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.

As its title suggests, this is a sequel to Stand by Me Doraemon (2014). Following the events of that movie, Nobita and Doraemon travel to the future to witness Nobita's wedding, only to find that something has gone drastically wrong. There are a couple of reasons I found this movie to be more palatable than its prequel. For one, it no longer focuses on the "how Nobita and Shizuka got together" narrative, and as a result the unsavory aspects of how Shizuka is handled by the story are de-emphasized. Indeed, adult Nobita even raises a concern in this film that might well be on the minds of many Doraemon fans: the fact that Shizuka's decision to marry him can come across as having been made entirely out of pity. For another, whereas Stand by Me Doraemon tried to cram seven individual stories from the manga into a single movie, Stand by Me Doraemon 2 primarily adapts material from only two manga stories, with much more original content in between.

That's not to say that all of this original content is well executed. What is meant to be the emotional climax of the movie essentially involves Nobita's friends undoing a supposedly irreversible situation by emoting very hard. Additionally, for those who can't stand secondhand embarrassment, the sequence where young Nobita takes his adult self's place at the wedding (after aging himself up with the Time Cloth) might be hard to watch, though that at least is presumably the intended audience reaction.

Otherwise, however, I found overall story here fairly solid, with Nobita's grandmother getting to attend the wedding ceremony (something she's expressed interest in ever since the original manga, but never explicitly realized in the franchise until now) and adult Nobita's wedding speech at the end being particular highlights. I do have one final objection to make though: in his speech, Nobita credits his parents and grandmother for raising him, and yet does not acknowledge Doraemon even in passing. Come on now.

In this movie, Nobita revives a fossilized double-yolked egg that hatches into two feathered dinosaurs. As a paleontologist, I appreciate that this movie clearly took notes on the latest paleontological science and incorporated it into its story. No, not everything in here is scientifically accurate, and there is definitely some embellishment for the sake of entertainment. However, it's evident that the filmmakers went the extra mile in their background research: for example, the dinosaurs that we think almost certainly had feathers are all shown with feathers, the end of the Cretaceous is said to be 66 million years ago and not the outdated 65 million years ago, and there's a scene showing the footprints of a pterosaur and they're obviously referenced from actual fossils of pterosaur tracks (that one really impressed me).

As for the story itself, I was originally apprehensive about how this film would be able to distinguish itself from Nobita's Dinosaur (1980). However, though the beginning plays out in a similar way (probably intentionally so), I felt that the second half of this movie carves out its own niche quite nicely. If anything, the climax here has more parallels with Nobita and the Knights on Dinosaurs (1987) in how it involves the end-Cretaceous mass extinction and reveals that there's no true villain in the story. In a way, I think Nobita's New Dinosaur combines the narrative strengths of those two previous Mesozoic-themed tales. Nobita raising two dinosaurs is a more engaging setup than Suneo running around under the impression that he's hallucinating in Nobita and the Knights on Dinosaurs, whereas the protagonists' actions turning out to have a major impact on the history of life on Earth gives the plot slightly more depth and complexity than the straightforward "boy and his pet" story of Nobita's Dinosaur.

If I have any (non-scientific) criticism for this movie, it may be the cameo from Piisuke, the plesiosaur from Nobita's Dinosaur. Although touching and well-intended, Piisuke's appearance raises some confusing questions about continuity. Some parts of this movie (such as Nobita's friends lacking faith in the possibility that he could find living dinosaurs) imply that it takes place in a separate continuity from Nobita's Dinosaur, but Piisuke showing up, complete with Nobita getting a flashback to their time together, seems to run counter to this premise. The fact that Nobita never fully realizes that Piisuke is there (as Piisuke rescues him while he is drowning and departs before he regains consciousness) might also be disappointing.

In this movie, Doraemon helps Nobita create an alternate reality where rabbits live on the moon. If one were to boil this movie down to its individual core elements, I think they'd find very little that hasn't been done in previous Doraemon films. (Okay, having one of the movie-only characters pose as a transfer student and actually interact with Nobita's classmates outside of the main cast is new.) However, that actually works to its benefit, in my opinion. After so many of the post-reboot Doraemon movies have felt experimental in one way or another (with varying degrees of success in my book), it was nice to see one that replicates the vibe of a classic Doraemon story without being a straight-up remake of an older film.

I also thought this movie does a good job of introducing potentially convoluted plot points without feeling bogged down, especially the main gadget that allows the story to happen: the Fringe Theory Club Member Badge, which can create alternate realities that are only perceptible to people wearing it. The effects of this gadget could have easily been overly confusing, but the film manages to establish how it works quite effectively.

I suppose there are a few things I could quibble about: maybe it strains credibility that the villain's second-in-command would think that someone named Diabolo was working with good intentions all along, and maybe the final battle against the villain's minions gets a bit too slapsticky to take seriously. Otherwise though, I'd say this is pretty solidly one of my favorite non-remake movies to come out of the 2005 Doraemon anime reboot.

Not to mention, Shizuka gets a nice moment where she saves everyone else here. That was a semi-regular occurrence in the classic films, but it's been a while since the last time. The fact that older entries in the Doraemon film series have a better track record of portraying Shizuka is honestly kind of sad, so anytime in the new movies that she gets to do something important instead of standing in the background or playing the damsel in distress can only be taken as a good sign.

In this movie, Nobita and his friends encounter pirates while searching for treasure out at sea (not to be confused with Nobita's Great Adventure in the South Seas, where they also did that). In general, I think this one is pretty good. Gian and Suneo get to do something cool. The Mini Doras have a lot of screentime, which is usually a plus. Quiz the robot parrot, who speaks in riddles, is a fun character.

