Saint Young Men #9 + Bonus DVD

The latest volume of Saint Young Men (聖☆おにいさん) hit the shelves this week, and if you get in early there is a special edition that includes a short anime DVD produced by A-1 Pictures. The DVD includes two short animated sequences and promotional material for the DVD release of the Saint Young Men anime that will be released on October 23rd.

I'm actually a few volumes behind with this series, but I picked up volume 9 for the bonus DVD. It's nice to see that my Catholic primary school education came in handy for something, a few Japanese friends who aren't as familiar with christian theology have a bit of trouble picking up some of the Jesus references. But the world that Hikaru Nakamura (中村光) also draws on a wide range of Buddhist, Shinto and cultural references. We see Jesus and Buddha navigate an impromptu Momotaro play, enjoy their first setsubun, and hina matsuri. There are recurring themes and characters that appear, but each episode is a self contained story.

Related Links:
Saint Young Men Website: http://morning.moae.jp/lineup/25
Hikaru Nakamura on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hikakom
Saint Young Men movie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/saint023_movie
A-1 Pictures on Twitter: https://twitter.com/a1pictures

Saint Young Men Trailer

And here is the video for Saint Young Men (聖☆おにいさん) that I mentioned just before Christmas. It doesn't reveal too much of a story, but the animation style looks great. Looking forward to this.

Saint Young Men UPDATE!

I posted about this series only the other day, and I'm already way behind, as Volume 8 was released in early December. But along with the latest volume, a revamped website (http://www.saint023.com/) was released with details of an upcoming animated feature.

It will be released in Japan on May 10th, and will produced be A-1 Pictures who recently did the Uchu Kyodai (a.k.a. Space Brothers) anime series. Jesus is to be voiced by stage and screen actor Mirai Moriyama (森山未来) and Buddha by singer, songwriter, actor Gen Hoshino (星野源).

You can follow the movie twitter feed here: https://twitter.com/saint023_movie
Plenty of more updates to come on this in the coming months, stay tuned.