Doraemon Movie 35: Nobita no Space Heroes

My overall take: Entertaining premise held back by a mediocre story and characterization.

In this movie, Nobita and his friends film a superhero movie, but are then mistaken for actual superheroes. Right off the bat, the premise of this film is an appealing one. Considering that this group of kids and their robot caretaker have saved the world multiple times over, they're practically an honorary superhero team already. Give them actual superpowers, and you have a recipe for a fun movie.

In practice, well... the best thing I can say about this film is that it's a pretty good ensemble showcase for the protagonists. Every member of ... the main cast contributes substantially during the action scenes here (except for Nobita until near the end, but being something of a failure is one of his core character traits). Having the main characters sing the show's theme song is also very cute.

However, the overall story comes across as rather haphazard. Like several other Doraemon films that I don't rate highly, parts of this movie's plot rely on incredibly convenient coincidences. For example, Nobita happens to stumble into the heart of the villains' lair (losing the superhero suit that grants him his powers along the way), where he passes out. When he wakes up, he happens to overhear a minion explaining the villains' plan to a clueless colleague nearby. (Nobita sure was lucky that they didn't choose to pass by when he was still unconscious!) Meanwhile, his super suit happens to get picked up by Doraemon and Shizuka, who were investigating a completely different location at the time.

Then there's the fact that during the final battle, several main characters gain power-ups with little explanation, in some cases barely struggling to defeat enemies that had previously bested them easily. The most we get is an offhand line from Doraemon saying that the protagonists still hadn't used the "full power" of their super suits by that point. You're telling me that none of them, not even impulsive, belligerent Gian, had tried using their suits at full power, despite encountering potentially life-threatening situations? I find that difficult to believe.

In addition, the movie has trouble providing closure to major plot elements. Most notably, what became of the villains in the end is never addressed. They are defeated in battle, yes, but then what? Did they get imprisoned somewhere, or are they free to sneak off and continue their nefarious deeds elsewhere? Another example of a forgotten story thread concerns the argument that Doraemon and Gian have in the beginning over who should play the heroes' leader in their movie. Suneo convinces Gian to stand down by telling him that they can simply request the burger-shaped robot directing their film to edit Gian in as the leader during post-production. One might expect this little scheme to come up again later, if only as an ending gag, but nope. In fact, the entire filmmaking subplot is essentially forgotten about once the actual superhero antics begin.

Speaking of the Burger Director robot, he forms a bond with Shizuka reminiscent of her relationship with the Underwater Buggy in Nobita and the Castle of the Undersea Devil (1983). (In some ways an appropriate parallel, given that the Burger Director represents another instance where one of Doraemon's gadgets is a full-fledged movie character.) However, whereas the Underwater Buggy warmed up to Shizuka specifically because she was nice to him, the Burger Director does so because... he favors girls, apparently. Okay then. This development certainly doesn't result in any payoff comparable to the ending of the Underwater Buggy's arc.

Another odd bit of characterization is that Shizuka acts offended when the others praise her super-suit-augmented strength. Other entries in the franchise have shown that Shizuka strives to maintain a "refined" image of herself, but if there's anything that image consistently doesn't include, it's coming across as weak and delicate. This is the same girl who thought that beating up a gorilla with Super Gloves (in Nobita and the Haunts of Evil, 1982 and its 2014 remake) was thrilling, after all.

My overall take for this original Doraemon film is that it felt bland. The entire film seemed to take no risks and ended up feeling very predictable and cliché, but at least not to a point that the movie felt cheesy. There are a couple weird things about the movie that I can discuss, but because the movie as a whole felt really dull I don't know if these things really affected my viewing experience.

First, we don't really get a clear idea of what kind of person Aron is (I even forgot his name while writing this review). All we know about ... his personality is that he seems to have a reverence for heroes and has a strong sense of justice, but this doesn't seem to be developed further than at the surface level rhetorical question, "what IS a hero?" We even get one of those obligatory "Nobita talks with the guest character in the middle of the night and bonds" scene but without much of a takeaway beyond that.

Second, one of the motivations for the antagonists has to do with diamonds. But instead of just the treasured diamonds, they are apparently also in desperate need of graphite. The whole movie could really fall apart if you know that graphite is an abundantly naturally occurring form of carbon and can be easily synthesized. I have no idea why the movie production team decided to go with graphite instead of a rarer material.

These two were the main issues I had with the movie. There were some additional little details that either felt inconsistent or lacked explanation, but I won't get into details so as to avoid spoilers.

Overall, it felt like I've seen bits and pieces of the film from other kids shows. And while that meant no weird curveballs, that also meant that it was so predictable I had a hard time engaging with the film and its characters. There are much stronger space-themed Doraemon films that you can enjoy.