However, I have one major issue with this movie: the fact that about half of it is taken up by an overdone "Shizuka gets kidnapped" subplot. Not only that, but relative to the amount of time spent on it, this may be the most poorly executed arc of its kind in the Doraemon movies so far. First of all, the reason given for why Shizuka gets kidnapped is frankly very silly. It's because the pirates mistake her for their captain's daughter, Sarah, who supposedly looks a lot like Shizuka... except the two of them have completely different hair and eye colors. Both this and the fact that Shizuka doesn't seem to know any of her kidnappers should have tipped the pirates off to their mistake, but they never properly catch on. Furthermore, when we meet Sarah herself, there's absolutely no indication that she has a history of getting lost or running away, making it even more of a stretch for these pirates to immediately assume that she was the same person as this frightened, dark-haired girl that they encountered on a random ship. (One pirate does point out the hair color discrepancy, only to be hastily brushed aside.)

In addition, to facilitate this kidnapping, the filmmakers invoke Shizuka's disappearing weapon. Right before she is captured, the protagonists are engaged in heated combat against the pirates that have boarded their ship, during which everyone, including Shizuka, is clearly wielding a weapon. We even see Shizuka use hers (the Reversal Cape, to be specific). Yet in the scene where she gets kidnapped, she is suddenly left defenseless on the deck, with no explanation for what happened to her gadget.

Okay, let's pretend that the reasoning for and circumstances around the kidnapping do make sense. It could at least serve an important narrative purpose, right? Maybe it motivates the other main characters to go after the pirates, starting a new chapter in their adventure... Well, it does, but this turns out to be unnecessary. Shortly after Shizuka is kidnapped, the protagonists rescue a boy lost at sea, who turns out to be Sarah's brother, Flock. Having left the pirate crew himself, Flock also hopes to give his sister a chance to escape. That alone probably would have provided more than enough reason for the main characters to help track down the pirates, as it's unlikely (at least in the movies) that Nobita and his friends would turn down the chance to help another kid who is in need.

All right, but maybe Shizuka could make some valuable contributions by being among the pirates. Perhaps her bonding with Sarah becomes significant- Hmm, not really. Sarah is pretty much on the same page as her brother from the beginning. Well then, maybe Shizuka can use an outsider's perspective to help convince the main antagonist not to follow through with his plan- Uh, nope, that doesn't happen either. There's even a scene where she is the only one present in the same room as the main antagonist, but nothing of that sort plays out. The most plot-relevant thing Shizuka does in this movie (helping Nobita save Doraemon from being trapped inside an energy ball) occurs after she is already reunited with the others, so I am really struggling to see the point of the kidnapping subplot here.

To end on a positive note, I do like this movie's ending song. It has an unusual style for a Doraemon song, but it's got character, and I don't hate that it's become the current opening theme for the regular Doraemon anime series.

In this movie, Nobita and Doraemon build an amusement park on an iceberg for their friends, but then discover a mysterious artifact from Antarctica. I have mixed feelings about this one. I found several story elements here to be odd: for example, Dorami makes a voiced cameo telling Doraemon that she's been fortune-telling and her readings indicate that he should stay away from ice, a prediction that Doraemon dismisses. Although intended as foreshadowing, I thought that this interaction was strange, because Dorami doesn't usually come across as the superstitious type. Even as a means of foreshadowing, the scene seemed unnecessary, because after all, the title of the movie already indicates that the protagonists will be visiting Antarctica, so ice being involved is a given.

Then there's the imposter situation that occurs partway through the adventure, in which a shapeshifting robot pretends to be Doraemon while leading the other main characters into an obvious death trap. Why there is a shapeshifting robot guarding the particular abandoned tower they're exploring is never explained, so the whole thing felt as though it were inserted just for the sake of creating a mid-story conflict. The imposter conundrum isn't resolved in a particularly clever or heartfelt way either; instead, Nobita "just knows" which one is the real Doraemon without much supporting evidence. I get that it is supposed to show the close bond between Nobita and Doraemon, but I would have preferred if this had been represented in a more subtle way-perhaps Nobita could have picked up on some telltale body language from the real Doraemon, for example. At the very least, the main characters could have tried quizzing the imposter on some harder questions than just Gian and Suneo's names.

On the bright side, some of the visuals in this film are really pretty. In addition, though most of the protagonists don't receive much characterization here, I thought that this was actually quite a good movie for Doraemon himself. Not only does he come up with a clever solution to help the others save himself when they get separated from each other in time (probably the best-executed subplot in this film), but he also plays a key role during the final battle. Furthermore, his gigantic, flying, ice-drilling vehicle might be one of the most impressive gadgets he's ever pulled straight from his pocket.

I also appreciated that there are a fair few references to Earth science in this film: Snowball Earth, the Cambrian explosion, and the history of Antarctic glaciation are all mentioned. (Just don't write down the part about aliens being the cause of Snowball Earth if you're taking an Earth science exam...) Something I'm surprised that this movie does not explicitly address, however, is anthropogenic climate change. Considering that the film begins with reports of record high temperatures in Tokyo, I was fully expecting that climate change would play some role in the plot, especially given that environmentalism is a recurring theme in Doraemon.

