This list of Doraemon films features both feature length and short films (movies) based on the manga and anime series, Doraemon. It also features a list of specials that are not included in the regular episode numbering.
Since 1980, all of these films to date have been released by Toho and have become the 11th highest grossing animated franchise & the highest grossing anime franchise by a combination domestic and international release, and having surpassed Godzilla as the highest-grossing film franchise in Japan.
Just like the first movie, the original was another one of the best Doraemon movies made IMO so I was very keen to see how this remake turned out. The Japanese DVD was just released earlier this month so I managed to find a copy of it to watch.
Original:
After daydreaming about magic during a baseball match and losing, Nobita goes to visit Dekisugi, the top class student to explain why magic and superstition was replaced by science. We see quite a few non-Anime black and white illustrations as Dekisugi explains how people believed that everything is controlled by a supernatural force long ago. These include people studying the stars and alchemists trying to turn metal into gold.
Thoughts:
Again, the original has a better impact and can probably even be thought provoking for a young audience. Those black and white illustrations were actually pretty creepy because they were life-like sketches and not the familiar Anime style.
While the series is about Doraemon giving Nobita gadgets to help him (and invariably give him a hard time when he abuses them), being a mixture of a Slice of Life and Science Fiction series, the films have much wider plots that often have Nobita, Doraemon, and their friends go to new worlds.
Tropes found in the films as a unit:
- Adaptation Expansion:
- Many of the films themselves are expansions of either a single or several chapters with an example being the first movie being an expansion of the 1975 chapter with the same name.
- The manga adaptation of the 2005 series movies tend to expand on the story in general. Showing more background stories or having some events played out differently compared to the movie it was based on.
- Adaptational Heroism: For the main five, where the "ass" part of Jerkass was removed and replaced with Jerk with a Heart of Gold, and that was at its worst.
- Big Damn Movie: LOVES this trope. The regular manga and TV series involves just the mundane daily life of the protagonist, his robotic cat, and his other elementary school friends in suburban Tokyo. However, the series' movies will always be huge epic adventure stories (often set in elaborate sci-fi/mythological/high fantasy locations) and the main characters are inevitably portrayed as the brave action heroes.
- But Now I Must Go: In the majority of the movies, the movie characters and the regular main characters say farewell to each other and never see each other again after said movie (discounting their original manga/later anime adaptions if existent or their original/remake version), bar one outlier.
- Demonic Possession:
- Happened to Suneo twice in two movies, first possessed by one of the Yadori Alien and latter by the Big Bad evil sorcerer Uranda.
- Also happened to Nobita once in the same movie. He, however, is prepared for it the second time and defeat the Yadori Emperor.
- Deus Exit Machina: To avoid Doraemon easily solving the main conflict, many movies have him knocked out, defeated, or separated from most if not all of his gadgets by the time the climax kicks in.
- Disneyfication: The whole Doraemon series mellowed down most of the fairy tales and famous stories they adapted, most notably in Doraemon: Nobita's Great Battle of the Mermaid King movie. The plot was closer to the source than the Disney movie, but in the end, Sophia and the entire mermaid tribe live happily ever after anyway.
- Foreshadowing: These movies love to foreshadow scenes that are very important.
- Forgot About His Powers: The movies will always have a big war towards the end. And yet despite the overabundance of useful gadgets, Doraemon only remembers the rather weak Air Cannon. Cue a Curb-Stomp Battle delivered by the enemies until the protagonists have to rely on Deus ex Machina or Heroic Sacrifice. Often, though, the trope is subverted because Doraemon usually has his gadgets in repair of out of power (makes sense due to the sheer number [over 4 digit] of them). He's only got multiple versions of the most common (and likely cheapest) gadgets in hand for most of the time. (Even the iconic takecopters are often lacking in battery power.)
- Girl of the Week: The movies, especially later ones, where there will be a token girl even though the main focus isn't on her at all...most of the time.
- Green Aesop: Used frequently in the movies. In most stories, and especially in movies, humans destroying the environment won't result in a disaster on its own; that would take too long. Chances are, alien civilization will plot to intervene and destroy humans first to prevent said environmental disaster from happening.
- Holding Back the Phlebotinum: It's common for Doraemon to lose his pocket at some point in the movies, sometimes leaving the heroes with only a handful of gadgets that they have to try and make the best of.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Almost every civilization Nobita and his friends run across in the movies has some sort of grudge against humans. Usually paired with Green Aesop above.
- Letterbox:
- Some movies have this when released on VHS or DVD. As the movies were produced in the 16:9 aspect ratio since Doraemon: Nobita's Great Adventure in the South Seas onward.
- Interestingly, this is inverted with the older movies when they're first released in Japanese theatres. The first 18 movies were made in the 4:3 aspect ratio but were shown in theatres in the 16:9 aspect ratio. They were generally good at not making important details got lost from the crop. So this is a non-issue for the most part.
- Non-Serial Movie: All of them.
- Make Wrong What Once Went Right: The Big Damn Movie villains are especially fond of this.
- The Movie: It will have more than 30 movies in a year or two, but since the story doesn't have a real ending nor it has any development, plus what most of what the studio's doing nowadays is to remake em'all for new generation's kids. All Doraemon movies (except some short movies and spinoffs) are considered not the Non-Serial Movie.
- The Remake: Starting with the 2006 movie, Doraemon: Nobita's Dinosaur (2006), which is a remake of the first movie. After that, several movies were given the remake treatments.
- Scenery Porn: The TV series and the older movies (1980 to 2004) are not known for their good animations, but Doraemon: Nobita in the Wan-Nyan Spacetime Odyssey, alongside the newer movies (2006 onward), are just simply gorgeous.
- Tender Tears: Loads and loads in the movies, especially those that started to be done in the 2005 anime era.
- Title: The Adaptation: All movies are titled Doraemon, later Doraemon the Movie, followed by a subtitle. Which also have to have the word Nobita in it (Stand by Me Doraemon and Stand by Me Doraemon 2 being the only exceptions).
- Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: Most of the main villains of the movies are shown to be outright malicious and evil, to the point where they try to kill the main cast as means of eliminating those who oppose them. Keep in mind the main cast mostly consists of children.
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