The official website for Saint Oniisan The Movie ~Holy Men vs Akuma Gundan~ (Holy Men vs Demon Army), the first live-action film of Hikaru Nakamura‘s Saint Young Men (Saint Oniisan) manga, announced on Monday that Tatsuya Fujiwara (Death Note, Battle Royale, Kaiji) is joining the film’s cast as Lucifer, Michael’s older brother and the fallen angel who once led the Heavenly host.
中村光／講談社 ©2024映画「聖☆おにいさん」製作委員会
This is Fujiwara’s latest collaboration with fellow actor Kenichi Matsuyama in a live-action film of a manga, after Death Note, Kaiji, and Noise. It is also Fujiwara’s first role in a production from prolific director Yūichi Fukuda.
The staff also debuted a new making-of video featuring Fujiwara as Lucifer:
The comedy manga imagines if Buddha and Jesus shared a low-rent Tokyo apartment with no bathroom.
The returning cast and staff from the manga’s previous live-action series adaptations include Kenichi Matsuyama (Promare‘s Galo Thymos) as Jesus and Shōta Sometani (BELLE‘s Kamishin, Suzume‘s Minoru Okabe) as Buddha. Yūichi Fukuda (live-action Gintama, The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. films) is returning to direct the film and pen the script based on an extended story (“Screen e no Nagai Michi” or The Long Road to the Big Screen) that Nakamura created for the film.
The other cast members include:
- Ryo Katsuji as Taishakuten, the god of war and thunder
- Jirō Satō plays an original character for the film, a battle hermit
- Mai Shiraishi as Benzaiten, goddess of music and art
- Kento Kaku as Brahmā, the personal conception of the universal principle
- Takanori Iwata as Archangel Michael
- Masataka Kubota as Mara, the incarnation of human desires who raised his daughters by himself as a single father
- Seina Nakata as Mara’s youngest daughter
- Mizuki Yamamoto as Mara’s oldest daughter
- Hinako Sakurai as Mara’s second oldest daughter
- Ryunosuke Kamiki as Johane
- Taiga Nakano as Jūichimen Kannon/Ekādaśamukha
- Takayuki Yamada
- Tsuyoshi Muro
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TOHO will open the film on December 20.
The staff members have deemed the 23rd of every month as “Oniisan no Hi” (Young Men Day) as a wordplay on Japanese pronunciation, and they will announce more information on the movie on that day every month until the film’s opening.
The first 10-episode live-action season premiered on Kakao Japan‘s Piccoma TV streaming service in October 2018. The second season began streaming on Piccoma TV in June 2019, and also screened in theaters. The third season premiered on NHK in January 2020. Each season has 10 episodes.
Nakamura launched the manga in Kodansha‘s Morning two magazine in 2006. 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.
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.
Kodansha USA Publishing is releasing the manga digitally in English.
Sources: Saint Oniisan The Movie ~Holy Men vs Akuma Gundan~ website, Comic Natalie
