Sometimes you end up really liking shows that you had no business watching in the first place. One great example of this for me is the Nuku Nuku TV show, which is really a kid's show, when you get right down to it. But it's just so darn cute and funny! And if you ever watch the show you will realize that there are so many songs, it almost qualifies as a musical. Granted, one of the benefits (from the perspective of the producers) of having tons of songs in your TV show is that you can sell lots of different soundtrack albums, which is just what Star Child did for the Nuku Nuku TV show. This album, the third soundtrack album for the show, actually has the background music and the opening and ending themes, making it more of a real soundtrack for the show than the first two albums, which were basically character song collections.

I should admit up front that the only reason I bought this album was to get the opening and ending songs, great examples of pure Megumi Hayashibara goodness. Now that my soul has been bared, let's get down to business.

If enjoying a kid's show about an android teenage girl with a cat's brain is wrong, I don't want to be right.

There are three general types of tracks here: the opening and ending themes, other vocal tracks (which appear in various episodes of the show), and true background music. The main theme songs are straight J-pop, and your mileage will vary depending on whether you like your music saccharinely sweet or not. If so, then you will like the tracks here, typical anime J-pop with heavy keyboard and electric guitar. Personally, I absolutely adore the ending theme, "oyasuminasai ashita wa ohayou," and can listen to it over and over again ad nauseum, but that's just me.

The other vocal tracks are not as good, and in fact I often skip over them while listening to this album. The singers cover the range of other members of Nuku Nuku's class (specifically the rich girl, Shirakaba, and her underlings; and Futaba, the class officer), the president of Mishima industries, and Nuku Nuku's teacher, as well as Nuku Nuku herself. Most of these songs are uninspired and boring, except for the Mishima president's song, which I personally find very funny, though that could be because it was used in a hilarious way in the actual show.

Sometimes the music makes even less sense than the show...

The actual background music is all over the place. Some is fairly serious (for the "heavy" moments before combat and the occasional sensitive moment), while some is downright ridiculous. There is little to actually tie it all together, and the album itself has a disjointed feel because of it. The music is almost exclusively produced on a keyboard, with the occasional electric guitar tossed in to spice things up. Sometimes the composer would get carried away and use too many funky sounds, with "nyan dakana" being the primary culprit in this regard. That track is actually somewhat painful to listen to; at least it's short. Still, some of the background tracks are quite pretty, such as "oyasuminasai," and many others are humorous, so there is enough good stuff to make for a generally pleasant listening experience. One thing that I noticed was that a lot of the background tracks sound very much like Noriyuki Iwadare's work on the Grandia video game series. I don't know what that really means, but that was the first thing that came to mind when I initially listened to this album, and I still find the resemblance very strong.

All told, while this isn't a bad album at all, it also isn't great, and you would have to be a significant fan of the Nuku Nuku TV show (like me) to pick up this album. If you are a fan, though, you will find enough good stuff here to make it a worthwhile purchase. Everyone else, save your money for something with more overall quality and consistency to it.