According to Yamane, Akihito is currently 25 years old. Which means that Asami is 37, so it's been two years. Personally, I always thought the manga starts with them meeting sometime in late fall, but I guess that's a matter of each reader's perspective. :)
Thank you for the information :)
Can you tell me where you read it? If it's in an interview, I'd like to read it, hoping there're plenty of questions and answers^^.
No....Sensei never told that...25YO Takaba is only on extra chapter which is in alternate universe where Takaba is a buchou..
@Anonnnnn: You people are so obtuse, do you honestly think that after 8 freakin' volumes the action takes place in the same time frame? That somehow, Akihito is still 23 years old?! That him meeting Asami, getting kidnapped by Feilong, going to the tropical island in Bali, coming back to Tokyo, moving in with Asami, living with Asami all happened in what, a month? I'd sure like to know how much time do numbskulls like you think has elapsed since this manga's first volume. Junjou Romantica's Misaki was 18 in the first volume, he's now 22. In mangas, certain informations that appear in extras are just as true in canon. Just...go watch paint dry, since putting two and two together by deducing certain aspects is too much for the likes of you, as long as it's not a big neon sign flashing in front of your eyes, you just don't get it. Pathetic, the level of intelligence some people on this page have.
First of all, the extra in question was a fantasy Akihito was having so no, it's not cannon. Second of all, time does not pass in exactly the same increments in every manga. So one series could take eight volumes to cover ten months where another series could cover twenty years in fewer volumes. Third, it is entirely possible that the events in these eight volumes have taken place within a year. He wasn't in Hong Kong that long. You know how I know? By paying attention to what's happening in the story like us numbskulls like to do. See, let me lay it out for you.
Volume 2 takes place mostly in the past, so that one doesn't count in the timeline. The events of volume three take place within a two-day period. At the end of volume 3, Asami is shot by Feilong. By volume five, when he comes to rescue Akihito, his wounds are still not healed to the point where they open and bleed from physical exertion. So it isn't likely Akihito was in Hong Kong for more than a few weeks. And they only stay on the tropical island long enough for the laser burns on Aki's wrist to heal, so that wouldn't have been months and months, either. Then the events of volumes 6, 7 and 8 happen very quickly and one after the other, with no lapsed time in between.
Example: Starting with chapter 40, where Aki is beaten up by Sudou's thugs, gets in the fight in the park, spends a few hours in jail, is returned to Asami's apartment, has sex with Asami, overhears Kuroda's conversation with Asami, offers to find the source of the article for Asami, goes to club with Kuroda, is drugged, wakes up in warehouse with Sudou, witnesses shoutout, taken home by Asami, assassins enter the penthouse, Asami and Aki flee to the roof.
That's twelve chapters right there and it covers about two-maybe three days time, no more.
Just because the volumes themselves take years to come out gives the illusion that more time has passed but in the actual storyline, you can see--if you actually pay attention--that unless two years passed between volume one and volume three, all of the events could fit very easily within a twelve-month period. And so yes, Akihito could very well still be twenty-three.
I don't suppose some kind-hearted person with a Twitter account could hit up Yamane-sensei and ask her how old Akihito is currently?
I just wonder why she would go out of her way to mention this age at all in an extra (especially in a dream where it has no bearing at all), unless it was her way of telling us that he is indeed now 25.
I'm not looking to argue, but this is one of many reasons why I tend to think that it may be his current age.
Also the current argument of timelines seems to discount ALL the extras as AU, which (again, my opinion) I don't think is true. Leaving out the notorious 3-way, which is already a hot topic in itself, I thought the extras were "slices of life" that took place between the arc stories. If you follow that belief, then at least one New Year's Day and two seasons of summer have passed.
But again, if you disregard all the extras, then at least a full year has passed which would still put Akihito one year older.
Or they could be non-aging, like Peanuts, or Calvin and Hobbs (if you know that comic).
Anyway, you can see why there are good arguments on all sides, so it would be nice to see everyone "respectfully disagree".
Yes, you're right about the respect and also about the extras. I forgot to take them into account but I don't know how to place them in the story. In my books, the extras aren't in the proper order (and some haven't been published yet).