In fact, I even have to wonder whether this movie might give some young or impressionable viewers the wrong idea about ongoing climate change. The main threat in the story poses the risk of freezing the entire world, with similar entities having already frozen other planets, so when the protagonists' movie-exclusive allies are shown to have successfully melted the ice on their own home planet in the end, this is portrayed as a positive outcome (and in the context of the narrative, it certainly is one)... yet would this imply that the melting of polar ice in the real world is a good thing? Maybe I'm overthinking it, but it seems to me that a plot emphasizing the importance of ice caps to maintaining current Earth systems would have been a more appropriate use of the setting and premise of this movie.

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) was thrilling, after all.

This movie is a retelling of some of the most iconic stories from the Doraemon manga, woven into a continuous narrative and represented using 3D computer-generated imagery. It is a special Doraemon movie that not only has a distinct art style and story structure from typical films in the franchise, but was released independently of the annual Doraemon movie lineup (coming out during the same year as New Nobita's Great Demon). This approach evidently paid off, because Stand by Me Doraemon is the highest-grossing Doraemon film to date, earning over $183 million at the box office. It and its eventual sequel are also the most internationally accessible Doraemon works-as of the time of writing, they are the only Doraemon movies available on American and British Netflix, and are among the few to have received official English dubbing and subtitles.

All of that probably sets some lofty expectations. From what I've seen, plenty of viewers loved this movie. As for me though... to be honest, as someone who was already familiar with the stories adapted into this movie thanks to either the manga or classic anime, my initial impression of Stand by Me Doraemon was that it seemed like a straightforward compilation of stories I knew, except with slightly creepier character designs. Don't get me wrong; the character models here are far from the worst examples I've seen of 2D characters being converted into 3D, but I still found them a bit uncanny. Doraemon's gadgets, on the other hand, look very good in this film.

Upon further reflection, however, I think there's more that bothers me about this movie than just the art style. Those who know Doraemon lore well are likely aware that one of the most dramatic changes to Nobita's life due to Doraemon's arrival is that Nobita and Shizuka end up married in the future (whereas originally, Nobita was fated to marry Gian's sister, Jaiko). There are sound criticisms that could be leveled at how that storyline was written in the manga, but Stand by Me Doraemon performs worse here than the source material in at least one major way: it treats Shizuka as essentially nothing more than a prize for Nobita to win. In this movie, Doraemon makes it his explicit goal to ensure that Nobita and Shizuka get together, with little regard for how Shizuka feels about the whole thing. Meanwhile in the manga, even though Doraemon's presence results in Nobita and Shizuka marrying, and the marriage is by all appearances meant to be a happy one, Doraemon never claims that this is the specific outcome he is striving for. In fact, in the manga story "The Night Before Nobita's Wedding", when Nobita gets agitated about the possibility that his future might change yet again and he won't get to marry Shizuka, Doraemon's response amounts to "that is not my responsibility".

Furthermore, I can't help but feel that most of the stories adapted in Stand by Me Doraemon had already been done justice in previous anime renditions. I found the 1998 adaptation of "Goodbye, Doraemon" and 1999 adaptation of "The Night Before Nobita's Wedding" to be more enjoyable than this film, for instance. In "The Night Before Nobita's Wedding" (1999), it's believable when Shizuka's father appraises Nobita as a kind and compassionate person, because the episode takes the time to show Nobita doing nice things for others throughout. In Stand by Me Doraemon, the same statement is a more difficult pill to swallow.

This highlights another limitation of Stand by Me Doraemon. Although Nobita can often be unlikable in the regular series, at least the sheer volume and diversity of stories provide him with opportunities to display other facets of his character, giving his friendships with Doraemon and Shizuka slightly more depth and credibility. Stand by Me Doraemon is tasked with introducing the premise of the entire franchise and constructing a complete arc out of a set of pre-selected, largely standalone stories in the time frame allotted to a standard animated film, leaving little room for asides or tangents that could potentially flesh out the characters beyond their most basic core traits.

At the end of the day, Stand by Me Doraemon is such an atypical Doraemon entry that I cannot truly recommend it as an introduction to the franchise. Simultaneously, its value to hardcore Doraemon fans also seems questionable (though I suspect that many of those same fans would disagree with me there!) given that the stories it's based on have been adapted multiple times over, often in more satisfying ways. I can guess at a large part of why the movie has been so successful, however: the retelling of classic stories using "modernized" graphics probably appeals especially to those who are nostalgic for Doraemon but haven't revisited the franchise in a long time, a demographic that most likely represents the majority of the audience in regions where the franchise is popular.

In this movie, Doraemon's bell gets stolen, and he really wants it back. Nobita and his friends track it to a 22nd Century gadget museum, where they have to find the bell and figure out who took it. Whereas most Doraemon movies use Doraemon's gadgets as a means to transport the main characters to classic science fiction or fantasy settings, a museum that displays these gadgets is a location that can essentially only exist in the Doraemon universe. Combined with the fact that the Doraemon films have not yet done a proper detective story up to this point, and the premise of this movie looks very attractive indeed.

For all that, however, I came away from this film somewhat underwhelmed. Maybe it's the fact that, despite an ideal setup for showcasing previously introduced gadgets in fresh and creative ways, much of the main plot ultimately hinges on new gadgets and additions to the lore. Make no mistake though, this movie does not skimp on giving cameos to established gadgets. Probably the best use of the museum locale is the scene where the protagonists and law enforcement are confronted by the gadget thief in one of the exhibits. The "duel by proxy" between the thief and the inspector investigating the case, in which they simply show off the gadgets they have on hand to counter each other's strategies without actually using them, is pretty amusing, but makes sense in a setting where gadgets are widely available.

