When I was younger, God and Jesus and the church were my security blanket. I wrapped them tight around me when I was scared and they kept me safe and warm. Whenever I was terrified of the things that were larger than me, I could pray and whisper to my friends who were larger than everything, and they would hold me. They were the only things other than my Grandmother that made me feel like nothing bad could happen. They stayed up with me and kept watch after my Grandmother fell asleep.
Later on in life, I thought I fell in love, and I thought about what a wonderful gift from God it was. When she rebuffed me, I stood in the snow and cried and God held me again.
I cried when my mother left town. I cried when my sister moved away from home. I cried when my grandmother died. I cried when I realized my father was flawed and far too human. I have been angry at myself for crying and I believe I have had moments of anger directed at these people for leaving me when I still needed them. I have never been angry at God, because throughout my life he has been the one person who has never left me, even though I have left him.
- Bill Hanstock
Okay, so here's how they worked the robot into Christianity
Kenny Loggins and his friends find Marsellus Wallace's copy of The Holy Bible and use its ironically godless powers of time travel and manipulation to physically interject themselves into every Bible story in the order in which they appear. Apparently the space between here and the Bible looks a hell of a lot like an animated segment from Sesame Street, or the Japanese Bible is about a castle, a horse, and some sunshine.
"Superbook" is one of the building blocks of Agnosticism to air on CBN Cable and the Trinity Broadcasting Network during those important moments of my childhood where I needed to know why I existed and what we were doing here, but could only find the answers through old, crying men in suits, and the only things available for Christians and kids were shitty puppets, a cowboy dispensing the Lord's Justice with a good talking-to, and some quarter-assed French anime. For your information, "Trinity Broadcasting Network" is that religious channel you have in the mid-to-early teens with the weird crest in the upper-righthand corner, and "CBN Cable" is what they used to call "ABC Family." "ABC Family" is what they are calling the Sexy Teens With Some Problems Channel before somebody gives up and just names it that.
In my effort to breviloquently describe Superbook to a readership who has never seen it, I have divided up my analogous explanations by age group, so pick your age and just read that sentence.
Ages tilde 25 and up, but not older than 30: "Superbook" is a religious version of that Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics show that used to be on Nickelodeon in the afternoon. I think you remember seeing the one about Snow White, which you remember to be pretty awesome.
Ages tilde 25 and below, but not younger than lets say, 10: "Superbook" is like Pokémon, except instead of powerful animals the kids collect doctrine, and everyone they meet is from The Bible. Jonah was swallowed by a Wailmer, and James from Team Rocket was turned into a strucken-down pillar of salt for being a wicked sodomite.
Older than 30: You do not have any idea what Superbook is.
Younger than 10: flashing lights and bright colors
Okay, seriously, this how they worked the robot into Christianity:
Superbook, who is a living book with scary supernatural powers like the one in the Care Bears movie, opens the show with a condescending narration about how awesome he is and how he could "unlock the secrets of history" if Professor Peepers, a man of science, would've just looked to him and asked him for help. That is seriously how the show starts. The Bible itself goes "HA WELL I KNOW HOW THE EARTH BEGAN BUT IF YOU DON'T WANT MY HELPPP" like a Jewish mother while a scientist sits around with thick glasses in a room full of books going "OH MY I KNOW NOTHING." That is SERIOUSLY HOW THE CHRISTIAN SHOW FOR CHILDREN BEGINS. It should've just started with Jesus being stabbed in the side by a spear, turning to look at the camera, and crying "OH CHILDREN, HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME."
See, Superbook is a landmark in storytelling for Japanese culture. The original version of Superbook was just an outcast teen in a cape screaming at the camera until a futuristic swat team with the word BIBLES stenciled on their riot gear bursts into his hospital room of the future and shoots him to death graphically.
The Professor's son Chris (known in other versions of the show as "Christian"... are there people named "Buddhist" in Asia?) comes home from school sounding like Rocky the Flying Squirrel (like every kid drawn in the interest of Japan in the 80s) and screaming about asinine bullshit like he just climbed into the trunk of the Mach 5 with his pet monkey. He races into the house to save his father from the mishaps of knowledge and is immediately told to clean the attic. How can a father love his son if he doesn't first know the love of Christ? Chris goes "OKAY DAD" and says a bunch of words really fast and all in a row without moving anything but his mouth. Why am I complaining, at least Superbook didn't start with Chris being late for school.
Chris' friend Joy shows up, and since she's one of the Fruits of the Spirit she agrees to help him clean the attic. Later in the series Chris' friends Meekness and Longsuffering show up to help him with the dishes. Together they discover a glowing book, decide that it is beautiful, and deduce that it must be full of wonderful stories.
But it won't open!