For example, the one happening the New Year's day is in book 3, which takes place, in my opinion, in the summer (And in my proposition of timeline, there is no winter yet). And the one with the summer festival and the fireworks is in book 7, which takes place, again in my opinion, in autumn.
And some (all of them?) extras were made for fan service like the one in the onsen with Akihito, Asami and Feilong, according to several comments I read. Or the extras were made because the mangaka wanted to show us several different scenes and was having fun drawing them. I don't know. It's only suggestions. But with the extras, it's even harder to try to find the correct timeline.
I agree with you: it would be easier to ask directly to the mangaka using her Twitter account.
I have a twitter, but sadly I don't know Japanese...
Have you ever read a shounen manga? Literally dozens of volumes with barely any time passing sometimes. Or the characters are suspended in time. And while some extras may be canon, others that are clearly meant as AUs (such as the one that stated their older ages) are just meant for crack fun.
Personnally I place them between Escape and Love and Pray in Abyss. It's kind of things happened after Akihito went to live with Asami. Then Pray in Abyss happens, who knows, maybe a year after Escape and Love for all we know. Lots of things can happen there, their relationship grows... And now it's challenged.
Naturally, the first extras happened sometime before Naked Truth.
If you try to put a year between Escape and Love and Pray in Abyss, then you screw up Akihito's emotional arc. Akihito working out his feelings for Asami flows from E&L into PiA. I don't think that went on for a solid year.
Be it a week or a few months aha. Only throwing my two cents here.
Though Akihito did say that "Steady work has been coming my way these days". One would imagine time have passed since his last screw ups in Escape and Love. Then "it's been so long since I've seen his face". They barely have seen each other, work has gone way better... They can have had a few sweet moments there and there. Also if we assume that 2 years passed accordingly to Ayano since the beggining of the manga, that'd be a good place to put a time skip.
It does flow rather well to me anyway. I'm not sure anymore about the average person aha, but to me, being a freelancer artist like him (and Ayano) working ALL the time, a year passes by without me noticing it. It's just insane. He just can't have been bothering that much about Asami every single day of his life, steady work just wouldn't happen, Asami seems to be that much more busy himself that Akihito felt it has been "so long", but that's the only thing we see since it's a yaoi manga :P. If they barely have been seeing each others, of course feelings have stalled, until the day Sudou just barged in there and freaked Akihito out.
Rumours have had the time to circulate about the two of them living together, so mmh...
Again, just a perspective, nothing proven here xD
First of all, don't live only on Junjou Romantica arc. It's too pathetic.
Read shounen manga too. If you read Jigoku Sensei Nube, you would die because of the complicated time there : 30 volumes but only one year passed there. lol
SO, If sensei haven't told us Officially on manga, it's still within a year....
Everyone is arguing time lines - and comparing to other manga - I'll put my two cents in - almost 700 issues of Bleach, with a major 2year time skip and the main characters are still in high school. And so many things unresolved there - just an alternate example.
Some people just need a lot of time to resolve their feelings and I think with both of them in a bit of denial one to two years - whatever it may be - is not that unreasonable - I think many of us are just used to shorter stories where they figure out their emotions quickly have spoiled us...but that is just an opinion. Hehehe
It's unlikely there's that big a skip in time between volume six and seven. When Kuroda approaches Akihito in the park in volume seven, he talks to him as though the incident with Momohara Ai was fairly recent, that people still think they're a couple. Also, during that conversation, he thinks of how no one knows he's living with Asami, that he hasn't told Kou and Takato. It would have been tough to keep that secret for a year. And then Kuroda references the "incident in Hong Kong" and how he had to clean up after that mess, so he knows Asami went to Hong Kong for Aki. But then he refers to Asami's interest in Aki as an infatuation and a "passing fancy." He wouldn't refer to a relationship that had already lasted more than a year as a passing fancy. That's a very slowly passing fancy.
And when Akihito comes home after seeing Sudou cry on Asami's sleeve and finds Asami sleeping, he thinks about how he has moved in here and how he's "not going to be here forever." If he's already been there a year, he wouldn't be thinking something like that.
So really, if you want to stick an extra year into this storyline, the only place to do it is between the end of volume one and the beginning of volume three. It's not going to fit in between six and seven.
