All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku

Nuku Nuku TV retells the story of our favourite cat-brain androbot from the direct-to-video 6-part series. They make a joke of this in the opening sequence where Ryu is holding onto the tapes from the OVA series. As before Nuku Nuku is an android with the brain of a cat which means she has trouble adapting to human society. The show is a high-school comedy but seems aimed a younger audience so older fans from before will be disappointed. I have seen all TV episodes and it is not quite as good as the OVA version.

Being a TV show the budget is less so the quality of the pictures is a little inferior to the original series. One plus is the music. I have the soundtrack CD and there are lots of catchy tunes from the show on it. It seems like everyone gets a song to sing not just the lead Megume Hayashibara. The stories are generally about monsters of the week created by Mishima Industries. In this series the head of Mishima is actively trying to cause trouble which is the reason why Mr. Kyusaku created Nuku Nuku. As before the son Ryunusuke is overly mature to make up for the crazy antics of his mother Miss Akiko and his father Mr. Kyusaku. This series is definitely worth a rental if you liked the original series but I would rate it "B" and the first series "A".

Unlike this atrocity, the original OVA is great - not groundbreaking cinema, but a modest, if guilty, pleasure. But even watching the subs on this one won't save you. It wallows in it's own clichés until it awkwardly tries to mimic the original, and you can't go more than a minute without a character outright announcing their motivation. In the end, it fluctuates between trying to be a parody and apologizing profusely for falling short even as a parody.

If you've watched and enjoyed the original, this is uncomfortably like seeing the body of a departed loved one hoisted up on strings and made to dance to music out of a hentai flick.