Chryso

An announcement from Sensei twitter. She’s taking a break 🥺 The wording gives me hope that its not permanent break, and that she purposely left us on a hopefully/ happier cliff hanger so we wont be waiting in agony for the next installation.

Now that you mention it, it was rather suspicious scene…. I didn’t really notice until you brought it up…

First of all— Like when have we known Asami to be sleepy?? SUspicccious! Secondly, I am remembering some facts which really make this feel very out of character for Asami. Earlier in this same chapter, we learned from Akihito that they’ve hardly seen much of each other lately. Akihito goes in to detail how his career was doing well and they are both so busy. He even goes so far as to say quote “we don’t see each other for so long that I almost forget he exist”. Later in the following chapter, Asami breaks down Akihito’s door and there is this whole line about Akihito being “pent up”. I only bring this up as a further reminder that its mentioned frequently that they’ve both been so busy, that not only have they not even seen each other around the apartment but they haven’t had sex for an extended period of time. So isnt it even weirder that Asami would have no reaction to Akihito in this moment given what I just said? Akihito, who most likely sleeps in the guest room, avoids sleeping with Asami, and has barely even seen each other, is caught basically crawling into Asami room at night? The rare time Akihito is somewhat lazily-so initiating contact and not hiding in his room as he usually would, but apparently Asami is just ‘too sleepy’ to even react. On top of that, above you can see Asami noting that Akihito smells like alcohol! So you’re saying an alcohol driven Akihito sneaking into Asami’s bedroom in the middle of the night??And nothing? Don’t you think normally Asami would be THRILLED and pounce! So yeah it really does seem very out of character, as we all know Asami loves when he gets a little bit of a reaction out of Akihito, and he will jump at any and all opportunity!

I dont really have the true answer as to why Asami just fell asleep, i mean its a little unfair of me to say he has no reaction because to be fair he does push Akihito onto his bed and feels him up. So it wasn’t nothing. But it is unusual for him to stop short. What I do know is that whatever it was — it’s ultimately used as a way to further cause Akihito to doubt himself, and to have distrust for Asami. For Akihito the fact that nothing happened that night is further adding to his suspicions that something is going on- even if it was something as innocent as Asami really was just tried after a long day… It further feeds into his own insecurities… Maybe even adding to the belief that Asami must’ve actually done something with Sudoh that night and thats why he wasn’t in the mood for anything more, because he was already spent/satisfied by someone else. Also notice the things Akihito is trying to say, before he realizes Asami is asleep. He is clearly already feeling some type of way about the fact that he rarely sees Asami these days, and he is pretty bluntly saying I wish you’d come home a bit earlier sometimes… Even tho he immediately takes it back. Truthfully if Asami heard that, don’t you think he’d be very happy.

On another note, I think this scene also causes further misunderstanding on Asami’s side. Because while Akihito is having a whole moment of like— what is he up to? where has he been ? The same is most likely happening with Asami in this arch too. This is the same chapter we learn that Asami has hired a P.I, though little good it does him as Akihito immediately ditches this guy. Even this scene, there is this line that has always fascinated (/haunted) me — when he notes Akihito reeks of Alcohol? Don’t you think Asami is also wondering the same things — where have you been? What have you been up to?? And who are you with?? Don’t forget that Asami also hasn’t seen Akihito this whole time either, and Asami clearly has even LESS clue what Akihito’s been up to! And who he’s been with! And we know he’s the jealous type!! You can’t tell me that he’s not also in the same boat as Akihito and feels frustrated that they hardly see each other. How must it feel for him to finally get a moment with Akihito, and see that he’s drunk and has been fooling around outside (with god knows who?) instead of coming home….

Ultimately the reason Asami falls asleep is mostly likely because he is stressed out at work. We know the reason he visited Sudoh that time, was to confront him over numbers not lining up. Which in his line of business is not a good thing — it might even be the reason why he isn’t really home during this arch because he is investigating a bunch of stuff and maybe even hunting a traitor. He gives Sudoh a chance, but ultimately we know what he was highly suspicious of Sudoh and didn’t trust him from the beginning — how draining must it be to have to talk to someone who is constantly scheming under your nose, and then the moment you confront them they put on a big performance with tears! The sad thing is that the moment he is with Akihito, I bet it’s like charging his batteries, and he is happy for even the little moment he got. Now think of the fact that he is mostly likely hunting a traitor in his midst, which SHOULD mean he should be sleeping with one eye open. But he is subconsciously so comfortable around Akihito that he easily fall asleep.