The mystery story itself is decent for a children's movie, though I found the handling of the aftermath to be unsatisfying. To make a long story short, it is eventually revealed that Doraemon's bell and several other items were stolen on behalf of a disgraced scientist, who hid microchips in those objects to preserve his life's work on developing a sustainable metal for use in manufacturing gadgets. By the time the movie ends, the scientist simply goes back into hiding, with no apparent opportunity to redeem himself in the eyes of the relevant authorities nor any clear headway made in addressing the metal sustainability problem.

I also felt lukewarm about the revelation that Doraemon exhibits more cat-like behavior without his bell, which came across as more of an easy excuse to make visual gags than a natural extension of the lore. I did appreciate that everyone in the main cast contributes at one point or another, even though the story focuses most heavily on Nobita and Doraemon. Additionally, this movie features one of the few times (if not the only time) that the Restoration Light is used in a Doraemon film, which is a gadget I've often thought should be acknowledged in the movies more often considering how frequently Doraemon's gadgets break!

In this movie, Nobita and his friends travel to the 22nd Century to visit an island that has been converted into a preserve for extinct animals. By all rights, I should love this movie. I found the short story it's based on, in which Nobita tries to save moa and some other animals from extinction, to be one of the most memorable from the Doraemon manga. Nobita and the Island of Miracles not only expands on that tale, but also adds a whole host of remarkable extinct animals to its critter roster. Furthermore, one of the protagonists' new allies in this film is a younger version of Nobita's father who has been displaced in time, an interesting idea! From a conceptual standpoint, this movie shows a lot of promise.

Sorry to say, however, I like very little about Nobita and the Island of Miracles. To start off, there's the premise that the extinct animals on the island preserve are sustained by the "life force" emitted by an immortal golden beetle that lives there. (No, this is never elaborated on any further.) The existence of this golden beetle drives much of the story, and yet it simultaneously feels wholly unnecessary. As an explanation for how the extinct animals can live on the island? That could have been chalked up to 22nd Century animal husbandry. As a source of wonder for the protagonists? One might think seeing extinct animals alive would have been enough. As a target for the villains to go after? The movie would have worked just as well if they'd wanted to poach the extinct animals.

Then there's the fact that the entire story is built on contrivance after contrivance. Doraemon and Nobita bring the moa into their home by complete chance, unlike the original manga in which Nobita actively wanted to rescue extinct species. The reason Nobita's father ends up in the 22nd Century as a child comes down to a series of accidents and a robot employee from the animal preserve being incredibly incompetent at his job. Doraemon sends all his weapon gadgets away for maintenance, and then the plot still has to devise ways to make most of his remaining gadgets unusable. (Why did he try hitting a charging Elasmotherium with the Anywhere Door?!) Right when the heroes need to fight a giant mech, Doraemon happens to rummage out his Big Light, which happens to turn on and happens to shine on a beetle that the main characters didn't know was there. The list goes on...

The movie also tries to force emotional moments that don't always work. For example, one scene has the main characters reminisce about their experiences with their parents, which was nice and all, but felt thematically odd at the same time. Despite Nobita's father being a major character here, most of the story doesn't particularly focus on the interactions between the kids and their parents. A conversation like this would have been more fitting in, say, Nobita and the Birth of Japan (1989). (It also doesn't help that much of the dialogue for this segment appears to have been borrowed from the 1974 manga chapter "Mom Swap".)

Suneo of all characters gets a good bit of characterization in this film... or it would be good if it weren't immediately undercut. When he and Koron, the young granddaughter of the village chief on the island*, are captured by the villains**, he tries to reassure her by saying the others will rescue them, even adding that Nobita is actually quite dependable in situations like this. (It's rare to hear Suneo say anything good about Nobita!) Not only that, but when the villains threaten Suneo in an attempt to persuade Koron to give them information about the golden beetle, Suneo continues to insist that she shouldn't tell them, a very brave gesture compared to his usual reactions to danger. Unfortunately, just then a pendant made out of a fossil of the golden beetle's horn***, worn by Koron's pet dodo, starts glowing, giving away the beetle's location and rendering Suneo's heroism moot. By the way, the fact that the pendant glows in response to the beetle and that this phenomenon can be used to track the beetle's location are never mentioned before this.

*Yep, there's a village of humans living in the middle of this extinct animal preserve. Why are they there? This is not explained.

**At least it's not Shizuka getting kidnapped for once...

***Why is there a fossil of the beetle's horn if the beetle is still alive? This is also not explained.

Meanwhile, Nobita is panicking over how they're supposed to save Suneo and Koron without any of Doraemon's weapon gadgets. After this goes on for some time, Shizuka tells him to get a grip, saying (paraphrased), "Can you do nothing without Doraemon's gadgets? I hate cowards like you!" Whoa! As much as I'd normally welcome Shizuka displaying aspects of her personality other than straightforward niceness, this reproach felt unearned, because Nobita's concern came across as completely valid: how are some children, peaceful villagers, and a babysitting robot supposed to contend with 22nd Century criminals without weapons? What's more, when the heroes eventually reach the villains' doorstep, Doraemon reveals that he does still have a few potentially useful gadgets left after all. Maybe you should have brought that up back when the others were panicking and arguing!

Probably the most ridiculous part of this movie, however, is when the protagonists respond to the villain leader bringing out a giant mech by... running around and yelling. Somehow, this actually works to stop the villain from attacking. Maybe he was just as confused as the audience was... This is one of the few Doraemon films I've watched in theaters, and that may well have been the most awkward scene I've ever seen in a cinema.

