#viewfinder

-

My first remembered exposure to "Finder" was via summaries of the ongoing chapters from a LiveJournal friend who could read Japanese. (She came from an older fandom tradition that included "Tokyo Babylon"/"X" and also later introduced me to "Mirage of Blaze," if that helps set the stage.) Back when I first started reading bl, there were many such cases of dissemination and acquisition. Scanlations existed, of course, but massive aggregators did not. There was no one place to find everything; instead, there was a network of partially-closed gardens that you could be granted entry into, like forums or IRC channels or closed-membership LJ communities, where you would find something. Once inside, you were at the mercy of what was being offered to you (and what slightly dodgy uploading site was working that day). These scanlation groups or moderators or uploaders or, in the case of my friend, individual dispensers of recommendations were the tastemakers, the bl manga disc jockey army. Before digital, for those of us non-JP fans, this was sometimes the only way to glimpse into what was on offer a sea away.

Though it did not originate any tropes and hails from older, equally famous works such as "Kizuna" or "Zetsuai" (or/and especially in the case of one character, "Banana Fish"), "Finder" still reads like the ur-manga of its specific bl subgenre: the older suave man in a suit with criminal connections and a perennial cigarette encountering a spunky younger man who is somehow disadvantaged and must offer his body in exchange for money and/or protection. It has managed to remain timeless and dated at the same time, its plot points so common in modern bl that it might as well be the air we breathe, a perfect time capsule even as the rest of the world has moved way, way on. Time and time again, it offers us the same plot, and we eat it up. Something is going on in the criminal underworld. Takaba is in trouble. Asami rescues him. They have sex. And repeat, ad infinitum. 

For in this year of our lord 2025, after over 20 years and 14 volumes, Yamane Ayano continues to write new chapters of "Finder." It is the only bl series that I have followed since the beginning of my reading career. So it's only fitting that for 801 Day this year, I talk about the many things that make it special.

-

"Finder" is both a romance and an exploration of Takaba's exploitation under capitalism. I mean this sincerely. This is not a bit. 

In the world of "Finder," Asami is on the top and Takaba is on the bottom. Asami is a wealthy businessman from a good family who owns nightclubs and has deep connections with the government and the media. As far as the story goes, Asami has "won" at capitalism. What he produces is other people's labor: his club girls, his smuggling routes, his interference in criminal activities in other countries, his access to information. Takaba, on the other hand, has nothing. He is only trying to survive. Even the fruits of his labor are not wholly his own. He has to sell them to an intermediary. The most important conflicts in "Finder" are not about the dynamics of their relationship, which even by volume three have mostly crystallized. Rather, early "Finder" is propelled by the way their feelings threaten livelihoods, both themselves and other people's.

Early in Naked Truth, the second arc of the "Finder" series, Takaba Akihito (our spunky investigative photographer) becomes the unintentional owner of a data disc (it's the early 2000s!) meant for Asami Ryuichi (our suave older man with criminal connections) and of interest to Bai She, the Hong Kong criminal family run by Liu Fei Long, who considers Asami to be his sworn enemy because he believes that seven years ago, Asami killed his (adoptive) father and seduced Fei Long to bring about a leadership change at Bai She. Despite being kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and forced to sell out Asami (briefly) in order to rescue his friends, Takaba cannot resist chasing after Fei Long, moved by revenge or professional curiosity or because he senses in Fei Long a fellow reluctant but passionate Asami-lover. For his troubles, he gets abducted by Fei Long and brought to Hong Kong, where he is threatened and cajoled into being Fei Long's temporary bed-warmer. Asami eventually makes off with Takaba safely in his arms, but not without a shootout on a megayacht at the end of the arc that would not have looked out of place in the latest Mission: Impossible movie. 

Naked Truth turns Takaba's body into literal property that is bandied about by the predators who can best harness capitalism for their own purposes. Fei Long brands Takaba on the wrist with Bai She's snake symbol, which objectifies him, literally: he is a piece of property belonging to Bai She, so valuable that no one in Hong Kong wants him. Asami, meanwhile, leaps at the suggestion to trade Takaba for a deed to a hotel in Macau, which he steals from Fei Long. Love may be priceless, but Naked Truth's animating conflict is Asami and Fei Long getting increasingly frustrated with how much they are willing to sacrifice to have Takaba. 

All this posturing ends up attracting the attention of one Mikhail Arbatov and his sadistic uncle Yuri, who together head the Russian mafia and are completely perplexed as to how two of the most powerful men they know have allowed themselves to get tied up in knots over a very ordinary Japanese man. To them, and to every rational observer of "Finder," the calculus is simple. Asami is willing to forego billions of profit to own Takaba. Therefore, Takaba is the equivalent of billions of dollars. Therefore, they too will kidnap Takaba—their very own means of capital production.