Vol 15 is out as of March 26th! Here are some pages sensei dropped on her twitter, revealing pages from the two new bonus chapters we get in this volume.

Aww yes. The cursed Bottom Asami images. They occasionally make the rounds on discord 🤭 I want to post it but it will be heavily censored (well see how tumblr likes this but I’ll try to post what i can.

Asami being topped by someone else is certainly strange to see!! But yes it’s true it’s not Asami.

Before sensei became a full time manga author (probably even afterwards too) and she was just starting in the manga world, she was doing a lot of side gigs and other work probably to buff up her resume. Including several one shots manga episodes, Finder was one of them, one that I don’t think she expected anything from. But that first episode was such a sensation and became so popular that they immediately hired her for a serialization. That was how Finder got picked up. She did other one shots, some of which i am sure you can find online. She also did an ICONIC BL Doujinshi (a self published manga, which are sometimes considered like fan fiction) of Slam Dunk, which i read a while back ago. She also did a Final Fantasy one as well! So she was in the BL scene for awhile trying to make a name for herself.

She did a lot of art work for lite novels (a short novel thats quick to read and typically very similar to manga with simple language, and is published quickly) the novels often feature a lot of manga style artwork. Cover pages, panels being created of certain scenes. Characters drawn. There are lots of famous lite novels that then get picked up as fully serialized manga and some even then go on to be animated. (For example; Heaven’s Official Blessing, Apothecary Diaries) Artist are commissioned to make that art, and well this image above is from a lite novel that Sensei worked on. There are several other images, here’s the cover for said lite novel.

I’ve never read this one, nor do I even know its title. But given the images I’ve seen I believe the story is about a yakuza member and a vampire! Sounds kinda fun!

You can see the Asami above has a large back tattoo — which our Asami does not have any such thing. So fear not it’s not the same “Asami”. This is one of those case of “Same face syndrome” which is very real for Sensei in particular! It’s just because the artist just draws similar features for all her characters and really the only distinguishing part about them is their hair, clothing and body! Sometimes I look at the above image and I start to kinda think the “Asami” looks like Akihito actually…(maybe he’s there son actually!!!) It really only looks like Asami because the hair styles are similar.

There are a bunch of other panels that sometimes float around that are from Lite Novels sensei worked on. And… well a lot of them look indistinguishable from Akihito and Asami 😅

Sensei announced she will be participating in Be Boy Magazine 35th Anniversary, here’s a new image she posted on her X.

The translation i read i thought Asmai was talking about general people, people who papa Asami tossed into a battle.

Right. The one I tend to reference is the sublime cause i have those ones saved on my kindle app for easy access 🤭 But yes I suppose there would be differences in different translations. The one i showed is from sublime version (left) and the other is one thats online thats a fan translation (right) (if that was indeed even the one you are talking about ??)

I can’t say which one is the better translation as I don’t know Japanese. To me they seem to be saying very similar things, so I am not necessarily complaining about either version. Though I have heard that sometimes the official is a bit off, just as sometimes fan made one can also be a bit off.

In my past post I didn’t mean to put so much meaning on to the single word “us” — it was just meant to point out the vagueness of this line as a whole. He is not making an “I” statement in either versions, it’s like he is talking about more then one person. Who is he talking about if not himself or Maxim specifically ?? Or how do you know that he doesn’t care about the ones who don’t make it?? Because someone else didn’t make it??? As if it’s coming from experience.

I am not really making any theories based on this, i was merely just pointing out how cryptic this sounded. He could easily just be talking him and maxim together, or even more broadly about the other people (who aren’t related to Asami in any way) who died fighting on behalf of papa Asami’s organization.

I am always down to hypothesize about Papa Asami!

