released 18 may 04 / last mod 01 jun 07 / greg goebel / public domain
* I really liked the original CAT GIRL NUKU NUKU anime series, which involved the adventures of the heroine of the title -- a really cute super-powered teen android with the cyber-augmented brain of a kittycat. Although the original NUKU NUKU was not brilliant by any means, it was always fun and even hilarious in places.
The original series only a ran to a few episodes, so I was hoping more might be made, while worrying a bit that new materials might not be as much fun as the old. This was borne out by the recent NUKU NUKU DASH! series, which rearranged the details of the original series substantially, essentially creating a different Nuku Nuku, and worst of all tried to take itself half-seriously, completely bogging down what humor there was in it.
I was then surprised to find that another NUKU NUKU series had been produced, this one for TV. On viewing the first volume of the NUKU NUKU TV (NNTV) series (featuring four episodes), it was a relief to find out that it used basically the original cute Nuku Nuku, though with some rearrangement of details, including a bit of cross-breeding with the DASH! series.
In NNTV, Nuku Nuku (AKA Atsuko Natsumi) was created by mad scientist Kyusaku Natsumi. Kyusaku's wife Akiko is an official for Mishima Corporation, which is run by a megalomaniac who likes to dress up in super-villain costumes and make his lieutenants do the same to hold secret meetings where they cackle evilly. Kyusaku and Akiko's son Ryonosuke is something of a cynical voice of reason in all the nonsense, and has a odd relationship with Nuku Nuku in which she is simultaneously his pet kittycat and his big sister.
It was nice to get the original Nuku Nuku back again in NNTV, and she's just as charming and goofy as she ever was, with her kittenish affections, catlike mannerisms, and cluelessness about humans. However, although the first episode on this DVD seemed to promise a lot of good fun, the later episodes were very disappointing, with dismal scriptwriting.
For example, Nuku Nuku goes to school and is given a supporting cast of a class full of eccentric students. That is a very good idea in itself, but nothing much is done with the students except parade their eccentricities around repeatedly. Case in point: one of the students is an aspiring musician who starts strumming on a guitar and singing in a bad voice every time something happens. This was not all that funny the first time around, and it was downright irritating after about the tenth time. It's the same for the rest of the story: a tendency to repeatedly belabor a weak joke. The production values are unimpressive and do nothing to relieve the thin scripts.
Possibly I was put off by the fact that I was also watching episodes of the TENCHI MUYO GXP series, which varies from sleazy to hilarious, and sometimes achieves both at the same time. However, I still think scriptwriting in NNTV would be weak for Saturday-morning cartoons, and it was ironic that the little "slide sequences" used to frame the commercial break were actually more entertaining than the stories. It was nice to see sweet little Nuku Nuku again, but it was sad that so little was done with her.