It is because Takaba means nothing and has no value to anyone that Asami can play with him. It is because Asami plays with Takaba that Takaba has worth to others. It is because Takaba has nothing to lose but himself that he continually fights against Asami's control. And it is because Takaba continues to fight that Asami continues to pull the leash harder. This is Finder's dialectical materialism. In the afterword to the deluxe version of volume two, Yamane makes it obvious that she invented Takaba as a character doomed to this struggle forever. "He keeps doing his best, stuck in the gap between regular life and society's dark underbelly," she writes. "He puts his body on the line (in more ways than one) to bring his everyman feel to the story!"

There are many bl stories about a rich man and a poor man, but "Finder" never has a moment where Asami enjoys the simpler pleasures in life or professes to Takaba that he'd be willing to give up everything else in his life just to be with Takaba. The reality is he wouldn't. He wants everything else in his life, and he wants Takaba too. Takaba exists to be crushed by the ambition and greed of the men around him. That is his everyman appeal.

-

Pray in the Abyss, the arc after Naked Truth, is "Finder's" most obvious exploration of its capitalist themes. In the aftermath of the Hong Kong hostage arc, Takaba and Asami return to their normal lives in Tokyo, which for Asami means breaking into Takaba's apartment and holding all of Takaba's material possessions—but especially his cameras!—hostage until Takaba agrees to move in with him. Takaba, incensed, does his utmost to rebel against Asami's heavy-handed ways, but an investigation into an affair between a Diet member and a hostess leads him deeper and deeper into Asami's world, full of private gyms, fancy night clubs, mistresses in furs and jewelry, and billion-dollar embezzlement deals. "It's a world that glitters like diamonds yet is as toxic as a swamp," Takaba muses. "Their business is turning desire into cold, hard cash." A glimpse is enough for Takaba, who concludes that he's not like them. "I have a job to do," the little proletariat says, marching off with his backpack on one shoulder. "A person only needs enough to get by." 

Yet Takaba is ashamed, of his continued association with Asami, of his fears that he doesn't measure up to the standards of Asami's world, of the way Asami closes him out from business that has nothing to do with him. This shame is easily exploited by Sudo Shu, the manager of one of Asami's nightclubs who has been side-dealing Asami's connections for his own benefit and who catches Takaba sniffing around for photographic proof of another scandal. After roughing Takaba up a bit, Sudo pulls out the big psychological guns, offering Takaba a choice: leave his job and live out the rest of his life as Asami's pet or take back his camera and walk away from Asami?

Takaba chooses the camera, of course. It was never feelings that were in conflict. It was always livelihoods. Yamane considers Takaba a "masculine uke," and I think this is what she means, that given the chance, time and time again, he will only take a seat at the table of capitalism if he fights for it. And it is something Asami has learned too, that a man must have a job and Takaba must have his camera.

Younger me came away from "Finder" with the misapprehension that Asami was a yakuza member. He is, of course, merely a businessman, which is to say that he is a gang member in the world's largest turf war, a lieutenant in a crime syndicate to which we all pay our dues. For increasingly, there is no difference between gangs and capitalist institutions. Our corporations operate with impunity; they are above the reach of the law and duck just under its regulatory hurdles like a particularly unwieldy game of limbo. And our gangs, even the storied ones like the yakuza, have become black market corporations, a way to wheel and deal property and capital. Pray in the Abyss exposes this Asami, the businessman who would not think twice about getting rid of Sudo if Sudo is impacting his bottom line.

It's a side of Asami that Takaba does not and can never understand. Takaba even naively asks Sudo why he can't just confess his sins to Asami and ask for help, to which Sudo rightfully scoffs. Sudo thinks, like Mikhail and Fei Long at the start, that there must be value in Takaba for Asami to care. But it is because Takaba has never been worth anything that he can be worth everything to Asami. Sudo learns this the hard way at the end of Pray in the Abyss. There is an Asami that only Takaba has access to, because Takaba exists under a system so foreign to Asami that for Asami, Takaba appears above all capital. For the rest of us out here, in the glittering toxic swamp of cold hard cash, Asami will always turn away.

-

The later arcs of "Finder" are more troubling to evaluate. In part this is the fault of Fei Long, whose death was planned at the end of Naked Truth's Hong Kong arc but who was saved from the dust bin by his fans. He has always been an outlier in "Finder's" capitalist structure, too easily moved by matters of his heart. Where Fei Long is involved, things—his older brother's unworthiness to take over Bai She, the betrayal of a right hand man, even Asami—end up revolving around feelings. This is the only reason Takaba of all people is able to broker a ceasefire between Asami and Fei Long at the very end of Naked Truth by simply shouting at them like they're two tomcats brawling in the backyard.

Softened by his gratitude towards Takaba and reconciled with his rancor towards Asami, Fei Long can no longer function as a villain, but is too tempting to kick out of the story altogether, resulting in him assuming the role of overly convenient plot device. Asami—and Yamane—lean on him to appear whenever the plot needs a way to save Takaba and keep Asami at bay. In some volumes, his team-ups with Asami feel positively Marvel Cinematic Universe (derogatory). By volume 13, whatever use he has as a contrast or foil to Asami is totally vitiated. We've already by then seen Asami on screen make multiple stupid decisions to keep Takaba by his side, and don't need Fei Long around as a reminder that love makes you stupid. Instead, as if to justify his continued presence in the story, Fei Long begins to act as a foil for Mikhail, whose uncle Yuri might as well have nine lives, all of them bad. 

