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 This Book is fun! Super Book, or Anime Oyako Gekijō ("Animated Parent and Child Theater") in the original Japanese, was a Japanese-American tag-team effort to try to show stories from the Old and New Testament of the Judeo-Christian Bible to Japanese children. Originally, it was for Japan only (no one thought anime was marketable in the West back then), but a positive response at a French convention led to an English dub in the United States of America.The set-up went something like this:The series focuses on the adventures of Christopher (Chris) Peeper and his best friend Joy. During the first episode, Christopher's father, an eccentric college professor who seems to specialize in Biblical archaeology, tells Christopher to clean out the attic, as it has gotten severely cluttered and messy. While Chris and Joy are working on the attic, some boxes fall over, and a strange book falls out of one of them.Taking the book to Chris's bedroom and failing to open it on their own, Christopher and Joy are startled to see a blinding light coming from it as it opens itself. Things then get even stranger; the book starts talking to them, identifying itself as the eponymous Super Book. The book explains that it contains many stories inside, and that they need only peer into it to experience them.Thus begin Chris and Joy's adventurers. Once an Episode, they travel within Super Book to experience one of the Biblical stories it contains, accompanied by Chris's toy robot Gizmo, who becomes a fully functioning robot during their adventures. Though they often interact with the Biblical characters themselves (at one point, they even try to stop Abraham from sacrificing Isaac), they primarily observe the stories, learning from them the lessons each tale has to teach.Surprisingly, it was good. The creators did their best to keep true to the original stories as best as they could while still keeping it appropriate for kids. The Biblical characters, while often one-shots, were still given good characterization. And, importantly, the producers tried to illustrate the stories that showcased God's love and mercy, rather than focusing exclusively on the judgment and wrath part.The second series (Superbook II, or Pasokon Travel Tanteidan) took place two years after the first and had Super Book accidentally fall on a computer keyboard. This somehow transferred Super Book's powers to the computer, allowing anyone who wanted to see into the past. Unfortunately, Chris' dog Ruffles accidentally gets lost in time in the process. To find her, Chris' cousin Uriah (Uri for short) and Gizmo (now a fully functioning robot even outside Super Book, with a built-in computer for recall purposes) regularly travel back in time to find her, adding an overarching plot arc to the second series.There was also a third, separate series called Flying House that focused more on stories from the New Testament, primarily the ministry of Jesus Christ.Most of the tropes that apply are tropes from The Bible. The ones listed here focus primarily on the original cast, the series, its premise, and any other characterization tropes not on The Bible page.There's a new version of this that uses CGI.This series provides examples of:
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0 reviews alternative title(s): Superbook
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