about Blue Archive, but programming! And then, we managed to write things about different topics, and voila! The Blue Archive programming book is finished!

And I thought there would be like... 0 or one guy that will notice this, turns out it was almost sold out! Granted, I only made 10 copies, but dang, this small of a topic could still have a market really slapped me.

All in all, Comipara was a blast. Definitely will come again since I got accepted for Comipara 6 already!

Comic Frontier 21 (CF21)

Although C106 was the biggest event I participated this year, CF21 was the peak and the most anticipated event I attended. Truly, everything was boiled down to this particular one for 2025.

I participated with my friend's circle again, making a joint circle "Atelier Haruka x SoraSoft" again (first was in CF19). But since I already made stuffs for C106 and Comipara, CF21 was more on improving how I execute things. And I'd say I really accomplished and met my goal! Though, I might've underestimated the situation since the programming book were sold out in just 4 hours, and I lost a lot of potential buyers for the rest of the day and the day after that. Definitely something for evaluation.

Going Forward

2025 was a great year. A lot of things happened, and I learned a lot of new stuffs. I managed to try new things and being more brave, and I managed to meet a lot of new friends. Truly, I'm grateful for everything that happened.

I already have several events laid down for 2026, including CF22, Comipara 6, CF23, and hopefully C109 (I'll probably be skipping C108 because it's hot af).

Can't wait for the next. See you next time!