Catgirl Nuku Nuku: Hilarity, Sadness and Catgirls

It should be noted that some things become popular for a reason. An enduring premise as simple as the loving bond between a boy and his pet have been the driving force behind many pieces of popular fiction.

But let's be honest, a catgirl is much more enticing.


(A fun AMV using mostly clips from the OAVs, Nuku at her finest.)

So I recently completed my All Purpose Cultural Catgirl Nuku Nuku collection and my gripe meter just spiked from irritation to pure fucking rage.

When I decided to stop being a stick in the mud, I picked up the TV series and shortly before it arrived I bought Nuku Nuku Dash. In my elation, I held off on Dash so I could watch the series in production order and... that was a mistake. In fact, everything past the OAV was a mistake.

Let's go over why this particular franchise spins around in my guts like glass shards...


(ADV Films Trailer for the Nuku Nuku OAV series)

All Purpose Cutural Catgirl Nuku (OAV)

Trial separations can really hurt a family dynamic. It puts a strain on the bond between the parents and creates a conflict over control of the children. Sometimes their necessary to find common ground and let love heal any wounds or gaps in their relationship.

Sometimes you need to drive faster when an attack jet is chasing your car.

In this case, the harm is pretty obvious when Kyusaku, a scruffy scientist escapes the clutches of his death merchant wife, Akiko, with their son, Ryunosuke, and his latest invention: a nearly indestructible combat android. On Christmas Eve Ryunnosuke adopts a friendly cat while the guys take a short break while on the run from Akiko, but her thugs cut the kitty's life short when they hose down the Kyusaku & Ryunosuke's car with machine gun fire. Or do they? Kyusaku, in order to appease his son, installs the brain of the fallen kitty into the unbelievably powerful cyborg body.

Some time later, the cat now calls herself Nuku Nuku, but her "legal" name is Atsuko Natsume and she's clearly become their maid and sole caretaker as neither Ryunosuke nor Kyusaku can function without her. Her casing is unusually attractive, a point that Akiko keeps pointing out with alarm and jealousy, it's also worth noting that each and every boy she encounters becomes smitten with her.

At it's core Catgirl Nuku Nuku is a poor man's Project A-ko featuring a hopelessly demented specimen of snaggletoothed, eccentric jailbait who is really a deadly battle robot that a well-meaning, but clearly deranged scientist cobbled together to placate his mourning son after the murder of his newly adopted pet kitten by jet-flying thugs sent by the boy's mother.

That's right! It's a cat brain transplanted into a powerful robot body coated in the attractive shell of a buxom teenage girl and when she's made into a determining factor of a violent custody battle between a mad scientist (Kyusaku, Ryo's Dad) and the cutthroat owner/manager of a global death machine manufacturer (Akiko, Ryo's mom), hilarity ensues! The classic image of a diminutive, attractive schoolgirl dismembering giant robots and sneaking off make mischief and eat fish sets the tone for the OAV's entirety and when you see it, you'll understand why this series endured for so long and why they were able to green-light two awful spin-offs.

The best part is how it stayed true to its origins in Yuzo Takada's one-shot manga, he's the mind behind 3x3 Eyes and Blue Seed. My favorite aspect of that is his artwork is beautifully represented in the original OAV. It takes some mild artistic interpretation, but it's magnificently consistent in its visual style, storyline and provides a consistent delivery of laughs.

It's legendary in Anime nerd circles and Nuku practically defines an Otaku dream girl with a body she's not shy about showing off and a ditzy, sweet personality that's hard not to like. Just like Blue Seed and 3x3 Eyes, this is another essential part of any worthwhile anime collection that Yuzo Takada masterminded.


(Opening for Nuku Nuku TV)

Nuku Nuku TV

A terrible mistake made horribly real.

Off the bat you'll notice they threw out the Yuzo Takada's character designs, but borrowed heavily from them (the same Character designs find their way into Dash as well). You'll also notice the massive divebomb in visual quality from the OAV, this also carries over in Dash.

The basic framework of the original story is... sort of there except that there's inadequate strife within the home to draw you in. In fact there's NOTHING to draw you in like the OAV did. Ryunnosuke is now a mean, spiteful little shit who picks on Nuku Nuku all the time, Akiko is living with the family and works for a new character called "Hell Mishima" wherein she works late nights dressed up as a villainous power ranger bondage queen. Nuku is borderline retarded and has an origin akin to Megaman; essentially, the TV show claims she was made to fight Mishima Industries... making the cat brain a conscious decision in construction rather than an endearing fuck up by  Ryo's Dad who dresses up similarly to Tuxdeo Mask to foil the plans of his wife's employer by cover of night.

They aimed for laughs, but the problem is that they aimed too low, too fast. The whole thing feels like it was produced in a hurry and edited heavily post production so they could bleed out introductions to fill airtime. They don't build up anything and can barely focus on the gags they try to set up, it's like they stack up Jenga blocks and then intentionally walk away. I've watched its entirety and I have gotten a few laughs out of it, but there's no room for timing and as a result the comedy burns itself out before it can find closure to a gag.