Hm, still, a "full year" is quite short. I'm not sure how that's a very slow passing fancy, honestly, looks like only a beggining :/
All your arguments are based on the feeling that things should happen at rocket speed, so I'm not sure what I could add aha ^^'
In any case, extras fit there or they fit nowhere. Except of course after PIA, but eeeh. I said "it could be a year for all we know". It could be like two months too, I really don't care how much time passed, a year just happened to be a number here, I just suggested that we basically don't really know how much have passed in the end.
The full year time period came up because the argument in this thread is that Akihito is now twenty five. I am pointing out that while you can roughly chart the passage of one year by the events of the manga, you can't chart two unless you find a gap of a full year between any of these volumes. It was put forward that there could be a year between six and seven but it doesn't seem possible. A few months there wouldn't be enough to advance Akihito's age unless--again--there was a larger gap between volume one and volume three, which is more likely.
Also, many of the volumes DO happen at rocket speed. I already laid out how quickly time passes is chapters 40 through 52. In our time, that's been actual years but in Finder time, it's only been a few days. So that's not just a feeling. It's fact.
Here's another piece of the timeline puzzle, the short "Takaba Akihito's Asami Ryuichi Report" that appears in the character book. I'm not sure when the character book was published, but there are entries in it that talk as though the Hong Kong arc is ongoing and hasn't been resolved.
The short is a little story where Aki spies on Asami and reports everything he does during his day. At the beginning, Aki says "Every time I get caught and screwed, get kidnapped and screwed, get drunk and screwed. Lately, I've even spent New Years abroad."
That seems to cover the initial rapes in volume one by both Asami and Fei Long (caught and screwed, kidnapped and screwed) and then the incident in Takaba's Wonderful Day short (drunk and screwed) and the infamous New Years short (even spent new Years abroad.)
To me that sounds like those things happened before Akihito was taken to Hong Kong, which makes it seem like there was a lot of time between the first and third volumes, so maybe that's where the extra year comes in.
Why so serious （￣へ￣）?
I have my own reasons to think what I think could be possible, you have yours, it's pointless to try to convince me by saying "but it doesn't seem possible because I personally have X viewpoint" :P
By the way, I've been reading it for about a year lol, it's not been that long of that time that I would think the events didn't happen quickly xD. But it doesn't necessarily mean nothing happens between events. I think we can at least doubt that.
I’ve just read an interesting conversation here, which happened 2 days ago about the timeline in Viewfinder so I checked each book to try collecting informations. And here are my conclusions:
Book 1: Spring. The characters are wearing lighter clothes but still keep light jackets.
Book 2: Still spring for the same reason.
Book 3: Summer. The characters are wearing t-shirts (Akihito’s wearing a sleeveless one) and it’s said it’s hot outside. At the end of this book, Akihito is kidnapped by Feilong and it is said that he stayed in Hong Kong several months.
Book 4: At the beginning of the book, it’s still early summer. But, at the end of the book, it’s a little bit colder at night because Asami is wearing a jacket again over is suit when he thinks about Akihito, wondering if he was damaged, and he’s stunned because of his own impatience.
Book 5: Late summer. The characters are still wearing light clothes but with long sleeves (except for Akihito who’s often showing his torso but I think it’s a gift from the mangaka for her readers ^^). Yuri and Mikhail are wearing jackets.
Book 6: Still late summer. At the beginning of the book, Akihito and his friends are wearing t-shirts with short sleeves, but at night, Akihito is sometimes wearing a jacket.
Book 7: Autumn. At the beginning of the book, when Akihito meets Kuroda, they’re both wearing warmer jackets and we can see tree leaves falling.
Book 8: Still autumn because of the clothes they’re wearing and it’s said it’s cold outside. So I pity poor Akihito who is only wearing a t-shirt and a underwear on the roof of the building, the last scene which was posted (another gift for us, the readers^^).
So, I think Akihito and Asami have known each other for nearly a year now. Asami is 36 and Akihito 24.
Of course, I may be wrong because it’s always hard to be adamant about subjects like timelines because there’re still too many things left unsaid and sometimes years seems to be only months or weeks.