Color me impressed. This boxset is a collection of almost all of the legendary Japanese hardcore band Nunchaku's discography: all three of their albums in deluxe editions, with era-sensitive bonus tracks and uncensored versions of songs bleeped on their original CD issues, with a bonus DVD containing a few live shows, music videos, and videos of the band eating together and shooting the shit to serve as interludes. All of it is packaged in this enormous DVD-sized set with beautiful matte-printed artwork.
The first album on this set, their self-titled album from 1995, is a good starting point. It features incredibly rough production, a mainstay of underground hardcore punk, especially of bands' earliest efforts. The rough production amplifies the intensity of the simplistic material here rather well. The one previously-censored song on this album is "３コードで悪いか", which also seems to be uncensored on Howling Bull's Best Of Nunchaku 1993-1998 release, and on the album's LP issue.
Next up is their 1996 sophomore effort Nunchakura, the only album I have a separate original issue of outside of this set. Although this features far better production, it doesn't detract from the faster, harder edged material here-- of particular note is their K.C.H.C. anthem "マラダイス", which had its own music video, included on this set's bonus DVD. The one previously-censored song on this album is "はけ口ドール", which I was actually able to compare to the original edit, but I couldn't hear the censored profanity myself.
Finally on the table is their 1997 album Ichirufubuku. This album sounds like Nunchakura part two, but I don't mind, to be perfectly honest. The title track has an intense breakdown where higher-pitched vocalist Kuni Okada unleashes some wonderfully vicious vocals, making me wonder why Tatsuro Mukai is the only one of the two vocalists who went on to form a band after Nunchaku (that band being Kamomekamome). The sole weak point of this album is "ズボラな瞳", where Mukai brings out some cleaner-than-usual vocals that are really unfitting with the band's normal style. Nothing on this album was censored on original release.
The bonus DVD includes their two music videos, a making of the "都部ふぶく" video, and a few live performances interspersed through the beginning portion, but where this disc really shines is including a full concert from Nunchaku's final tour, a performance at the Akasaka Blitz on January 18th, 1998. A show at a smaller club a week after the Blitz performance closes out the disc.
There are just a couple things missing from this set that keep it from absolute perfection. While there was another Nunchaku DVD released, showcasing a reunion concert filmed in 2007, the year this boxset was released, that performance happened a month after this set came out, and wasn't released until February of 2008. However, a Nunchaku track on a compilation called "Taste Of Sweet Love Masterpiece 1969-79", while referenced within the booklet of this set, is nowhere to be found here. The absence of this song could be chalked up to label issues or that it was a collaborative song with vocalist Tamaki Ogawa, but regardless, it keeps this set from 100% perfection, reaching instead for 99.9% perfection.
Speaking of the booklet, it's really, really sweet. I can't read the various interviews that it's packed with, since I can't read Japanese, but I can absolutely read CD tracklists, references to every non-album release Nunchaku has put out (all but one of which are retained here as bonus tracks), and pretty pictures, and they all tell me that this booklet is dope.
There is simply too much material to list as tracklistings here, but let the above pictures, or the Discogs article on this boxset, be your guide to navigating the massive amount of content here. I found this boxset for slightly under 5,000 yen, and it'd be safe to say that you probably will too, should you be on the lookout for it. This boxset does come with a giant obi that wraps around the bottom, which gives an immediate listing of all of the set's contents. I've seen this obi in the wild, but unfortunately my copy did not have it.
