released 24 jan 04 / last mod 01 jun 07 / greg goebel / public domain
* I was something of a fan of the original CAT GIRL NUKU NUKU anime series, which envisioned the heroine of the title as a very cute super-powerful android with the cyber-augmented brain of a kittycat. While the original NUKU NUKU was not a great work of art by any means, it was a great deal of fun, consistently charming and goofy, and even hilarious at times.
As a result, when I saw that a new series -- NUKU NUKU DASH! -- had been released, I had mixed feelings. It would be nice to get more of the adorable Nuku Nuku, the original series only running six episodes, but I was afraid that the new series would not be as inspired as the original, since good comedy is one of the most difficult things to produce.
The NUKU NUKU DASH! series generally rearranges the elements of the original series. In the original, mad scientist Kyusaku, creator of Nuku Nuku, was at odds with his estranged wife, Akiko, president of Mishima Industries, while their gradeschool son, Ryonosuke, acted as a voice of common sense when the fighting grew too intense. In NUKU NUKU DASH! they're all one happy family, the Natsumis, with Kyusaku and Akiko fighting on occasion but Kyusaku generally ending up carrying Akiko in his arms to the bedroom, while Ryonosuke is a junior high kid. Akiko now works for Mishima Industries, which is a sinister organization run by literally shadowy figures.
The original Nuku Nuku was a redhead with a kittenishly exhuberant and affectionate personality, plus a certain ignorance of how the real world works, being basically a kittycat after all. The new Nuku Nuku has pale green hair and a pleasant but somewhat bland, insecure, and still basically ignorant, personality, until she shifts to "combat mode", becoming a spandex-clad superheroine with a mission to "protect life". Ryonosuke is crazy about Nuku Nuku but unaware of her superpowered alter-ego.
The evident thing about NUKU NUKU DASH! is that it takes itself more seriously than the original NUKU NUKU series, trying to tell an extended story instead of just jumping through something along the lines of various Looney Tunes adventures. The problem is that it is somewhat difficult to take a story about a super-powered android with a cat personality very seriously.
Ryonosuke's frustrated attempts to get close to the clueless Nuku Nuku get tiresome quickly; Kyusaku is nowhere near as much fun as he was when he was basically crazy; and such humor as exists is mostly hamfisted pratfalls. NUKU NUKU DASH! also ramps up the "jiggle vision", which gets downright annoying. I was happy to see the duo of Arisa and Kyouku, in the original series Akiko's hilariously inept flunkies, introduced in the last episode of this DVD, but it turned out the two characters were oddly scrambled together, sort of like they had been in a matter transporter accident together, and did little more than act like 100% morons and hit each other. In the original series they were just smart enough to be dangerous (as well as extremely funny).
The original NUKU NUKU series, like I said, was no great work of art, with mediocre production values, and as far as the production values of NUKU NUKU DASH! go, they're comparable. However, NUKU NUKU DASH! seems to have decided that everything that made the original series fun had to be removed. A hardcore anime fan might find NUKU NUKU DASH! watchable. As for myself, when I got to the fourth and last episode on this DVD, I was glad to be done with it. I would have gone through it faster if I'd managed to figure out how to get the fast-forward on my new DVD player working more effectively.