Finder 4: Prisoner in the Viewfinder

Ayano Yamane – June – 2011 – 7+ volumes

“I had to show Fei Long’s story out of necessity, but I could just as easily have filled 30 pages with Akihito’s masturbation sessions – that’s how pent-up he is (Enough already!) It’s gonna be huge when he blows! Please hurry!”

I wish so goddamn much that this had been included in this volume. THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS.

I get a kick out of Ayano Yamane’s author talks. BL artists tend to be surprisingly coy about what they’re drawing, so it is both bracing and hilarious to see one own up to it. I love that, in a series this full of sex, Yamane is still holding herself back, and also clearly enjoying herself while drawing it. It makes me happy to see an artist enjoying her work so much.

On the minus side, I was a little disappointed by this volume. This is the middle part of a long story where Akihito gets kidnapped by Fei Long, and there’s almost no Asami at all in this volume. With no Asami to have sex with, non-con rears its ugly head as Fei Long makes Akihito his sex slave. Unfortunately, Akihito is also the worst sufferer of Stockholm Syndrome in BL, since he never protests this attention (he puts up with it after Fei Long threatens to sell him as a real sex slave, where he would die a bad death addicted to opium). Worse, he seemingly becomes attached to Fei Long as the volume goes on, and realizes just how lonely and tortured Fei Long really is. He begins to offer advice, and even sticks up for him in certain situations by the end of the volume. It really does read like the two are friends and/or lovers, though Akihito is still a rather badly kept captive that keeps trying to escape to Japan.

Not to say that Akihito hasn’t had past Stockholm Syndrome tendencies. After all, that’s what’s going on between he and Asami. I don’t know.

Fei Long needs to be developed more before Asami can swoop in for the rescue. That happens next volume, but in the meantime, it’s strange in this type of series, which is all about the “action,” not to have plenty between the main couple for an entire volume.

And yet, despite that, and the horrible, horrible guilt I have now that I’ve watched Akihito and Fei Long for an entire volume, I can’t help but adore these books. I’m not sure why. I guess it’s just damn fine romance, and I tend to like these ones with the action mixed in, too. Plus, as I said, Ayano Yamane seems to be extremely self-aware, which I think does help. I just wish there wasn’t non-con on, like, every page.

I think I was completely won over by the last page of the bonus chapter when Akihito gets himself drunk and comes on to Asami. When he wakes up from his drunken stupor in the middle of sex with Asami, he begins to get upset, but Asami simply tells him “Now that you’re awake, pump that ass!”

See what I mean about being self-aware? Yamane obviously knows what to put in the bonus story to win me back over. It’s not even the sex. I live for cheesy lines like that.