In this movie, Nobita and Doraemon accidentally strand a mermaid princess in their yard. I distinctly remember this being the first Doraemon movie that I actively thought was bad, and sadly, my opinion has not changed much after a rewatch. I wish it weren't so, because the undersea setting and mermaid concept could have been a lot of fun.

To briefly discuss a few of my main issues with this movie:

-The mermaid princess Sophia is amazed by cars and doesn't realize they're dangerous, yet we later see that she comes from a society that has roads and vehicles.

-Dorami suddenly shows up to deliver some exposition about mermaids, apparently at Doraemon's request, even though mermaids have barely been mentioned by that point.

-When the villains are about to invade, the mermaid queen dumps the responsibility of leading the war onto Sophia, and this is portrayed as a good thing for some reason.

-There's an abrupt scene cut into the middle of the final battle. (I seriously wondered whether I'd been watching a faulty copy of this movie when I first saw it.)

-After everyone spends much of the story trying to figure out how the obtain a legendary mermaid sword, the end result is that Sophia can just summon it without even intending to, because she happens to be the chosen one, rendering most of that subplot pointless. (Also, why couldn't the protagonists use Translation Konjac to decipher the ancient texts about the sword again? They've done similar things in previous movies.)

-Despite that, Sophia ultimately doesn't do much to help neutralize the villains. The sword she summons immediately gets taken by the villain leader, making him more powerful, and it isn't even directly used to defeat him later. The other main thing Sophia does during the final battle is attempt to fight the villain leader herself, and... she gets disarmed in one hit. Yet her actions in battle are enough for her to be crowned queen in the aftermath. Huh?

-The porcupinefish-boy Haribo (who is somehow the leader of the merperson army) is a leading contender for the most annoying character in a Doraemon movie.

-As if all of that weren't enough, this movie includes one of my "favorite" recurring Doraemon tropes: Shizuka getting captured and needing to be rescued. As far as I could tell, this doesn't even serve any narrative purpose here other than to add some tension before the final battle begins. The rest of the story probably would have played out essentially the same way without that subplot.

This next observation is not necessarily a flaw, but Nobita's Great Battle of the Mermaid King is another movie in which the main characters seem rather unfriendly towards each other, more typical of the main Doraemon series than of the franchise's cinematic lineup. Gian and Suneo shamelessly bully Nobita in the beginning of the story, and even Shizuka doesn't show any sympathy or concern for him upon witnessing this.

There is also a strange scene in which everyone else chews out Suneo for being unable to point out a specific constellation (which they suspect to be the planetary system where Sophia's people came from) out of hundreds if not thousands of stars in the night sky. They apparently take this as an offense to Sophia's feelings, though Sophia shows no signs of being upset by it.

To be absolutely fair, I don't think this movie is entirely devoid of merit: the underwater scenes are often quite pretty, and it's nice to see Dorami get screentime that amounts to more than a voiced cameo. If I had to pick a least favorite Doraemon movie though, this would almost certainly be it.

In this movie, Nobita brings a young tree home, where Doraemon gives it the ability to walk and think. I found most of this movie quite pleasant: the visuals are beautiful, the interactions between Kibo and the main characters are charming, and the plant planet they end up visiting is interesting... but then the climax happens. I'm not even going to try to explain what goes down. Suffice it to say, however, that this is almost certainly the most baffling Doraemon movie ever.

It's not only that the plot is resolved in such a bewildering way, but also that intriguing setup from earlier in the movie is never given any proper followup. Why did the plant aliens need Kibo specifically to power their superweapon? What did Jii the mushroom elder, who apparently is actually the personification of the entire planet, mean when he said that the plant aliens stole their superweapon from him? (We can guess, yes, but it's odd for the story to hint multiple times at a seemingly important history that is never elaborated on.) That's not to mention all the promising characters who are introduced only to be given disorganized character arcs, or simply make no impact on the remainder of the plot. All in all, this movie very much reads as an attempt at making something artsy and profound but then falling short.

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. All subsequent Doraemon movies from here on out were (and will be) released following the 2005 anime reboot.

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.

In this movie, Nobita keeps a small typhoon as a pet and discovers that it has a connection to the history of a hidden village. Just to get the obvious out of the way: very few Doraemon movies can claim to end on a sad note, but this one certainly qualifies. Beyond that though, this film also deserves props for its worldbuilding, which might be among the most extensive and creative of any Doraemon movie. The main setting is an isolated village (apparently somewhere in Central Asia, but not directly stated) whose people have developed tools to manipulate and harness wind energy for almost all their daily needs, and the animals in the region have also evolved accordingly. It reminded me a lot of the element-based societies in Avatar: The Last Airbender (which this film predates).

The story here has some noteworthy parallels with the original Nobita and the Birth of Japan (1989). In both movies, there's a scene where Nobita gets lost in the snow before being rescued by a large, woolly mammal (though in Nobita and the Birth of Japan, the "mammoth" was actually the time police in disguise). In addition, the main characters are also not the ones who ultimately defeat the biggest threat in Nobita and the Windmasters. However, I think this avenue of resolving the conflict works much better here than in Nobita and the Birth of Japan, because the characters who end up doing the heavy lifting (Fuuko the typhoon and the people of the Wind Village) have established relationships to the protagonists, instead of being nameless time police that the main characters just happen to stumble into. Indeed, it could probably be argued that Fuuko would not have been motivated to fight against the threat if she hadn't bonded with Nobita throughout the movie. Furthermore, the protagonists' efforts do still wind up making a difference in how the final battle plays out (or at least, Nobita's and Gian's do).

