Though the show is open for 7 hours a day–very nearly an honest day’s work in itself–this is no indication of just how many hours a day your typical hardworking manga editor puts in at a convention. Our official responsibilities do not end when the doors to the convention center close; our sense of honor and duty compels us to soldier on well into the night. Because, after hours, there are the parties, sometimes until 2 or 3 in the morning. Yeah, I know, I know, it sounds so hard. Oh, how much we sacrifice in the name of manga!

The details of such parties are simply too gruesome to recount, but I will say that it was with an extremely large cup of coffee I faced the third day of the show. And yet my excitement hasn’t abated just yet; it will continue to war with exhaustion until the battlefield (um, that’s me) is destroyed. It’s going to be quite a day!