Finder Series

Plot

Twenty-three-year-old Akihito Takaba (高羽 秋仁 Takaba Akihito) is a young freelance photographer who takes pride in his work and seeks to get a major "scoop". After he takes photographs of the business dealings of crime lord Ryuichi Asami (麻見 隆一 Asami Ryūichi), Asami kidnaps and rapes him, beginning a relationship between them as they find themselves continually drawn to one another. Liu Fei Long (劉飛龍 Ryū Feiron, Chinese: Liú Fēilóng), a rival Chinese boss who blames Asami for his father's death, takes an interest in Takaba, as well, seeking a way to get revenge.

Manga

Written and illustrated by Yamane Ayano, Finder Series was originally serialized in Japan's Be x Boy GOLD and B-Boy Zips manga anthologies. The individual chapters were collected and published in tankōbon volumes; by Biblos, from 2002 until 2005, when the company went out of business. In 2007, Libre picked up the series, reprinting the first three volumes before continuing its release.

In 2007, Biblos licensed the series for English language release to Central Park Media, which began publishing the series under its Be Beautiful Manga imprint. In 2006, Biblos filed for bankruptcy and some of its properties were acquired by Libre Publishing. Libre later accused Central Park Media of infringing on its copyright of the transferred Biblos properties, stating that all foreign license holders needed to negotiate new licenses with Libre as those Biblos had sold ended with the company's bankruptcy. In a letter posted to its website, it asked readers not to purchase any Be Beautiful releases, calling them "illegal". John O'Donnell, then manager of Central Park Media refused Libre's claims and felt that Biblo's original license agreements were still valid. In 2009, the company filed for bankruptcy and its assets, including licenses, were liquidated. Finder Series was not listed among the assets, indicating Central Park Media no longer held the license.

In March 2010, Digital Manga Publishing announced that it had acquired the English license to the Finder Series and published under their yaoi-oriented line, Juné. Volume 3 of the DMP edition was #4 on the New York Times bestseller list for manga the week of May 1, 2011. The series was licensed in Germany by Tokyopop Germany, which has published 6 volumes of the series as of December 2011. Finder Series has been released in several other languages too, including Chinese, Korean, French, Polish and Italian.

On June 18, 2016, Digital Media announced that its licensing agreement with Libre Publishing was going to terminate at the end of the month. Thus, all of Libre's titles, including the "Finder Series," were no longer going to be published with Digital Media Publishing. Digital Media president Hikaru Sasahara said the company was "stunned" at Libre's decision, and called the move "unjust." In response, while Libre expressed surprise at Digital Media's decision, they noted that the agreement had been "terminated some time ago under just cause due to a breach of contract." It was announced on July 7, 2016 that Viz Media had acquired the licensing arrangements to publish the series under its Boys Love label "SuBLime." Since Volume 8 was released in Japan in May 2016, SubLime stated that they would publish Volume 8 first by March 2017, and then republish the first seven volumes every other month beginning in May 2017.

Anime

A special anime adaptation of 'Target in the Finder' (ファインダーの標的) was recently released by ANiMix Project on February 29, 2012 - starring Japanese voice actors Tetsuya Kakihara as Akihito, Takaya Kuroda as Asami, and Nobuo Tobita as Feilong. It is not really a fully animated animation, as the animation was limited to only the character's mouth, eyes, and some important body movements of the scenes. A special Cast Talk CD was included in First Press edition.

Drama CDs

Others

A character book was released December 18, 2007 that included a pull-out poster.

Reception

In May 2009, Germany's Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons labeled the first volume of Finder as "harmful to young persons", which results in the first volume of the series being "restricted to people of legal age only. It is also prohibited to show incriminated content as teasers, trailers or in any other advertising context." In response, Tokyopop Germany removed the information about the first volume from its website, but continued to list the other three volumes it had already published.

In Manga: The Complete Guide, Jason Thompson gave the series a rating of 3½ out of four stars, stating that the series is "written in an appropriately dark and brooding fashion" due to its use of "graphic sex and S&M", and praised the art as "coolly attractive".

Volume 7 of the series ranked #1 on the New York Times Manga Bestseller List.