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1st Episode of Live-Action Saint Young Men Series Streams on YouTube
posted on by Crystalyn Hodgkins
The YouTube channel for the Piccoma TV streaming service began streaming the first six-minute episode on Tuesday for the live-action adaptation of Hikaru Nakamura's Saint Young Men (Saint Oniisan) manga. The video is available worldwide.
The series premiered on Kakao Japan's new Piccoma TV streaming service on October 18. The show will have 10 episodes, including one original episode. The project also has a special two-week limited screening in more than 40 AEON theaters in Japan that started on October 12.
Ken'ichi Matsuyama (live-action Death Note, Gantz) stars as Jesus and Shōta Sometani (live-action Parasyte, Bakuman.) stars as Buddha. Additionally, Jirō Satō (live-action Death Note, Gintama) plays a doctor, and Umi Yamano (live-action Aoi Honō, The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.) plays the landlady of the apartments where Jesus and Buddha live together.
Actor Takayuki Yamada is producing, and Yūichi Fukuda (live-action Gintama, The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. films) is directing the project and penning the script.
Nakamura launched the manga in Morning two in 2006, and Kodansha shipped the manga's 15th compiled volume on June 22. 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.
