News
Live-Action Saint Young Men Show Debuts This Summer
posted on by Jennifer Sherman
The "Piccoma Monogatari 2018" event announced on Tuesday that the live-action adaptation for Hikaru Nakamura's Saint Young Men (Saint Onii-san) manga will premiere on Kakao Japan's new Piccoma TV streaming service this summer.
Kakao Japan is the Japanese subsidiary of Korean company that operates the messager app KakaoTalk. The company launched the comics platform Piccoma in 2016. CEO Kim Jae-yong said at the event that the new streaming service will focus on live-action shows and anime based on manga. Like the comics platform, it will offer viewers a certain amount of free content per day.
The staff of the Saint Young Men show previously announced that it would premiere on a new streaming service. Ken'ichi Matsuyama (live-action Death Note, Gantz) will play Jesus and Shōta Sometani (live-action Parasyte, Bakuman.) will play Buddha. Actor Takayuki Yamada is producing and Yūichi Fukuda (HK/Hentai Kamen, Super Salaryman Mr. Saenai) will direct the project and pen the script.
Nakamura launched the manga in Morning two in 2006, and Kodansha shipped the manga's 14th compiled volume last September. The manga imagines if Buddha and Jesus shared a low-rent Tokyo apartment.
The manga inspired an anime film that premiered in Japan in May 2013. The manga's eighth and ninth volumes both bundled original anime DVDs when they shipped in December 2012 and July 2013, respectively.
The manga won the Short Story award at the 13th Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize in 2009, and was also nominated for a Manga Taisho award in the same year.
Sources: Comic Natalie, The Investor (Park Ga-young)
