Saint Young Men


 * See w:c:SaintYoungMen

Saint Young Men (聖☆おにいさん) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Hikaru Nakamura. It has been serialized by Kodansha in the monthly seinen manga magazine Morning 2 since 2007, with chapters collected in five tankōbon volumes.

The series is about Jesus Christ and Gautama Buddha living together in a Tokyo apartment while taking a vacation on Earth. The comedy often involves jokes about Christianity, Buddhism, and all things related, as well as the main characters attempts to understand modern society.

Plot
Saint Young Men follows the lives of Jesus Christ and Buddha, who live again in Japan as young men, roommates, and best friends. Jesus is often lazy, care-free, irresponsible, and impulsive. He frequently has to get "permission" from Buddha to do or buy things. Buddha is calm, rational, and concerned about the well-being of others. However, Buddha often finds himself annoyed by Jesus' impractical or rude behaviour. Each chapter shows how they go about or react to an average day, though they also go sightseeing or to amusement parks.

When either of the two does or says something especially virtuous, a halo glows above their head. People don't realize that they're Jesus and Buddha (some high school girls even say that Jesus looks like Johnny Depp), so they try to avoid making their identities too obvious.

Reception
Saint Young Men received the 2009 Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize for Short Work Manga.

Saint Young Men was the tenth best-selling manga series in Japan for 2009 according to Oricon, with the four volumes selling over 2.6 million copies. Volumes three and four were among the top 25 best-selling manga for 2009. As the result of its popularity, issues of Morning 2 started selling out on newsstands; because of this, in May 2009 Kodansha began making the magazine available online the day it is published.