Speaking of Gian, he and Suneo get a surprisingly large amount of focus in this film, though Suneo spends much of it as a puppet for one of the villains. Even before that happens, however, Suneo takes on a somewhat antagonistic role in the beginning of the story (more akin to his usual interactions with Nobita in the mainline series), which was interesting to see.

In this movie, Nobita and his friends rescue a lost robot boy, who comes from a planet where humans and robots once lived in harmony. It must be something about robots that brings out the emotional stories in Doraemon movies. That probably shouldn't be a surprise, because one of the most important themes of the franchise is, after all, the friendship between a robot and a human. The dramatic setup here is an interesting one for a Doraemon film, as we learn that the robot boy Poko was the childhood playmate of one of the major antagonists, the tyrannical Queen Jeanne, with both of them having grown up under the care of another robot, Maria. For most part, the movie gets a lot of mileage out of this premise, and the scene near the end where Doraemon and Maria deliver what they fully expect to be their last words to their respective charges is especially heartwrenching.

However, there is one way in which this movie drops the ball considerably on its emotional journey: the queen's character development happens far too quickly! Barely a montage passes before she has a change of heart. I wondered whether this was also the case in the manga adaptation of this story*, so I had a look.

*Although the original author of the Doraemon manga, Fujiko F. Fujio, passed away in 1996, his company Fujiko Pro continued to produce manga counterparts to the films for a while following his death.

As it turns out, it takes much more for Jeanne to come around in the manga, including getting smacked in the face by Shizuka! I have to say, I really wish this version of the story had been used in the film, not only because it would have improved Jeanne's character arc, but also because Shizuka doesn't get very much to do in the movie proper. In fact, many of the newer Doraemon films (remakes aside) don't seem to know what to do with Shizuka. Whereas Nobita, Gian, and even Suneo often get to display more rarely-seen sides of their personalities in the movies, she is mainly just cast as "the nice one", which is already her default role in the group.

In truth, Shizuka is not such a one-note character in the mainline series. There are times when she can be very direct with her words and quick to anger towards perceived slights. Lashing out in the name of justice for a vulnerable child is absolutely something she would do, yet would be unprecedented in a Doraemon movie!

There are other elements of the manga that I would have liked to see in the movie, too. For example, Poko's ability to remotely pinpoint Maria's location seemingly comes out of nowhere close to the end of the film, but in the manga it is mentioned that he was unable to do so earlier in the story because he had a damaged antenna. The manga also indicates that the roboticist Dr. Chapek repaired Doraemon's Time Machine so that the protagonists could return home at the end of the story, whereas the movie never explains how the Time Machine was fixed.

Given that this is a relatively recent Doraemon film, I'm guessing that it's not high on the priority list for a remake. However, I think it would benefit a lot from one! Newer Doraemon movies are generally longer than those that came out prior to the 2005 anime reboot, which would give a hypothetical remake of Nobita in the Robot Kingdom more room to include the aforementioned items. Furthermore, the remakes often use material from the manga that was left out of the original films.

In this movie, Nobita and his friends stumble across a portal leading to a land inhabited by bird people. This is unquestionably an exciting film to watch, with the race sequence partway through and the final struggle against the main threat being particular highlights. The concept of a bird civilization is also of special interest to me, as a paleontologist who studies birds. However, I've long thought that the story lacks a sense of coherence in following the plot threads that it introduces.

One of the most obvious examples of this is that the primary villain becomes a non-entity as soon as his plan goes sideways and a greater threat appears. He is not even given a cameo appearance or a passing mention when all is said and done. Does he still retain his leadership position in the bird military? Has his perspective changed at all as a result of this incident? The movie does not say.

Then there's the character of Icarus the eagle-man, who is built up as a legendary figure in bird society. When he finally enters the story in the flesh, he proceeds to spend his screentime accomplishing... not very much. Nearly all of his contributions probably could have been written out of the film with little difficulty. Even the reveal that he's the biological father of the protagonists' new friend, Gusuke, amounts to almost no narrative importance (and is never disclosed to the main characters or to Gusuke himself).

I also felt that there were many missed opportunities with the portrayal of the bird civilization. To be fair, it's more fleshed out than the animal society from Nobita and the Animal Planet (1990), but not by a whole lot. Even a few more relatively basic references to real-world bird biology could have enhanced the worldbuilding-why not have the owl professor be nocturnal? (One scene shows him working at night, but in an "academic doing late-night research" kind of way.) There's no shortage of interesting elements in bird physiology and behavior to draw from that could have made the bird people much more than simply "flying humans that hatch from eggs". (Why yes, I am a degreed bird biologist overthinking a children's anime...)

In addition, it would have been nice to see the main characters display quirks and abilities based on the Bird Hats that they wear to blend into bird society. At one point, Gian is shown to require a running take-off because he is wearing an albatross hat. I would have liked to see more moments like that. (Ironically, this is something that Nobita and the Animal Planet did better.)

As a final observation: the main threat ends up getting sent to the beginning of time, which has to be one of the most horrifying fates for any antagonist in a Doraemon movie.

In this movie, Nobita switches lives with a prince from a Maya-esque civilization, who somehow looks just like him. This might have been the first Doraemon movie I ever watched. I remembered it as a good one, and I'd generally still agree with that assessment. That's not to say that one can't find holes in the narrative (why does Doraemon try attacking the villains' moving statues even after he's already realized they're illusions?), but I found it a well-crafted and enjoyable story overall.

