All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku
Encyclopedia
is a Japanese single-volume manga
series written and illustrated by Yuzo Takada
and serialized in Weekly Manga Action
. The manga was released as a single volume in December 1997. The story begins when genius inventor Kyusaku Natsume transplants the brain of a cat found by his son Ryunosuke on Christmas Eve, into a schoolgirl android that he created and subsequently stole from his former employer, Mishima Heavy Industries (owned by his estranged wife and Ryunosuke's mother, Akiko Natsume). The result, Nuku Nuku (also known as Atsuko Natsume
), is a nekomusume or cat girl
. The manga was licensed by ADV Manga and published as a single volume on August 24, 2004.
Cat Girl Nuku Nuku has been adapted into two OVA
series and one television anime
series. All three anime adaptations were also licensed in North America
by ADV Films. An English language
version of the OVA was released by Crusader Video in the United Kingdom
on VHS featuring regional accents. ADV's English language release was shown on PBS
affiliate KTEH
San Jose along with Generator Gawl
and City Hunter
.
Two episodes also deal with a one-sided war between Nuku Nuku and another android named Eimi, who suffers from an over-the-top inferiority complex and envies Nuku Nuku's more stable design. As it stands, Eimi was made after her and seeks to transfer her programming into Nuku Nuku to ditch her own body, which Akiko calls "a piece of junk." In spite of Eimi being more emotionally unstable than Nuku Nuku, both their fights end in a draw.
Ryunosuke Natsume
Kyusaku Natsume
Akiko Natsume
Arisa Sono and Kyouko Ariyoshi
Eimi Yoshikawa
by ADV Manga. It was serialized in Weekly Manga Action
. It was created by Yuzo Takada and originally contained three chapters which focused on Nuku Nuku trying to be a human after her brain was transferred into an android. The manga was licensed by ADV Manga and published as a single volume on August 24, 2004 with the name All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku.
series and one television anime
series. The first OVA adaptation, All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku, was directed by Yoshio Ishiwata and released in Japan as six individual episodes on both VHS
and Laserdisc
during 1992. An English language
version of the OVA was released by Crusader Video in the United Kingdom
featuring regional accents. A Masturbation
scene was removed prior to release.
Spanning fourteen episodes, the full anime
adaptation, Nuku Nuku, was directed by Yoshitaka Fujimoto. It premiered in Japan on January 7, 1998 and ran until March 25, 1998. It introduces new characters and makes several changes to the manga story line.
The third adaptation was a 12-episode OVA series called All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku DASH! and also directed by Yoshitaka Fujimoto. It was released on DVD
in three volumes from September 23, 1998 to December 23, 1998.
All three anime adaptations were also licensed in North America
by ADV Films.
Manga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
series written and illustrated by Yuzo Takada
Yuzo Takada
is the pseudonym of , a popular Japanese manga artist. He worked as an assistant for manga artist Fujihiko Hosono before starting his career as an original author...
and serialized in Weekly Manga Action
Weekly Manga Action
is a Japanese seinen manga magazine pushlished on a weekly basis by Futabasha since 7 July 1967.-Currently serialized:Listed alphabetically.*Bar Lemon Heart...
. The manga was released as a single volume in December 1997. The story begins when genius inventor Kyusaku Natsume transplants the brain of a cat found by his son Ryunosuke on Christmas Eve, into a schoolgirl android that he created and subsequently stole from his former employer, Mishima Heavy Industries (owned by his estranged wife and Ryunosuke's mother, Akiko Natsume). The result, Nuku Nuku (also known as Atsuko Natsume
Atsuko Natsume
Atsuko Natsume, known as Nuku Nuku , is the main protagonist of the All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku OVA, TV series, and DASH OVA. In the DASH series, Atsuko is named Atsuko Higuchi, rather than Atsuko Natsume, but retains the Nuku Nuku nickname...
), is a nekomusume or cat girl
Catgirl
A catgirl is a female character with cat traits, such as cat ears, a cat tail, or other feline characteristics on an otherwise human body. Catgirls are found in various fiction genres, and in particular Japanese anime and manga where they are more commonly referred to as Neko or Nekomimi , in...
. The manga was licensed by ADV Manga and published as a single volume on August 24, 2004.
