It's
a concept that is instantly going to catch the attention. Especially if you're
a Westerner accustomed to shaking your head with a faint smile at the surreal
things that always seem to be coming out of Japan . Saint Onii-san is a gentle, rather silly sitcom from the
mangaka behind Arakawa Under the Bridge about two young foreigners learning to
live comfortably in a Japanese apartment despite not quite fitting in
culturally. Only the two young men are Jesus and Buddha.
It's
one of those ideas that are so bizarre and silly and yet so simple that they
are quite inspired. It's also the kind of idea that only comes naturally to a
society where the attitude to religion is rather more relaxed and the fear of
deeply offending is less of a concern - meaning both that there's less
inclination to tip-toe around possibly offending someone, and also less
inclination to be edgy and subversive by setting out to be offensive.
Instead, Saint Onii-san presents the son of God and the
enlightened Siddhartha Gautama as rather naive but very pleasant guys who want
to see the sights of Tokyo - including a rather sweet trip to a thinly-veiled
Disney Sea - and occasionally get a holy glow when they do something virtuous
and their halos 'come out'. They are slightly scared of the strict landlady and
the neighbourhood kids who have decided Buddha is a 'Button alien' and have made
it their mission to press the bindi on his forehead. Generally, however, they
have a simple and low-key lifestyle of going to the local family mart or trying
to shop for bargains, getting keen on Osamu Tezuka manga or going to the public
bathhouses and Jesus accidentally convincing a local Yakuza that he is the son
of a crime organisation's boss.
This
works because it is not an attempt to belittle or trivialise the religions
named for the two lead characters. They are a bit hapless, and even Jesus
doesn't know what the true meaning of Christmas is, but they are also very
good-hearted and virtuous guys - Saint-like, even, to use the surname they
decide to live under (the series title is based on the pop song 'Saint Oji-san'
and I think managaka Nakamura Hikaru thinks that 'saint' generally denotes a
transcendent holy person and thus would actually apply to Jesus). Much
of the comedy comes from their true selves manifesting, be it animals flocking
to the apartment seeking nirvana from Buddha or hoping to sacrifice themselves
virtuously for the nourishment of the son of God (even bringing their own
matches for the cooking), or the train they are on being raised to the heavens
and surrounded by worshippers and angels, and the two of them trying to pass these
miracles off as normal. They gain a reputation around town for their silly
T-shirts with religious references on that Buddha likes to make and for their
quirky oddities - Buddha's bizarre hair and Jesus actually wearing a crown of
thorns at all times, which causes bleeding when he's distressed and bursts into
roses when he's amused - and it's very sweet when they leave for a time and the
local community grows to miss them. The brat who likes to bully Buddha as an
alien becomes something of the emotional centre of the whole piece, showing his
real emotional vulnerability and abandonment issues when things go a little too
far, and the bond that grows up between the holy men and the seemingly
unpleasant child is very sweet.
If
there's a downside to Saint Onii-san,
it's that its gentle tone is just a little too gentle. The truth is that it's
just not all that funny. There are some real laugh-out-loud moments, but once
the original concept has passed there's a lot of dead space of the two just
being generally pleasant. It's very sweet that Buddha wants to get Jesus a
birthday cake, and that they love awful puns (like hotoke (Buddha) and hottoke
(‘leave me alone’) the best being as simple as 'Jesu' sounding like 'Yes' in
Japanese), but I feel like the pacing was much too slow getting from joke to
joke.
Visually,
this is quite a departure for A-1, certainly a long way from the cutesiness of Welcome to the Space Show, Kuroshitsuji or Magi. Sticking closely to the style of
Nakamura's manga, albeit making it slightly less ugly, the sketch-like quality
that spans rather realistic faces for Jesus and Buddha to the kid with dots for
eyes is less universal than most A-1, and closer to more abrasive comedies like Detroit Metal City. For me, it works
perfectly as the right mix of quirky and everyday, but it won't be for
everyone.
And
I can't help but feel that while there's a huge amount of philosophical ground
that could be at least poked, it's rather the point of Saint
Onii-san that it stays superficial. That's how its gentle humour can
thrive. I just don't know where else the title can go beyond that, which is why
it perhaps suits this format of a couple of OVAs and a feature film better than
a series. I'm glad I watched it, and I'd welcome more - but if more comes, it
will have to progress beyond what we've seen so far, or else the whole thing will
just become stagnant.
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