Lamb Seed
This is one of those complex situations.
The problem: there's a Japanese animation studio
working right now on an adaptation of Christopher Moore's book Lamb. Sort of a miniseries, really: imagine a Hercules:
TLJ-style take and you won't be all that far off. To give you an idea, the pilot episode
involves hang-gliders (Jesus' looks just like a cross), a wisecracking Biff
whose drawn to look just like Gregory Hines (assuming that Gregory Hines ever
wore Roman-derived armor and carried a sword... well, yeah, he did, didn't he?)
and a villain who had been at the temple when Jesus scourged it out; his facial
scar throbs whenever Jesus is around, complete with visions and a direct steal
of that riff from Kill Bill.
However, there's no indication so far that Hell's directly involved,
except of course in that special sense that Nybbas is never more than seven
links away from just about any example of the Media - so there's a clear shot
and everything. All of this is the
simple part.
The complicated part is that the program... well,
from all the indications so far the show is going to be pretty good. Not just 'good', stylistically speaking;
good in a profoundly moral sense.
The scripts so far have been respectful to the core beliefs of
Christianity, with a special emphasis on attempting to reconcile them to
similar concepts from Shinto and Buddhism; it may not have much effect on the
target audience in Japan, but Marc and Jean's statisticians are predicting a
reasonable rise in regular church-going among the anime demographic within six
months of its penetration into the American market. That was enough to get Laurence's attention; the Archangel of the
Sword will swallow hang-gliders for the sake of something that can actually get
the Beatitudes reverberating in a human male's head.
Needless to say, this animation studio needs
protection - fast. It's unclear whether
Nybbas would be interested in the situation as is - the Prince of the Media
doesn't have infinite resources, and making sure that infinite amounts of pap
gets generated takes up most of them - but once the studio stops looking like
an amusing backwater and starts looking like a bridgehead for Heaven, well,
Servitors of the Media at least will start doing the entire antibody shtick. Assaults on the local agents of the Host
first, of course, then escalating to harassment of the studio and culminating
in a scorched-earth policy; better to explain to Nybbas why a piece of his
empire isn't there anymore than to explain why the Host is still in possession
of it. Marc's people will be available
to help with a good deal of this, but they aren't going to be handle it all -
knife fights in alleys aren't really their style, and the Other Side will not
be shy about hiring heavy hitters. The
only bright spot is that Disturbance will not be in anybody's interest until
the situation becomes sticky enough to attract Nybbas' personal attention, so
at first there won't be anything too flamboyant going on.
When it comes down to it, things will probably be a
race to see whether the Media can destroy the studio before the Host can tease
something useful out of it - but if it can be protected for long enough,
there's a chance that it might be the indigestible lump around which to launch
a true campaign to break Nybbas' stranglehold upon the entertainment
industry. Pulling that off is
precisely the sort of thing that would cause any number of Archangels (and,
truth be told, a Prince or two) to gift brave Servitors with an open hand...