They pull it from both ends, stab it with a screwdriver, but nothing works. So Chris is all, "aw man I wish I could open the book" and the book goes "YOUR WISH IS GRANTEDDDD" and announces itself as SUPERBOOK, a book capable of taking you on magical adventures, if you just believe!
So, a couple of questions.
1. Is it THE BIBLE or is it just a super book? If it can take you back to experience Bible stories, can it take you back to ANY book? Like, if you want to keep Tom Robinson from being shot dead, can you get the Superbook to take you back and let you do that? Is it a Quantum Leap arrangement, or a Back to the Future thing where you aren't supposed to directly interfere? Does this work for shit books, too? Can I quantum leap into the Christmas Shoes book and punch the guy before he gives money to the kid who wants to buy Christmas shoes? If I do that and change things and come back, will the book now end with Jesus looking down at Mama's feet and going, "Eh, well, that's disappointing" ?
2. Why do a scientist and his son who have never heard of the Bible and are unaware of even the most common Bible stories in possession of a Bible, and even more than that a SUPER Bible with faith based magicks?
3. can you use superbook to cast "holy" on your enemies?
Chris and Joy believe, so Superbook opens to about the middle of itself to THE BOOK OF GENESIS, because that is how the Bible works.
They are introduced to Adam and Eve, the first man and woman on Earth, and are invited to travel back in time and meet them. Chris and Joy are scared, but Superbook assures them that nothing bad will happen. Nope, nothing bad! I'm a book with time traveling abilities, so let me send two eight-year olds back to the dawn of time to a place full of wild animals where the only people around are fully grown, nude adults whose existence hinges on and directly determines the progress of human sin. Nothing bad can possibly happen!
Moments later Chris and Joy wake up in the woods with no short term memory alongside GIZMO, Chris's CRUSADER ROBOT, a toy for tiny babies meant to recall and represent that time when Christians got together with some swords to recapture Jerusalem from the Muslims and ended up killing everybody they met for 200 years in history's greatest theological clusterfuck. You may also remember Crusader Robots from the computer game "Strife." Gizmo declares his life a "miracle" and thanks Jesus (seriously) for the ability to walk and talk and think.
So far this book has displaced multiple children from their homes, shot them across time and space into a distant, possibly fictional land and brought Christian life to a machine, and oh shit, here come the presumably fictional naked grown-ups who are the cause of the world's suffering and death, and WAIT WHAT THE SHIT IS HE DOING TO THAT SHEEP
We find out that the sheep is really a ram in the worst way ever when Eve says "What did you name this creature, Adam?" and he forcefully responds, "I call this one a RAM!" Yeah buddy, I bet you do. Adam and Eve don't skirt the nudity issue here; they are fully nude, and the slack-jawed children talk about how beautiful they are from the bushes. Even the robot gets of a full-on robot chubby over "the most beautiful woman he's ever seen" (I wanted him to just start shouting "MOTHER! MOTHER!" at her), causing Joy to get jealous and say that when SHE grows up she's going to be even more beautiful! Message: little girls want to grow up and be naked older ladies. Good to know.
This bickering catches the attention of the animals, and Adam stands up to investigate in the most hilarious shot ever, with a jungle cat, two creepy anime rabbits, and the worst looking bluebirds I have ever seen in my life blocking his junk.
Also of note: Adam has nipples, Eve doesn't.
Adam (who looks like he should be in Powerman 5000) and Eve (who looks like she should be in the White Stripes) find out that Chris and Joy have traveled back in time to meet them. Eve begins a long exposition about how they are young human beings and how the robot must be a possession that they've brought back with them from the future, but Adam cuts her off with an awesome, dismissive WHATEVER! and welcomes them into the story. For as it says in Genesis 2:23, "Bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man, and the robot shall be called Gizmo, a placeholder name for any small technological item."
Adam and Eve give them a guided tour of the garden (here is the grass, here are some trees) and offer to answer any questions they have. What are you supposed to ask Adam? In theory he shouldn't know how to speak or at the very least shouldn't have a deep vocabulary, so what am I supposed to do, point at the sheep and go "Sheep?" so he can go "No, RAM!" I already know it's a fucking ram, I heard him before. At least if you met Jesus you could think of shit to ask him. Adam and Eve are some boring motherfuckers. Oh, and by the way, HOW ABOUT MENTIONING ORIGINAL SIN TO THEM NOW SO THEY DON'T EAT THE APPLES, YOU CAN DO THAT AT ANY TIME AND HELP US OUT, CHRIS.
Adam explains the story of creation, where God created light and separated the light from the darkness, and then he created the water, and dry land appeared, because I guess water can just float in a circle in space and doesn't need any dry land to anchor it originally or anything. He explains that God created the plants and the stars, and Chris joins in naming off stuff God created, which really drives home the point that even a child or a dead person or a stupid serf from Mesopotamia should know more than Adam because he has never done anything. God created the animals...