Furthermore, Prince Tio may very well have the most compelling arc of any movie-exclusive character in a Doraemon film. This movie also ends up being a great showcase for Nobita, with his role as a foil for Tio bringing out Nobita's best qualities as a person. That being said, Tio getting together with his handmaiden, Kuku, at the end does feel a bit forced given that she barely gets to witness his character development firsthand during the events of the story (and what she thought she saw as growth on Tio's part occurred while Nobita was posing as the prince).

In this movie, Nobita's friends Gian and Suneo are accidentally abducted by aliens, so the others travel through space to save them. Doraemon and friends have gone on adventures in space so often that I sometimes have trouble keeping all their space-themed movies straight. And out of all their interstellar excursions, this one might stand out to me the least. It's not that it shares too many elements with other Doraemon films (I don't think it does, though it does exhibit parallels with non-Doraemon works such as Star Wars), but it does very little that I found exceptional.

That's not for the lack of trying, however. The last half hour or so is essentially a rapid-fire series of plot twists and new developments. The problem is that these events happen so quickly that there's little room for them to make a real impression on the viewer. I have to say though, being sent into a black hole must be one of the most brutal fates to befall any Doraemon antagonist.

I did like how some of the spaceships were inspired by orthocones and horseshoe crabs. Also, the opening sequence is cute.

In this movie, Nobita and his friends encounter pirates while searching for treasure in the Caribbean Sea. This is the first Doraemon movie made after the manga author's passing, and we're off to a rough start. The story here is filled with convenient coincidences: Nobita just happens to pinpoint the exact location of hidden treasure on a world map, the main characters and most of their allies all happen to get caught by the villain independently after the party is separated and they all happen to get locked in the same cell, the only two pirates who have not yet been captured happen to stumble into the villain's hideout and happen to knock out a guard on the way in, and so on.

Moreover, the characters make some bizarre decisions. For example, the reason Nobita and his new friend Jack (the son of a pirate captain) get captured is that a dolphin brings them inside the villain's hideout after rescuing Nobita from drowning. However, the ending reveals that the dolphin is actually a member of the time police who was investigating the villain, so why it decided to take two lost children into the heart of enemy operations is unclear. At one point, the villain also monologues his plan and motivations to the main characters for no apparent reason other than presumably to provide exposition for the audience.

I'll give credit where it's due: I didn't get bored watching this movie, every main character contributes at some point, and it features several pretty cool-looking monsters. However, seeing as there are other Doraemon movies that have similar achievements without the problems of this one, I'd consider Nobita's Great Adventure in the South Seas one of the most skippable entries.

In this movie, Nobita and his friends populate a planet with sentient toys. This movie is a milestone, because it is the final Doraemon movie that the manga author Fujiko F. Fujio worked on before he passed. In fact, he apparently collapsed while drawing the manga that this film was based on, and the rest of the story had to be completed by his company, Fujiko Pro. Without speculating on exactly how that affected the development of this movie, I do feel that Nobita and the Spiral City sets up many interesting concepts-for example, the toy civilization that the main characters create, the fact that the planet is apparently populated by sentient plants, and the mysterious shapeshifting golden statue that is eventually revealed to be the creator of all life(?!)-but doesn't always tie them together in a satisfying manner by the end.

Much of how the plot is ultimately resolved here seems to borrow heavily from previous Doraemon movies. Shizuka's kindness inspiring an antagonist to act in favor of the heroes at a critical moment? Nobita reuniting with Doraemon using Doraemon's Spare Pocket? The villain leader being defeated by Nobita's sharpshooting skills? All story beats that we've seen before. On that last note, the weapon Nobita uses is the Floaty Gun (which causes targets to inflate and float into the air) he earned as a souvenir in the previous movie, one of the few times that a Doraemon film directly references the events of another. Perhaps one of the more original moments in the second half of Nobita and the Spiral City is when a plush monkey sneaks back to Earth with Doraemon's Key of Life and grants sentience to several inanimate objects that don't quite fit in with the toys, such as a model skeleton from a school science lab. (Unfortunately, the movie leaves out one of the funniest new allies that the monkey recruited in the manga: a propaganda poster for a politician!)

The confrontation with the villains drags on for a while considering that they're a group of regular humans without superpowers or futuristic technology, who probably could have been easily dealt with using Doraemon's gadgets. In fact, once the main characters are prepared to face them, the villains are defeated pretty handily, even with barely any gadgets involved. Until then, however, the story goes out of its way to produce circumstances in which the villains would be a threat, at one point forcing the main characters to work with them in an uneasy alliance. Although this could have been an interesting narrative angle to take, it mostly comes across as contrived in practice.

In this movie, Nobita and his friends take a trip on a train that traverses the Milky Way. This is a fun one, especially once it's revealed that the final stop of the Galaxy Super-express is an amusement park built on a cluster of planets, with each planet having its own theme. Watching the main characters go from planet to planet trying out the different facilities is quite entertaining.

Just about everyone gets a moment to shine in this story... except maybe poor Suneo, whose main role is getting body-snatched by an alien parasite. Additionally, Shizuka's primary contribution (discovering that the parasites are weak to soap solution) mostly seems like a cheap excuse to show her bathing onscreen. Gian's moment is actually very cool, however, and Nobita is the one who gets to finish off the main villain. It's a consistent trend in the Doraemon films that Nobita often comes across as more heroic than he usually does in the main series, but this may be the movie that shows off his precision shooting skills (one of the few things he excels at) the most.