Cat Girl Nuku Nuku has been adapted into two OVA
Original video animation
, abbreviated as media , are animated films and series made specially for release in home-video formats. The term originated in relation to Japanese animation...
series and one television anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
series. All three anime adaptations were also licensed in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
by ADV Films. An English language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
version of the OVA was released by Crusader Video in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
on VHS featuring regional accents. ADV's English language release was shown on PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
affiliate KTEH
KTEH
KQEH is a public television station in San Jose, California, serving the San Francisco Bay Area as a PBS member station on channel 54. The station is owned by Northern California Public Broadcasting with sister-stations KQED in San Francisco and KQET in Watsonville, the latter mirroring KQED.Until...
San Jose along with Generator Gawl
Generator Gawl
is a 1998 12-part anime series. The story is set in 2007, when Professor Takuma Nekasa uncovers a gene code that will unlock the human body's greatest mystery and expose mankind to its greatest threat. As a result, Gawl, Koji, and Ryo—three young scientists from a future period—have traveled back...
and City Hunter
City Hunter
is a hardboiled manga series written and illustrated by Tsukasa Hojo, published by Shueisha in the Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1985 to 1991. The manga was adapted into an animated television series by Sunrise Studios in 1987...
.
Plot
The plot generally focuses on the custody battle for Ryunosuke and the attempts by Akiko and Mishima Heavy Industries to reclaim Nuku Nuku's body, which often involves amusingly larger-than-life battles between Nuku Nuku and military hardware produced by Mishima Heavy Industries.Two episodes also deal with a one-sided war between Nuku Nuku and another android named Eimi, who suffers from an over-the-top inferiority complex and envies Nuku Nuku's more stable design. As it stands, Eimi was made after her and seeks to transfer her programming into Nuku Nuku to ditch her own body, which Akiko calls "a piece of junk." In spite of Eimi being more emotionally unstable than Nuku Nuku, both their fights end in a draw.
Characters
Atsuko 'Nuku Nuku' NatsumeAtsuko Natsume
Atsuko Natsume, known as Nuku Nuku , is the main protagonist of the All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku OVA, TV series, and DASH OVA. In the DASH series, Atsuko is named Atsuko Higuchi, rather than Atsuko Natsume, but retains the Nuku Nuku nickname...
- The defacto protagonist and title character. Nuku Nuku started out as just a stray cat Ryunosuke stumbled upon taking a leak while on the run with his father Kyusaku after retrieving (stealing) a prototype android of Kyusaku's own design to keep it from being sold off to the military by Ryu's mother Akiko. The stray cat was shot in the crossfire short by Akiko's henchwomen quickly after Ryu was allowed to keep the cat as a christmas present. In a moment of brilliance Kyusaku put the dying cat's brain into the android, giving the feline sapience and the android emotions. Nuku Nuku considers Ryu her brother and Akiko and Kyusaku her parents though she is fully aware of her origins. Nearly indestructible, she acts as Ryu's, and her own, bodyguard keeping from being reclaimed by the near dementedly overprotective Akiko. Relatively new to the world, Nuku Nuku acts childish at times, and is still easily distracted by stereotypical feline things like mice, but shows a sincere desire to evolve and grow. In spite of her situations, she harbors no ill will towards Akiko or just about anyone, but is more than willing to resort to violence when push comes to shove. To help create the pretense of a normal life she attends high school.
Ryunosuke Natsume
- The son of a brilliant if absent minded scientist and the over protective CEO of a Japan's number one weapon's manufacturer, Ryu manages to take it all in stride and enjoys the times where he's able to squeeze in a normal life and quality time with either of his parents. He loves Nuku Nuku as a sister, but is agitated when his father brushes off her blunders as 'just being a cat' when at the same time granting her the respect and responsibilities of a human being. Ryu was the one who found the stray cat that would eventually become Nuku Nuku. Ryu is fully aware of how warped his mother can be, but still cares for her all the same (but still prefers to live with his father over his mother's smothering affection).
Kyusaku Natsume
- The brilliant, if quite eccentric, scientist who created a prototype android with funding from his wife's company. However, with the amount of cash being dumped into the project he realized that his android would be sold off as a weapon. Having no desire to aid his wife's weapon's research he fled with his son in tow. He and his wife are not technically divorced and will still chat and bicker like any married couple when the chance arises. He created add-ons for Nuku Nuku on at least one occasion to outfit her for unique situations.
