About

Saint Young Men (Japanese: 聖☆おにいさん) is a Japanese anime about Jesus and Buddha living together as roommates in present day Tokyo. The movie was based a manga by Hikaru Nakamura.

History

Saint Young Men was released in Japan on May 10th, 2013.^[2] The DVD was released in October 2013.

Reception

The film currently holds a rating of 7.5 on IMDB.com. A Facebook fan^[3] page for the film has received over 9,000 likes as of January 2014. The DVD was the 7th highest selling DVD in Japan the week of its release.^[7]

Online Presence

As of October 2014, Saint Young Men's Facebook page^[9] has gained over 2,000 likes.

Fandom

Many fans of the anime share GIFs and fan art on Tumblr. Popular tags include #SaintYoungMen and #saint-oniisan (the Japanese title). The film also has an active fan base on deviantART^[4] which hosts over 600 Saint Young Men submissions as well as a club, Saint Oniisan, devoted to the fandom.^[5] On January 12th, 2014 actor Orlando Jones, who is very active in the fandom community (within and outside his own show, Sleepy Hallow) tweeted,

I think I found my new fandom BTW – https://t.co/JnQ72MQHLc #SaintYoungMen "What is God’s policy on transformative works, anyway?"

— Orlando Jones (@TheOrlandoJones) January 12, 2014

Jones mentioned a Daily Dot article that examined the fandom, which attributed its increase in popularity on Tumblr to an increased use and awareness of Christmas GIFs from the film during the 2014 holiday season.^[1]

Shipping Controversy

Because the main characters of the film are holy figures in two major religions (Christianity and Buddhism), fandom interpretations are controversial, especially shipping Buddha and Jesus. Some Tumblr users have condemned people who ship these two characters on the site. ^[6] Still others on Tumblr are quick to defend the show against those condemning it for religious reasons, user Lifeofachocoholic joked,

"The Christian fandom shipped Adam and Eve so hard that they still do to this day. Some groups of the Christian fandom even split off and made AUs and tons of Headcanons."^[8]

Fan Art

Search Interest

External References