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I just finished this movie and honestly, it makes me feel bad. I adore Doraemon so much, I wanted to love this movie, but I didn't, at all.

I'm gonna keep things short, let's start by the good things.

Art and Sound are amazing, absolutely fantastic, the visual style is great, with amazing attention to detail.

The characters stay true to the original source, which might be a good thing but, let's elaborate a little bit on this, later.

Now let's go to the bad things: The story is awful. I've seen Doraemon since childhood but I don't remember the episodes in great detail, I take it that this ... is composed of several episodes mashed together to make a movie, and some people think this is great but I personally didn't. The movie has to stand on its own two feet, so let's judge this as its own thing, and as its own thing, its so poorly developed.

Nobita is irredeemably useless throughout the whole movie. Most of the problems are caused by him. Which, yeah, it's how the show is. But no, it doesn't work, here. Not when you have a string of him messing up all the way through.

His motivation is so dull, too. He wants Shizuka to fall in love with him, and not to change as an individual. And when it is, he gives up at the slightest inconvenience. He NEVER wants to improve himself, despite knowing that he will only make Shizuka miserable if she chooses to stay with him. Even his future self hasn't changed much, and the only redeemable quality he's was given, was only exposed by Shizuka's dad's dialogue (The worst possible way, exposition).

Then comes my main issue with the whole thing. The ending.

Look, the *SPOILER WARNING* I'm doing here is only out of courtesy, because you could see this "twist" come from the first 10 minutes of the movie. But when Doraemon has to leave, there had been ZERO development to his friendship with Nobita. Up to that point he still didn't seem to even like him and they hadn't done anything substantial together. The snow scene was the perfect chance for them to work together and they DON'T DO IT. So yeah, The scene that should've hit my feelings hard, didn't do it. And I cry extremely easily. Not to mention they decided to undo it to force a happy ending.

**END OF SPOILERS**

Now, about the characters. I know that Nobita has always been like this in the series, I get it. But it doesn't work here. I think he should've actually made progress to better himself for real during the movie, and it doesn't really happen.
Suneo, I don't mind. Shizuka is treated like a trophy. Takeshi is just the way he is in the anime, and it doesn't really matter too much. But yeah. The characters that should've been handled a bit differently, but without removing their essence, were kept completely unchanged.

And, man. I wanted to love this. I love Doraemon so much, that I feel terrible for not liking this movie. But ultimately I don't. So, I painfully give it a 5. And that's only because it's Doraemon and because of the excellent visuals.