Akiko Natsume
- CEO of Japan's biggest military contractor, and a obsessively protective mother, Akiko's greatest goals are to reclaim Ryunosuke from her husband and to capture Nuku Nuku in order to reverse engineer her. Because of the delicate nature of the information about Nuku Nuku's existence she does not try to legally reclaim Ryu' but instead relies on numerous abduction attempts by her two henchwomen Arisa and Kyouko. In spite of her borderline-demented attitude and love of firepower, she does indeed love Ryunosuke and only wants what's best for him. That said, all else is business to her, and is frighteningly ruthless and manipulativePsychological manipulationPsychological manipulation is a type of social influence that aims to change the perception or behavior of others through underhanded, deceptive, or even abusive tactics. By advancing the interests of the manipulator, often at the other's expense, such methods could be considered exploitative,...
to get what she wants and was even willing to turn a blind eye to Nuku Nuku when the cat girl was working at a restaurant her company owned.
Arisa Sono and Kyouko Ariyoshi
- and Akiko's two loyal henchwomen, they spearhead the attacks on Nuku Nuku and frequently suffer the consequences. Arisa is the more violent of the two and prefers to use weapons in order to get her way, something which Kyouko tries to restrain.
Eimi Yoshikawa
- An android built in the image of the deceased granddaughter of Kyusaku Natsume's mentor, Eimi is emotionally, mentally, and physically unstable. Built in the image of a girl around Ryu's age, Eimi's activation resulted in an explosion that killed her grandfather leaving her legally the property of Akiko's company. Suffering from multiple sources of psychological trauma on top (or maybe because of) of her faulty design, Eimi's single fixation is taking Nuku Nuku's body for herself. (Eimi's own body doomed to detonate if pushed beyond its limit due a faulty or perhaps non-existent cooling system.) Eimi openly admits she has no idea how to download her OS into Nuku Nuku's hardware (not knowing Nuku Nuku's brain is biological and not software driven like Eimi's own), but is driven by a lack of a better plan and a superiority-inferiority complex she suffers from Nuku Nuku. Nuku Nuku for her part would love nothing more than to be Eimi's friend. Eimi admitted to having feelings for Ryu, but brushed off her own emotions as meaningless since like everything else about her is just a software parlor trick, and wrote an apology to Ryu for feeling such 'fake' emotions towards him. A drama queen and an irrepressible hot-head, Eimi is able to think ahead and be clever but often lets her own impatience get the better of her.
Manga
The manga is published in EnglishEnglish language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
by ADV Manga. It was serialized in Weekly Manga Action
Weekly Manga Action
is a Japanese seinen manga magazine pushlished on a weekly basis by Futabasha since 7 July 1967.-Currently serialized:Listed alphabetically.*Bar Lemon Heart...
. It was created by Yuzo Takada and originally contained three chapters which focused on Nuku Nuku trying to be a human after her brain was transferred into an android. The manga was licensed by ADV Manga and published as a single volume on August 24, 2004 with the name All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku.
Anime
Cat Girl Nuku Nuku has been adapted into two OVAOriginal video animation
, abbreviated as media , are animated films and series made specially for release in home-video formats. The term originated in relation to Japanese animation...
series and one television anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
series. The first OVA adaptation, All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku, was directed by Yoshio Ishiwata and released in Japan as six individual episodes on both VHS
VHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
and Laserdisc
Laserdisc
LaserDisc was a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium. Initially licensed, sold, and marketed as MCA DiscoVision in North America in 1978, the technology was previously referred to interally as Optical Videodisc System, Reflective Optical Videodisc, Laser Optical...
during 1992. An English language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
version of the OVA was released by Crusader Video in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
featuring regional accents. A Masturbation
Masturbation
Masturbation refers to sexual stimulation of a person's own genitals, usually to the point of orgasm. The stimulation can be performed manually, by use of objects or tools, or by some combination of these methods. Masturbation is a common form of autoeroticism...
scene was removed prior to release.
Spanning fourteen episodes, the full anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
adaptation, Nuku Nuku, was directed by Yoshitaka Fujimoto. It premiered in Japan on January 7, 1998 and ran until March 25, 1998. It introduces new characters and makes several changes to the manga story line.
The third adaptation was a 12-episode OVA series called All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku DASH! and also directed by Yoshitaka Fujimoto. It was released on DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
in three volumes from September 23, 1998 to December 23, 1998.
All three anime adaptations were also licensed in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
by ADV Films.