Review: ALL PURPOSE CULTURAL CAT GIRL NUKU NUKU

This is a manga release I suspect most of you didn't even know existed.  As we'll see, maybe there's a good reason for that.

ALL PURPOSE CULTURAL CAT GIRL NUKU NUKU (Banno Bunka Nekomusume), by Yuzo Takada and Yuji Moriyama.  First published in 1998 and first published in North America in 2004.

PLOT:

Late one Christmas Eve, young Ryunosuke and his scientist father Kyusaku discover an injured cat.  Ryunosuke begs his father to save the cat, which Kyusaku does by implanting its brain into a prototype android body.  Now she is Nuku Nuku, a teen girl with the strength of a robot and the instincts of a cat.  All she wants to do is please her newfound family, even if it means dealing with school trips, alien cats, and Kyusaku's ex-wife.

Review: THE LEGEND OF MOTHER SARAH

It's time for yet another Old School Month here at the Manga Test Drive, and we're digging deep into the Dark Horse library to dig up a forgotten story from one of manga's most legendary creators.

THE LEGEND OF MOTHER SARAH (Sara), by Katsuhiro Otomo with art by Takumi Nagayasu.  First published in 1990 and first published in North America in 1996.

PLOT:

In the future, nuclear devastation has driven humanity to space stations in low orbit.  A civil war broke out between those who wanted to stay in space and those who wanted to use an experimental bomb to reboot Earth's ecosystem and were unafraid to bomb those space stations to prove their point.

Only a small portion of humanity made it back to Earth, struggling to survive in this post-apocalyptic world.  One of those survivors is Sarah, who wanders the world in the hopes of finding the children she lost during the evacuation.  In the process, she finds herself in a mining town ruled by a tyrant.  There, water is just as precious as gold and there are plenty who would fight to control them both.