Doraemon (1979)

Nobita Nobi is a normal fourth grade student. This all changes, however, when a blue robotic cat appears from his desk drawer. Calling himself Doraemon, this robot tells Nobita that his future descendants from the 22nd century live in poverty because of all the mistakes he made. Therefore, they have sent Doraemon to serve as a guide and mentor to Nobita, so that their future may change for the better. What Doraemon comes to learn, though, is that Nobita is the weakest and laziest student in the whole school.

To assist in his quest, Doraemon has a four-dimensional pocket with him, in which he keeps various machines and gadgets from the future. Unfortunately, these often result in even more trouble for Nobita. Will Doraemon really be able to achieve his mission of changing Nobita, or will he remain as he is?

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Doraemon Main

Ooyama, Nobuyo Japanese

Nobi, Nobita Main

Ohara, Noriko Japanese

Minamoto, Shizuka Main

Nomura, Michiko Japanese

Honekawa, Suneo Main

Kimotsuki, Kaneta Japanese

Gouda, Takeshi Main

Tatekabe, Kazuya Japanese

Dorami Supporting

Yokozawa, Keiko Japanese

Dekisugi, Hidetoshi Supporting

Shirakawa, Sumiko Japanese

Nobi, Tamako Supporting

Chijimatsu, Sachiko Japanese

Hoshino, Sumire Supporting

Yokozawa, Keiko Japanese

Nobi, Nobisuke Supporting

Naka, Yousuke Japanese

Shibayama, Tsutomu Director

Watanabe, Ayumu Episode Director, Storyboard, Animation Director

Moriwaki, Makoto Episode Director, Storyboard

Hara, Keiichi Episode Director, Storyboard, Assistant Director

Reviews

Jan 5, 2014

imjustjk

Recommended

Clear all of your previous jaundice, because Doraemon is not as clear and transparent as it would seem on the surface; it should not be simply considered as another anime on par with the pace of all of the classics of anime. With its immensely large number of episodes, and the repetitiveness of its plot line in line with flat characters that hardly undergo any change, it is easy to assume that the anime is simply about the numerous different gadgets that Doraemon brought back from the future. To change your perspective, you only need an open mind, then you will see the truth as ... clear as daylight.

To begin, as much as you wish to believe that Doraemon is about a ne'er do well named Nobita and how his life changed for good from the arrival of Doraemon, the plot of Doraemon actually revolves around the fact that Nobita is a boy suffering from a severe mental disability, and all of the characters, including Doraemon, are the product of his imagination. In real life, Nobita would be a little boy on his deathbed who imagined the entire series in order to keep himself entertained and to ease his pain and depression.

From this perspective, the entire series of Doraemon now becomes a series about the different sensations of human life that the little boy would’ve felt had he not fallen into a mental disability. Every time Nobita becomes depressed in the story because he was bullied by Gian or Suneo, he is probably suffering pain from his mental disease; Gian and Suneo are simply the manifestation of his illness. Every gadget Doraemon pulls out of his pouch in order to save Nobita is a manifestation of something in real life used to relieve him of his pain; or rather, it may be the surgical tools of a doctor, since sometimes the gadgets cause him pain if Nobita goes overboard with them.

The settings also provide concrete evidence to the truth behind the series. The mental capabilities of a child is much greater than that of an adult, yet it is not all powerful; it is not able to create objects that he has never seen. Therefore we see that the neighborhood inside Nobita’s imagination is very small, with a sparse number of houses and even more sparse the types of people that can be met. For example, we can only see Japanese people in the neighborhood, there is hardly any foreigners. Furthermore, when Nobita is walking around, we almost always only see blank walls, side-walks, and telephone poles; when Nobita is flying, we can only see the clouds in the sky and numerous trees and houses, with many of the same structural build-up. There are hardly any miscellaneous people or things walking around, in accordance with the fact that Nobita’s imagination can only support what it considers as important.

Now, a little bit about the series itself. At this point, if you continue to believe that Doraemon is about how Nobita's life changed for the better because of the arrival of Doraemon, you will continue to enjoy Doraemon only as a remnant of a great series of memories, and possibly, a great childhood. However, considering the complexities of the plot as analyzed, Doraemon is actually a chilling insight to how the mind will react when driven to extremities of solitude. It is painful to consider how lonely and hopeless it must be for a child on his sickbed without being looked after by a friend, and possibly abandoned by his family for good. With this in mind, the boy now proceeds to indulge in escapism in order to run away from all of the emotional and physical pain that he is experiencing. We laugh at how silly it is, and gaze in wonder at the impressive gadgets that Doraemon can pull out of his pouch, yet behind the facade of happiness and wonder, behind the cover of the moral lessons, behind the desire and personality of an ordinary school boy, there exists a background of such darkness, such that in rereading the series, one cannot help but wonder at how strong a fortitude a child can possess.