Asami’s line from vol.11 about how his father treats his children. That “us” is doing a lot here — and has always made me wonder if there are more Asami siblings that we don’t know about…and maybe even ones that didn’t make it out alive…

We really don’t know much about Papa Asami, and from the start he sounded like a pretty bad person. Our first time hearing about this character was in Finder no Souen. Where we see teenage Asami being corned by a group of men, who are asking him to return to his father, threatening/pressuring him into doing so. Its a little unclear why or how he left in the first place — It sorta made out to be that teenage Asami managed to strike some deal allowing him to leave and live with his mother, for either only a period of a year or some other unspecified amount of time. In any case, within the year his father is hounding him to return — so whatever it was it mattered very little to Papa Asami and he essentially immediately wanted Asami’s return. Due to the events of No Souen, ending in Asami basically having to take out a gang, he is forced to return to father in the aftermath. Asami is basically blackmailed into agreeing to return. Interestingly its sounds somewhat similar to the same thing that Maxim did to Asami, with the contract he had to sign. (Like father like son…) With the agreement being Papa Asami would clear up the mess about the dead gang, in return for Asami agreeing to coming back. So either he could face the law or return to his father.

So what we can surmise from that infromation, was that even before Asami reached adulthood — he was already quite deadly, and trained to kill. So who knows what kind of training he went through. On top of that, being blackmailed by your own father… I mean in short it sounds like Papa Asami basically raised his children to be child soldiers and then keeps them locked in, dependent on him and loyal to him only.

My theory is that Asami most likely was forced into crime, because of who is father is. Not only so that he had some protection against the law, or potential enemies of his father. But also and maybe more importantly, it gave him protection from his own father. Think about what would happened if back then, when he was in high school — if he’d had the right connections and enough power. He could have cleaned up his own messes himself and not been reliant on his father — blackmail tactics wouldn’t work on him. And he would have a semblance of independence and control over his own destiny. Becoming a crime boss in your own right, becomes what is most likely the only way to get out of his father’s shadow, and live with a bit more autonomy.

People have already guessed that Papa Asami is looking for a possible heir to take over his business and that is why he is like this with his children, shaping them to be the best so they can take over a highly competitive and dangerous organization. Maybe it’s what he tells himself — but i don’t want to confuse this person with someone who actually cares or is worried about his children being killed because they are too weak. I plainly refuse to give him the benefit of the doubt and say that maybe it’s more complicated and he is this way out of some false sense of protectiveness. It sounds like bullsh8T that even Asami probably long ago saw right though, which is why he left and doesn’t consider either Maxim or his father as family. They pull that family card, but only when its to guilt Asami into returning to becoming a living weapon for the organizations sake.

Most likely the bounty hunters are connected to Papa Asami and the contract Asami signed. I think it's more likely that it’s someone else who Papa Asami has tasked with collecting Asami, rather than Papa Asami himself. Whether it’s that mysterious man we saw who was playing poker with Fei Long (Who could very well be Papa Asami, but I am more inclined to believe he could be a commander for Papa Asami) or if it was Maxim who might be pressured into making sure Asami fulfills the contract.

Though i think it would be fun if there was some twist — like its actually Fei Long who is doing it because papa Asami or Maxim has decided to take it out on him, since Asami has decided to skip town. Meanwhile, Fei Longs like Helll nahh. I ain’t dealing with this myself just cause y’all wanna go on some honeymoon!!! 😤

I could totally see that being an option.

Yes of course I remember! I actually always get asked questions about aki’s father, but i havent been asked in a while 🤭

It is confirmed to us in the character profile pages from vol 3. There is a little section thats meant to be an “interview” with Akihito, where he brings up his dad.

In two separate questions he brings up that his dad is a photographer, and that he is a traveling photographer. Maybe this is to explain why nobody ever checks on poor aki — in that his parents maybe live mostly overseas?

There is also another side episode, the one where Akihito goes to a day care and is being watched by a BeBoyGold detective who is making a report of everything Akihito does in a day. He goes to the day care and mentions to the kids there that when he was there age — he once broke his dads camera and cried and ran around the house trying to avoid his dad who was yelling at him. 😅 On a side note Aki’s dad sorta sounds like him….