In the Beginning: The Story of Noah (1986)

Back in 2020 I wrote an initial post about a Japanese anime series Kyuuyaku Seisho Monogatari (In the Beginning) initiated by the renown director Tezuka Osamu. I meant to write up a few entries of the series, particularly the ones that almost included Nehemiah, but apparently never got around to it. However, now I'm doing a deep dive on adaptations of Noah, I thought now would be a good time to revisit that entry at. least, and maybe start the ball rolling with the others.

As it happens, The Story of Noah, is not a bad place to start, because it was the pilot and was finished around 1986, six years before the project came to completion. Although Tezuka continued to work on other episodes of In the Beginning, he died in 1989 and the series was completed without him. So, not only was The Story of Noah the pilot, it was possibly also the standard to which the others would be compared. 

In terms of tone, these are in the same ball park as many Bible-related animated adaptations. It's generally trying to offer a dramatised standard take on the text. Some bits are simplified (the animals only go in pairs, not fourteens for clean animals), more adult content is left out (the story doesn't get to Genesis 9 where Noah gets drunk and naked) and it adds in extra material to make the story work as drama.

For example, in Genesis Noah doesn't speak until after the aforementioned drunkenness, here the filmmakers give him and his family some dialogue in earlier scenes. We also see Noah being mocked and encountering opposition which is also not in the biblical account (or elsewhere as far as I recall). These things attempt to make the ancient text into a modern drama.

As this is a series, there's some harmonisation to make all the episodes feel similar. The most obvious example of this is a mischievous cartoon fox who appears in each episode, but perhaps a bigger issue is that such an approach essentially takes a range of texts written in quite different genres and standardises their tone. This reinforces the impression of univocality rather than the diversity of the biblical texts.

Overall (based on these episodes) the series seems is probably going for presenting a version of the texts most would be happy with and then trying to present it in such a way as to make it accessible for kids (without alienating adults). Given that, it's surprising that the episode starts by giving rather more attention to humanity's "wickedness" than most such child-orientated adaptations. The episode starts briefly touching on the Gen 6:1-4 about the sons of God having children by human women. There's also a brief shot of a naked woman's chest, which I don't think I've seen in any other Noah film.

There are some other visual innovations.  When Noah hears God tell him to build an ark he also sees a vision where it's sketched out in a white line drawing in the sky. The idea of Moses seeing a vision is one that emerges in later Jewish texts. When Noah tells his family what's happened there's some scepticism, especially from Ham. As the episode progresses Ham is consistently the one who is most likely to question, challenge or disagree with what Noah is doing. While the episode where Ham tells his brothers about their father's nakedness is not included, nor Noah's resulting curse upon Ham's son Cush, this seems to be at least a nod to it. Ham is perhaps the off-white sheep of the family.

The biblical text, doesn't actually say how long it took to build the ark, with some suggesting it took more than 100 years, or that Noah had time to first grow the trees he would use to build it. Here, it takes 7 days a number that's agrees with the Mesopotamian pre-cursors to the biblical flood story. This gives Noah's neighbours plenty of time to mock Noah, his wife and her sons (this is an idea that is developed more in the New Testament and the Qu'ran) and this forms quite an extended sequence. Some of Noah's neighbours also discuss sabotaging the ark, an idea found in texts such as Tanchuma Noach.

Like many child-orientated Noah products in popular culture (as well as animated shorts, I'm thinking of the popular ark playsets) there are attempts to lighten the mood. For example, there is a big focus on the animals arriving and the family's wonder at all these strange beasts. There are also some moments of humour here, skunks, Ham asking the scorpions not to bite him, octopodes riding on the back of a turtle etc.

When the flood finally comes we see both rain falling from the sky and water coming from the deep. This is part of the text that modern readers often overlook but seems to derive from the ancient worldview from which these texts emerged, and the idea that something fundamental changed the geology and physical processes by which the earth runs.

The flood scene doesn't shy away from the fact that people are losing their lives, including a Danby-esque scene of survivors clinging to a rock. Shem and his wife even lament the death of the people they knew. It also looks like the cross-series fox is without a partner and he is rejected by the other animals as he tries to find the female fox. Noah's sons are also unhappy about the lone-fox surviving. As are the rabbits who it tracks down, planning to eat them. I'll avoid spoiling how these various fox related story lines resolve themselves, as it's the only part of the story which is not from the text of Genesis.

It's not only the fox who ends up hungry. By the time the rain stops and the boat lands, the family has gone without food for several days and the animals are looking similarly peckish. This isn't an angle I've seen explored before. Shem and his wife discuss the possibility of farming the animals once things are back to normal, but we're not told about Noah going on to plant a vineyard or of his agricultural innovations. The family's story ends with Noah's sacrifice, God's promises and the rainbow.

Overall this is definitely one of the better animated takes on the story, perhaps not surprising given Tezuka's reputation. I'm not sure if/when I'll get round to writing about the rest of the series, but if/when I do I hope those entries completed after Tezuka's death continue in the manner of this pilot entry.