Nobita’s friends are also very important in finding just what exactly the series is trying to do. In the beginning, we know that Nobita is very interested in marrying Shizuka, but becomes very agitated when he learns from his great-grandson that he instead marries Jaiko, Jaian’s little sister. Therefore, immediately in the second episode, he tries to change his fate by imagining himself traveling to the future and then… [I will not write a spoiler]

The changes that Nobita makes because of the arrival of Doraemon gives us a clue that Nobita indeed hasn’t given up hope of his recovery, and wishes to live long enough to give birth to the next generation. However, the fact that Nobita never changes the present from his imaginary excursions with Doraemon to the past and the fact that his own manifestation in his imagination reveals that Nobita accepts the fact he cannot change his sickly body, and is not afraid to face his circumstances head on. A line from the original opening of Doraemon:

How wonderful this is,
if only it would come true.

This dream, that dream,
so many of them.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Mar 13, 2017

hass447

Mixed Feelings

The story centers around a complete loser who is lazy, stupid, irresponsible, and wears a pair of impossibly large glasses. He is in love with a girl in his class but he never had the courage to tell her how he feels. He is constantly being bullied by two boys in the neighborhood: a fat guy with confidence in his athletic abilities with a heart of gold and a wealthy boy who's got a bird's beak for mouth. In 22nd century, Skynet decided to send advanced robots back to the present day to destroy humanity. Skynet sent different robots to different countries, and for Japan, ... they sent a blut fat robot cat called Doraemon. It's mission, help the loser boy overcome otherwise insurmountable obstacles through futuristic gadgets, so the boy may survive the natural selection and breed even more losers, thus weakening humanity's genes so the robots can take over.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Mar 7, 2017

gesouix

Not Recommended

Funny

These days it goes against the grain for a person to rip on a cult classic.
Allow me to do just that, write a review that'll do this series justice.

Art 4/10:
Severely dated, by today standards this series comes off immediately as an eyesore. Absolutely pathetic by the 80s animation criteria. This series came out around the time of the VHS era, the time when animation was purely hand drawn and devoid of any graphical rendering from CGI. I am a sap for smooth hand drawn animation and I can sympathise if the series cannot deliver those moments all the time, since that demands painful labours ... and a creative knack for animation per se. But Doraemon was lackadaisical from start to finish, not a single moment throughout the 1787 episodes when I thought there was a redeeming scene that might salvage this utter disaster area, animation-wise.

Sound 4/10:
Mediocre in every possible sense. I have no gripe on the sound effects since they're par for the course. The voice acting feels forced, as if the VOs just treated this like a run of the mill kid show and phoned in their run of the mill performance. The OP song is cringe worthy to the point of obsession-inducing but that is my personal beef.

Character 4/10:
The show is laden with characters with the most cliche tropes you can possibly imagine: The challenged protagonist, the posh snub, the aggressive macho, the bland cute girl,... Notice the way I didn't go into further description of these certain character about their traits and background because there wasn't any to speak of.

Story 4/10:
The story revolves around this spineless 8 year-old who was accompanied by a sentient robot from the future and his daily struggles with his life and peers. The robot was sent back to him with a view to helping him cope with his challenges and hardships as well as shaping him into a functional unit of society. Now the series did try to get a little creative by throwing in these futuristic devices which the characters capitalise for their own means, ultimately resulting in hilarity by the end of every episode. Unfortunately I cannot overlook the fact that the plot for this series straight up refused to develop into any particular direction and as a result, this became a major grind for me. After the 10th episode I immediately realised what kind of show I was getting into.

Enjoyment 4/10:
Again I must address the fact that character progression is non-existent in this series, too was any twists and coup de theatre that I was desperate praying for towards the end of doraemon. Perhaps this might get immensely more interesting were all of the hubbub being carried out just simply a figment of the protagonists's rich imagination, but then again this is not those kind of shows.

Overall 4/10:
Doraemon is amongst the most insipid, trying series out there. I don't get how this is hailed as the embodiment of many people's childhood and such. Why can't your people's childhood be something a little more tasteful like Legend of The Galactic Heroes, or Neon Genesis Evangelion?

Doraemon was okay, production quality was good and the story was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it!

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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