In an unusual twist for ADV, the Dub is actually kind of painful to endure, it mostly has to do with them trying to keep with the super fast dialogue erupting forth constantly. It's not like Excel Saga where the dialogue has meaning as part of ranting character or fast-paced dialogue that some clear meaning to both the scene and story as a whole, most of the dialogue is actually a means to keep track of which characters are in a scene akin to taking attendance in class.

By comparison, the Japanese audio is comparatively palatable, but it doesn't make it funny or interesting when the literal parade of B and C list characters crowd Nuku off the fucking screen. Seriously, the biggest detriment to the show is the new cast of characters tacked on for no reason AT ALL. Their appearance basically requires much of each episode to be dedicated to their moments of being accounted for in a scene that NONE of the chatty extras can resolve. The other students appear spouting a tagline or spew some awful blathering befitting their stereotype (folk singer sings all his lines, spoiled brat spouts rich brat lines, creepy fortuneteller spouts ominous fortunes, etc.) and through about half the series they actually put the brakes on the scene for a few seconds while seizure inducing characters fill the screen introducing the same character... again. And again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again.

By the time they're done re-introducing the characters who have no bearing on the overall story (such as it is) and they've belted out their pointless lines, they've actually eaten up a substantial run time of the episode. Nothing is developed, EVER and the methods used to introduce an issue and then completely resolve the same issue could have been done in five minutes and still have as little impact on the episode (and the series as a whole), but instead they're bled out dreadfully as the main cast (mostly Nuku) gets interrupted as much as humanly possible by these cardboard cut-out caricatures on their way to unsatisfying closure.

I watched in horror wondering how this got funding and I still writhe in agony over how something so awful could be produced. Worse still, how the same asstard behind it was signed on for the Dash series...


 (Opening for Nuku Nuku Dash)

Nuku Nuku Dash - So the same rat bastard who messed up the TV series suckered his way into making ANOTHER TV show into a Power Ranger-ish bastardization.
 In this short series you'll find the same trademarked title idiocy from the TV series (Son calls his Dad Mister Kyusaku and his Mother Miss Akiko, what the fuck is that all about?). Also the term "androbot" comes back along with members of the awful TV show's cast, but the BIG difference is that young Ryunnosuke is now a hot-blooded teenager who is horny as hell for his family's amnesiac houseguest, Nuku Nuku. While members of the original cast populate their original roles... mostly, the show is heavily populated by a generic mishmash of the original OAV characters and the TV characters.

On the plus side, there's a story in play. I'm not saying that it isn't a horrible pile of shit, but I am saying that unlike the random, and pointless nonsense that comprised the TV series there is a clear story that flows through the show. The evil Mishima corporation is now run by a trio of sinister old men that search the company records for fodder to throw at luring out and collecting a missing robot: Nuku Nuku, who is staying incognito as a young woman with amnesia by day and fighting the unfortunate idiots sent to smoke her out by night. Nuku stays under the same roof as the Natsume family (Akiko, Kyusaku & Ryunnosuke) where Kyusaku tries to hack into her programming in the basement when no one's home and Ryunnosuke simply lusts for her at all times, but is unable to make a move on her due to being a unusually pathetic Japanese loser who actually cries when she willingly walks in naked to scrub his back in the bath. For those of you wondering what happened, he ran out of the bathtub and spent the night crying so loud that even the neighbors knew what happened.

Anyway, Dash's distinction is that it feigns seriousness. What I mean by this is that characters die during the course of the story and there are very heavy consequences to be weighed, but that's usually an afterthought because this was made for all the stammering nerds who need to see someone else fail at even basic socialization with the fairer sex. Much of the show is dedicated to Ryo's pathetic gibbering fantasies and the head injuries he receives while walking, riding or running in the midst of them as he yearns for Nuku's affections and ruins every single chance he could have with her.

To spice up that angst, there's the family drama where Akiko works for Evil Incorporated and Kyusaku is looking to take it apart from the inside using Nuku. Things get interesting when clones and Nuku's sister come out to play near the end, but the buildup was so slow and sloppy that nothing is really yielded from the effort of putting up with it for the show's entirety and the ending itself is so disappointingly ambiguous and creepy that is actually makes me pissed off. It's completely incapable of wielding any one of the elements it tries juggling with any effectiveness: The romance falls flat and feels rather perverse being that it's all in one guy's head, the action is stilted and hinges on gimmicks power rangers would be ashamed of, the comedy is poorly timed and interferes with every other aspect of the show and trying to tie it into the Nuku Nuku franchise seems to have done more harm than good.

I love the OAV series that kicked things off, but the two series that followed tarnish an otherwise good name for the sake of brand recognition, in their effort to keep attention to the name alive they try forcing a square peg through a round hole. The one awesome thing I can take note of is that throughout the entirety of the franchise while in ADV's hands the series had consistent voice casting and to their credit the voice acting is outstanding, but you can't polish a turd and the latter two are verily turds.