User Reviews

In this movie, Nobita thinks life would be much better if he lived in a utopia, and asks Doraemon to help him find one. There are quite a few things I enjoyed about this film. The story is well crafted for most part, making effective use of foreshadowing. It's certainly one of the most emotionally driven Doraemon movies, with several heartfelt moments among the characters, especially between Nobita and Doraemon and between Doraemon and the "perfect" robot cat Sonya. Speaking of which, Doraemon being the main protagonist to forge a connection with one of the movie characters is a rare occurrence! Additionally, Sonya himself probably qualifies as one of the more memorable and developed movie-exclusive characters in the franchise.

If I were to criticize anything about this movie, one would be that it's very exposition heavy. I have to wonder whether some of the scenes dedicated to explaining background information and character backstories through dialogue could have been trimmed down just a bit, especially given that there were other elements of the story that could have used the extra runtime. For example, Shizuka, Gian, and Suneo don't get a whole lot of focus this time around.

I do appreciate though that the movie actually highlights one of Shizuka's flaws other than "she plays violin badly"-she can be stubborn, which is true... even if the way it is shown here makes her come across as studious more than anything. The scene where the protagonists come around to embracing their shortcomings is also a well done character moment.

That being said, there are ways in which the central theme of the story (essentially "it's okay not to be perfect") could have been handled with more nuance. After all, Gian and Suneo's misbehavior is regularly shown to cause real harm to others throughout the franchise. I know, there are limits to how deeply one can explore a moral conundrum in a children's film, but I don't believe this would have been too challenging to achieve. Perhaps more emphasis could have been placed on learning to control one's flaws and redirecting them into exacting positive change, contrasting with the villain's plan to forcibly erase all individuality. Glimmers of this are already present in the aforementioned scene, but I think it could have been made more explicit still, which isn't helped by the fact that the main villain only appears in person briefly and barely interacts with the heroes.

On the whole, however, these weaknesses didn't detract much from my viewing experience, and I'd consider this a worthwhile entry in the Doraemon film series.