Ask John: Will Saint Young Men Ever Get An Anime?

Question:
Do you think a “Saint Young Men” anime adaptation is possible in the near future? I know the manga is quite popular right now, like “top ten” material, and actually is one of the few original ideas for a manga this year. So why not?

Answer:
Actually, considering the popularity of Hikaru Nakamura’s offbeat comedy manga Saint Young Men (Saint Oniisan) and the seeming contemporary popularity of off kilter dialogue based and slice-of-life comedy anime, I’m a bit surprised that a Saint Young Men anime hasn’t already appeared. Over the past couple of years we’ve seen anime productions including World of Golden Eggs, Himitsu Kessha Taka no Tsume, Masuda Kosuke Gekijo Gag Manga Biyori, Peeping Life, Dankai Curry Chu-Kara, The 3-Mei-sama, and Tentai Senshi Sunred, just to name a few, that all create odd humor out of mundane relationships, sometimes between unusual people. The popular Himitsu Kessha and Sunred anime series, for example, illustrate odd symbiotic relationships between super heroes and evil organizations. Hikaru Nakamura’s Saint Young Men depicts the routine daily life of room-mates Jesus and Buddha living in present day Tokyo. Conservative American instinct may immediately presume that the potentially controversial revisionist approach to revered religious figures may make Saint Young Men risky to adapt into mainstream anime, but that instinct is strictly American. Japan has less hesitation to fictionalize religious figures and concepts than American culture. The daily life of God’s family was the subject of the 2006 Kamisama Kazoku television series. God’s son depicted as a baseball bat wielding high school delinquent starred in the 1997 Hallelujah II BOY TV anime adaptation of Yasuhiro Imagawa and Haruhito Umezawa’s manga.

Perhaps even more relevant, the anime TV series adaptation of Nakamura’s other ongoing manga series, Arakawa Under the Bridge, premieres next month. Careful observation of trends in Japan’s anime production industry reveals that manga artists who have one story adapted into anime nearly always eventually have a second series also adapted into anime. Practically the only exception is manga artists who only have one published manga series to adapt. Considering the success of the Saint Young Men manga, and the fact that creator Hikaru Nakamura has already had one manga series adapted into anime, I think it’s only a matter of time before an anime adaptation of Saint Young Men is announced.