...including normal looking rabbits that don't look anything like the hydrocephalic manga beasts we saw earlier, and the birds in the sky. Then, God created man in his own image, because God is a ginger with an Abraham Lincoln beard, then put him to sleep and dismembered him to create woman. Joy knows this story already and interjects, and neither party thinks that's weird.
Chris and Joy thank their great great great inbred kinda-masturbatory grandparents for the experience and are introduced to the Tree of Knowledge. They note the beautiful fruit and become hungry, but are told not to eat from the tree, because God forbids it! It's a big cocktease chain in the Garden of Eden. God makes a tree full of fruit as a symbol of obedience for NO REASON WHATSOEVER and tells Adam, who is probably eating bugs and twigs and shit, that he can't eat it. So Eve looks at the tree and gets really hungry because she's been eating clumps of dirt, but Adam tells her she can't eat it, OR ELSE!, for no reason whatsoever. Then these time traveling children show up and are perfectly okay with what's going on, so Eve is all, "hey guys check out that awesome fruit over there bet you want to eat that, huh." So they're all, "oh shit, you're right, I'm hungry as balls," and Eve gets that look on her face and goes "welp, can't eat it, sorry." I bet there's a deleted scene where Joy holds an emaciated cat a few inches from an apple and goes "BOY THAT SURE LOOKS GREAT TO EAT!"
I don't know why Gizmo can't eat the apple, though, he's not a human. That shouldn't cast us into sin. If the jungle cat is wandering around and accidentally steps on an apple of knowledge is God going to go LOL IT COUNTS and burn us to death in fire? Why wouldn't he just burn us to death like we're Sims in a grease fire and be done with it?
Joy: "I don't understand, but I'll do what you say!"
There you go, Joy! Now you understand religion!
Meanwhile, in the OTHER BUSHES lurks the evil The Devil!
He has taken the form of a serpent to trick the people into eating from the tree, because it would've been too hard to just take the form of a guy and eat it himself. Chris, Joy, Gizmo, and the porno fiends wake up from a long night's sleep (how long are they planning to stay time traveled for God's sakes) and have a lunch of oranges and grapes from the Trees of Temperence and Gentleness respectively. Chris tells Eve he wants to know more about God. Eve explains that we're all a part of the blanket and the kids seem complacent, because you could've told them that God was a big fish that lived in the river and they would've went "wow okay."
The Devil openly talks about his "scheme" and lures Eve to the Tree of Knowledge, where she resists for about 15 seconds before she denies God for a piece of fucking fruit. You know the Bible story. She has to eat the fruit, or else so and so isn't going to beget so and so and we're never going to get anywhere. But right before she bites into the apple, Gizmo enters from stage right and gets the bright idea to LET EVE KNOW THAT SHE SHOULDN'T EAT THE APPLE BECAUSE SHE'S GOING TO BONE US ALL. The people didn't think to do that once even when Adam and Eve pointed out the goddamned tree, but the robot toy is granted cognizance long enough to feel about ten lumps of "oh shit" and race to our rescue as a created species.
But, because God is a cruel bastard and this is all predetermined no matter how often you travel time and no matter how many machines with which you choose to do so, Gizmo runs out of energy before he can stop her.
The moral of the story: If we'd made better robots, people wouldn't be going to Hell.
Secondary morals: Make better robots, travel time.
Tertiary moral: Wind the fucking robot.
Adam shows up, abdomen rippling, and chastizes Eve for disobeying God.
Eve calls him an "old fuddy-duddy," which is bizarre, because earlier it's established that Adam and Eve were never children and they are the only two people on Earth and have never aged, so the concept of "old" should be foreign to them, and the concept of "fuddy-duddy" should be completely out of their context because they're the only other people they've ever seen anybody act like. Eve tells Adam to taste of the fruit so he can know things he's never known before (such as "who invented the cotton gin," "what is the Pythagorean Theorem," and "define 'ziggurat'") (oh and also "shame"). Adam says that because Eve is his wife, he will do what she says. Hey Adam, your wife just got outwitted by a big purple snake.
Of course God shows up as a lense flare and casts Adam and Eve out of the Garden, but he does so in front of the children, so that means the children and the robot have seen and heard God. What a super fucking book. God punishes the serpent by, uh, making him a serpent? He tells the snake that he'll have to crawl around on his belly "for all times," as though the snake has arms or something right now and doesn't get to use them anymore. Adam gets a promise of death, Eve gets a promise of reproducing in sorrow, the snake has to be a snake! Oh, God! You devil!
Adam and Eve dress up like Andre the Giant and wander into the world, knowing now of things like pain and swift winds and brown rocks. Superbook keeps its promise and returns the children to their own time, where they are impressed by the book's promise keeping abilities. The book asks them if they, too, will keep their promise. We're all a bunch of promise keepers, here!