That being said, I found the main conflict in this movie to be somewhat less engaging than the more lighthearted parts. For such a high-stakes narrative (including the first and probably only example in the Doraemon movies of a villainous party that wants to take over the entire galaxy), the way the plot unfolds feels surprisingly low-key. That is especially true considering the unusual nature of the villains here, being parasites that can take control of their hosts, which could have been used to build a suspenseful atmosphere in which both the protagonists and the audience were kept in the dark about who'd been possessed and who hadn't. Yet even though the parasite that takes over Suneo's body does trick the main characters by masquerading as him, that concept is otherwise not explored much, with the climax ultimately consisting of a fairly straightforward pursuit and a mostly one-sided battle sequence. Despite my minor gripes, however, this is certainly a distinctive Doraemon movie with its own unique charm.

In this movie, Nobita and his friends essentially play a fantasy role-playing game in their dreams. This was a childhood favorite of mine, and I had a good time seeing it again. It boasts an arresting adventure, an intimidating villain, and one of the best roles for Shizuka in any of the Doraemon movies. It also ranks among the darkest Doraemon entries, with several antagonists and even main characters being killed onscreen. That's fine though, because the entire escapade takes place in a dream, right? Not quite, because the machine facilitating it has a setting to reverse the dream world and reality!

As fun as this movie is to watch, the interactions between the dream world and the real world raise many questions. How was the villain's bird-like minion able to enter the real world before the game had even been activated? Why does the robot who retrieves the Dream-making Machine in the end look and sound like the bird person? Why is Nobita's school suddenly on top of the hill in the closing scene of the movie? So many mysteries... To make things even more confusing, the resemblance between the bird person and the robot, as well as the the placement of the school on the hill, were not present in the manga version of this story, so they must have been deliberate creative decisions added by the filmmakers. (Yes, I've seen the obvious fan theories about how this all indicates that the main characters never escaped from the dream in the end.) On the other hand, maybe that kind of surrealism is exactly what you should expect from a story a like this.

In any case, there's no time to dwell on that, because there's an upbeat ending song! All's well that ends well? (For real, the end credits song and illustrations are cute.)

In this movie, Nobita and his friends visit a strange yet luxurious hotel, but end up having to stop a robot uprising. Probably the standout feature of this movie's narrative is that the kids are unable to rely on Doraemon for most of it, recalling a similar subplot in the previous film (Nobita and the Kingdom of Clouds, 1992). However, whereas in that movie Doraemon was at least accompanied by Nobita for much of the time that he was broken, here he is physically separated from the children and they have little clue of where he is or what happened to him. It's certainly an effective emotional setup: Nobita's despair at Doraemon's absence is palpable, and the moment when they finally locate and repair Doraemon is a real hope bringer.

If I have anything to complain about the story here, it's that the protagonists' movie-exclusive allies sometimes don't come across as very sympathetic. I get that they're in a desperate situation, but essentially tricking a group of children from a different planet into fighting for their cause doesn't leave a great first impression! Not only that, but they also don't give the protagonists a real opportunity to consent; by the time the movie characters explain all this, they're already bringing the protagonists with them on the way to start a campaign against the enemy robots. Note that Doraemon had already gone missing by this point, so the main group really consists of regular kids who don't even have gadgets to use.

In this movie, Nobita and his friends build a kingdom in the clouds, only to find an actual civilization hidden in the clouds. I quite like this one. At its core, it's another 90s environmentalist movie, but the central conflict is more nuanced than the one in the similarly-themed Nobita and the Animal Planet (1990). The main characters actually spend time reflecting on humanity's actions here, instead of simply facing off against "bad humans from a different planet". (Although Nobita and the Animal Planet did reference environmental issues on Earth proper, they did not form a central part of the plot.) At the same time, the cloud people with their sustainable civilization are not portrayed as being entirely virtuous either.

In addition to the conflict being morally grayer than usual, this film does quite a few new things for the Doraemon cinematic lineup. For example, it is the first movie in which Doraemon is rendered out of commission for an extended period of time, forcing the kids to get by without him for a while. This story also establishes that Doraemon has a rock-solid head (a lore addition that future films will regularly make use of), introduces a timer setting on the Anywhere Door allowing users to travel to a preset time, and shows Nobita and Doraemon soliciting funds from their friends to complete their latest project. Speaking of which, it's a lot of fun to watch them construct their Kingdom of Clouds.

Furthermore, this may be the only Doraemon movie that contains multiple explicit, plot-relevant references to the mainline series. Reappearing in this film are the moa and the dodo from "Moa and Dodos Forever" (1978 manga chapter, 1981 anime episode), the Lilliputians from "Hui of Donjara Village" (1984 manga chapter and anime episode) and Kibo the walking tree from "Goodbye, Kibo!" (1984 manga chapter and anime episode), now an adult tree. (Although that does raise the question of how Kibo was able to grow to adulthood when Nobita and his friends haven't aged at all...)

My main criticism of this film is that it's so jam-packed, some plot points show up with little to no chance for explanation. (And seriously, we did not need that five-second scene of Shizuka showering, barely censored...) For example, what is that healing energy Kibo uses to revive an unconscious Doraemon at the end? However, a more noticeable case might be the backstory of the cloud people: apparently the founders of the cloud civilization discovered that the clouds had become solid after a comet had passed by near the Earth, but how the comet was able to affect the clouds in this way is never revealed. Given that Doraemon tends to ascribe scientific or technological explanations to such phenomena, it's strange to see an origin story like this left with no clearly stated "rational" explanation.

Funnily, early in the movie, Nobita asks Doraemon how his Cloud-solidifying Gas gadget works, but Doraemon essentially replies, "That is a good question, but it would take too long to explain, so I won't." One has to wonder whether the author intentionally inserted this exchange to acknowledge how little would be explained in the story itself!