Volume 7 also marks the last time Takaba has regular interactions with normal people who are not part of the criminal underground. Side characters abound: we are introduced to Asami's half-brother Maxim and his bodyguard Alec who (naturally) fought alongside Asami when they were both mercs and (naturally) has a crush on Maxim. Character histories and professions are increasingly outlandish. It makes you long for the days where Takaba was feuding with Mitarai over who has to keep watch during a stakeout.

This is hardly unusual. The same thing happened in "Kizuna," which in its sixteen-year runtime of eleven volumes also later became embroiled in outrageous yakuza plots and hitmen. But my thesis is that "Finder" is as much about Takaba Under Capitalism as it is about Takaba Under Asami. On a meta level, he has lost who he used to be when he started. "Finder" as it continued became less of a specific story told about specific characters and has become an Intellectual Property. Its enduring popularity is its enduring popularity, the many colorful costumes it wears, the flexibility of its characters to be anything Yamane wants or needs them to be. It is the ultimate product to be consumed. 

-

"Finder" has always been popular. It was not Yamane's breakout hit, but it did cement her status as one of the bl manga greats. In the English-speaking part of the bl manga fandom I was a part of, it felt like everyone read "Finder," even if that wasn't quite true. Most people, even if they didn't remember anything else about the story, remembered the first chapter, where in the very first sex scene of the series Asami shoves a canister of film up Takaba's ass and then puts a catheter tube in Takaba's penis. If you ask me who is the predecessor of the "blood type: Lezhin" bl manhwa, the ancestor to which they all owe tribute, I would point—proudly, unashamedly—to "Finder." Maybe one could even go so far as to say, it was the "Jinx" of its time, or that "Jinx" is the "Finder" of our times. 

Which is also why in 2025, it no longer feels critical to read "Finder." The things Yamane was doing with Asami and Takaba are now basic bl manga competency. While I can't think of very many major series that start with a sex scene as extreme as theirs, they've now slipped into a predictable, almost vanilla sex life that is only being upended in recent chapters because Takaba is a brainwashed assassin who thinks he has a younger brother (no, this is not a joke). The plot progression that "Finder" took 13 years to come to would probably be a single solid year of a Chinese or Korean webtoon. It is, quite frankly, a dinosaur.

But I think this does disservice to its appeal, then and now. I don't think any of us were reading "Finder" in 2005 because it was original. It was, and is, sexy and charming and beautiful, and Yamane has the superstar's sense of timing for when to be outrageous and when to be restrained. It helps, too, that she can be very funny when she wants, which is frequently in the bonus chapters. 

And despite the thousands of words I've spent here trying to say otherwise, "Finder" is also a love story, the most classic of boys love stories: two people who would do anything for each other, even when it is irrational. Takaba and Asami would die for each other. As of volume 11, this is canonical. And perhaps that is the only way to overcome capitalism. Perhaps love, as irrational and outrageous as it might be, is the only thing powerful enough to fight back. 

"Finder" is also a love story between Yamane Ayano and her fans. The lovey-dovey scenes between Mikhail and Fei Long, she informs us, is because her fellow mangaka Eiki Eiki (the creator of "Love Stage!!") likes them. Fei Long was saved from certain death at the end of Naked Truth because his fans loved him so much. She laughs fondly at the difference in reader reactions between her Japanese and overseas fans. She recounts a fan who read "Finder" while caring for her sick family. She dedicates whole bonus chapters to a fanmeet she had in Hong Kong. 

When I look at "Finder," I see in it all of bl manga, as a genre, as an institution, as a fandom, as a series of human works. I see the multiple bankruptcies and licenses and publication companies it survived, in both Japan and the US, to reach us today. I see in it a mode of making manga that feels like it has been gradually phased out, that of slow deliberate work made by the human hands that can take months between chapters and years between volumes. I see one of the few long-standing bl series whose volumes are still guaranteed to be released for the English-speaking market. I see my own young self scandalized after reading the first chapter, realizing that sex can be so much weirder than I ever imagined. I see the changes in Yamane's art, as she becomes surer of her style and as all manga art moves to digital. I see the names of other creators I've become familiar with, like Yonezou Nekota and Psyche Delico, pop up in her afterwords. I see the difficulty in writing a story that will continue to ring true after ten, twenty, fifteen years, and the way we (including myself) have become numbed to the sheer volume of bl that we now can access. I see the changes in how we access bl, how bl is made available to us, and how and where we talk about bl, if we do at all.

And I see my friend who first introduced the Finder series to me. Later she introduced me to Hannibal (NBC). She has a kid now. I still chat with her weekly. In 2010 she wrote a review of "the end of Viewfinder" (based on context, I think this was when Naked Truth came to a close). She didn't know that in fifteen years, there would still be more "Finder." I didn't know when I was reading and commenting on that post that I would still be reading "Finder" fifteen years later.

And I wonder in fifteen years, when reading this post is just a memory for you, will there still be more "Finder"?