The Professor calls Chris back into the attic and berates him for not following orders. Chris tells his dad that he now knows the consequences of disobedience and promises to do whatever his father says without question so he can "be a good boy." And if he isn't, the Professor can use his Dead God's science to punish Chris abstrusely using an intricate series of sedatives and holograms!
Superbook tells us that this was how he was rescued from the "dust of ages" by a little boy and a little girl, and how this was just the beginning. And Chris lived happily ever after, and there was never another episode of Superbook ever!
In the next episode, Chris is sitting on his front lawn (okay) complaining about failing a math test and wondering why it's important to learn math at all. Luckily Chris notices a magical textbook glowing in his book bag and without warning the boy is sucked into a swirling mass of floating numbers and clocks and jagged edges that drag him into a chaotic oblivion of chance and infinity.
The Professor discovers Chris's boner and banishes him to his room, where he cannot play except with Joy and his toy robot, because there has to be some Superbooking going on somewhere and we need everybody there to do it.
Superbook starts lighting up (complete with Joy asking "HEY WERE IS THAT LIGHT COMING FROM" and me at my computer going "GOD I WONDER IF IT'S SUPERBOOK YOU DUMB BITCH" while I'm writing this) and drags them kicking and screaming and hallucinating into a Bible story where nothing notable happens except murder. Thanks, Superbook! Hey magical book, can we go watch Abraham stab his son to death in the name of God?
Chris, Joy, and Gizmo awake in a field, and the FIRST THING Chris does is grab some fruit from a nearby tree and eat it. GOOD IDEA YOU FUCKING KID, you just spent two days centered around fruit eating being evil, hold on for a second and make sure you aren't stuck in the book of Revelation and figure out whether or not eating a fig is going to make a seven-headed dragon spring forth from the Earth and devour you. In this case it's a pissed off caveman with a club who sounds like Lionel Barrymore from It's a Wonderful Life and threatens physical violence (possibly with the club) on the children if they don't give him money (what) for the fruit. Joy offers to wash his dishes (WHAT) to pay for it. The fig-farming caveman doesn't have any dishes so he drags Joy away as payment, and Superbook racks up another in a series of bizarre child fatalities.
Chris and Gizmo realize they need help if they're going to get Joy back from the evil man, so they enlist help from THE ONLY OTHER GUY ON THE EARTH PROBABLY, the evil man's brother, who they find peacefully milking a goat.
Gizmo thinks the man is dangerous, so I guess the robot has an understanding of miracles and original sin but can't understand where milk comes from.
It turns out that the men are (swerve) Cain and Abel. Abel sounds a lot like Winnie the Pooh and welcomes the strange boy and his living machine into his home for more food and excess. Abel finds out that Cain is stealing children and explains that he "behaves badly because he is very unhappy." He goes on to explain that Cain is always pissed off at his inability to properly grow beans.
You know, I think Cain gets a bad rap. He's got this jackass brother always giving him advice and going on about how he's so great and knows how to do everything, and Cain is just like "god dammit leave me alone." But Abel keeps it up and even gossips about it when mysterious children wander by. Imagine if you hated one guy a whole lot for being an arrogant ass to you, and then imagine if that was the ONLY GUY YOU EVER SAW, and you had to see him every single day. Now imagine that you had a club. See how that works?
Meanwhile back at the ranch, Cain is peacefully eating dinner rolls and not really doing anything to Joy when Abel shows up with a hatched plan (eggs) and some sneaky ulterior motives. Abel reminds Cain that tomorrow is THANKSGIVING (WHAT) and that the Lord wants an offering. For Thanksgiving? Long story short, the Big Red Machine kills the shit out of Abel with Finger Sword and it all would've been really traumatizing if Chris hadn't forgotten about it by the time Superbook made him drag a duo of oxen onto the Ark.
But seriously, Thanksgiving offerings? What is God going to do with a bunch of tomatoes and cucumbers?
God punishes Cain by banishing him from the place where his family was already banished and by turning the world into a tie-dyed T-shirt.
Superbook banishes the kids home immediately afterward, going 2-for-2 on the joyless Bible visits, and leaves them sitting in Chris's room, still without any reasonable excuse to do that math. The Professor shows up to help tutor his child in math by dropping off a big stack of books, which everybody laughs at, not because it was funny, but because they really, really wanted to get out of this episode. One of the books is full of evil spirits and turns you into a werewolf!
Superbook invites you back for more thrilling adventures, which include:
Helping an old man feed clumps of hair to a giraffe!
Learning what you can and can't do with a turtle!
Figuring out how hard it is to draw a lion!
Discovering why the birth of our savior means nothing unless it directly relates to you!
Stopping by any roadside in Southern Virginia!
and slightly more