In this movie, Nobita does something about the local stray problem by sending abandoned dogs and cats to a safe haven 300 million years ago. The stray animals then start their own civilization. This movie is a landmark, being the last film to come out of the classic Doraemon anime that started in 1979. Befitting the old anime series' final cinematic hurrah, this film has an interesting art style that almost seems "transitional" between the visuals used for most of the classic series and those of the reboot series. There's no other Doraemon movie that looks quite like it.
The storyline of Nobita in the Wan-Nyan Spacetime Odyssey has many ingredients that could make a great Doraemon movie: there are time travel shenanigans, emotional connections between the protagonists and movie-exclusive characters, and decent action sequences with creative application of gadgets. However, I thought that the execution of the story was not as fluent as it could have been. There are times when the plot simply moves too fast, leaving little time for major developments to sink in, and the reveal that Sharmee, a cat idol singer who Doraemon falls in love with, was working with the villain would have been more impactful had it not been shown to the audience before being made known to Doraemon.
In addition, the characters make a few strange decisions in the name of plot convenience. For example, at one point most of the protagonists and their allies escape from the villain's base while knowing that Doraemon is still imprisoned inside, but only decide to go rescue Doraemon after they've already left the base. Luckily for them, the villain chooses that very moment to leave the base himself in his time machine, bringing the captive Doraemon with him, which saves the heroes the trouble of having to go back inside. What are the odds?
Also, Doraemon's romantic subplot with Sharmee felt awkward considering that he was shown going on a date with his girlfriend in the beginning of the movie.
On a different note, it was hard for me not to feel a sense of wistfulness as this movie ended, not so much because of the content of the film itself, but due to its status as one of the last works from the 1979 series, which was the Doraemon anime I grew up with. I think the main voice actors on the current Doraemon anime are excellent, but this movie made me realize how much I'm going to miss the old voice cast. It's wild to think about how long this franchise has been going. A child who was the same age as Nobita and his classmates when the first Doraemon movie was released (Nobita's Dinosaur, 1980) would have been 34 by the time this one came around! And though there has been a changing of the guard, this remarkable robot cat and his friends show no signs of stopping anytime soon.
