Matsuyama Kenichi & Sometani Shota to star in real-life adaptation drama of "Sei Oniisan" produced by Yamada Takayuki

Matsuyama Kenichi and Sometani Shota will be starring in the new real-life adaptation drama of "Sei Oniisan" based on the same-titled popular manga series serialised since 2006 in the manga magazine "Morning Two" which has sold 16 million copies to date. The new drama series will be produced by Yamada Takayuki and directed by Fukuda Yuichi and is planned to be released on a new video streaming service due to be launched this year. There was an anime version made in 2013 which featured Moriyama Mirai and Hoshino Gen as the leads' voice actors.

Matsuyama will be playing Jesus Christ while Sometani will play Buddha who come to the mortal world for a vacation as they have been too bogged down with their duties and live together in an apartment at Tachikawa, Tokyo. Fukuda said that he had always wanted to work with Matsuyama and Sometani but never managed to do so. In addition, he had been very eager to make a real-life adaptation of the manga since it was first released so to be able to realise his two dreams at one go, he was very happy about it and thanked Producer Yamada for entrusting this task to him. Meanwhile, Yamada said that just imagining Matsuyama as Jesus and Sometani as Buddha tickled him so much that he almost suffered from incontinence and said that the two of them already look like they are enlightened beings so it will be interesting to see how Fukuda goes all out and won't let them off easily during the filming of the movie.

Matsuyama said that he heard that Fukuda is very knowledgeable about Jesus Christ so he hoped to find out more from the latter in order to prepare for his role. As for Sometani, he was very excited to hear about the collaboration with the golden duo of Yamada and Fukuda  and looked forward to how he would interact with Matsuyama's Jesus when the filming starts.

Sources: Natalie / Eiga.com / Oricon