Doraemon

Doraemon (Japanese: ドラえもん) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Fujiko F. Fujio. The series has also been adapted into a successful anime series and media franchise. The story revolves around a robotic cat named Doraemon, who travels back in time from the 22nd century to aid a pre-teen boy named Nobita Nobi (野比のび太 Nobi Nobita).

The Doraemon manga series was first published in December 1969 in six different magazines. A total of 1,345 stories were created in the original series, which are published by Shogakukan. The volumes are collected in the Takaoka Central Library in Toyama, Japan, where Fujiko Fujio was born. Turner Broadcasting System bought the rights to the Doraemon anime series in the mid-1980s for an English-language release in the United States, but cancelled it without explanation before broadcasting any episodes. In July 2013 Voyager Japan announced the manga would be released digitally in English via the Amazon Kindle e-book service. It is one of the best-selling manga in the world, having sold over 100 million copies as of 2015.

Plot
Nobi Nobita is a young boy who suffers from poor grades, frequent bullying and negative emotions like sadness and jealousy. Many years in the future, one of his descendants sends the robotic cat Doraemon back in time to protect and guide Nobita. Doraemon has a four-dimensional pocket from which he produces items known as gadgets, which range from toys and medicine, to technology from the future. Examples include the Bamboo-Copter (Japanese: Take-Koputa), a small piece of headgear that allows flight and the Anywhere Door (Japanese: Doko Demo Doa), a door that opens up to any place the user wishes.

Nobita's closest friend is Minamoto Shizuka, who also serves as his romantic interest and eventually becomes his wife. Nobita is usually tormented by the bullying Goda Takeshi (nicknamed "Gian"), and the cunning and arrogant Honekawa, Suneo. A typical story consists of Doraemon using one of his gadgets in order to assist Nobita in various ways, often causing more trouble than he was trying to solve.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) It's one of the longest-running TV show series in Japan, alongside Kamen Rider, Sazae-san, Ultra Series, and Super Sentai.
 * 2) It paved the way for the Japanese anime industry to be able to compete against the American cartoon industry, mainly due to its simplistic and enjoyable story.
 * 3) The character designs are well-done.
 * 4) Being a similar case to South Park, unlike the television programs of the United States, or the most emblematic animes of Japan, Doraemon has been one of the few series that have never suffered a notable or cancerous decline within its history, demonstrating that the creative team that works on the series cares about the quality of the show, at the same time there have only been very few cases where fans have been disappointed with the episodes, the specials or the movies during its almost 60 years of broadcasting
 * 5) All of the characters are likable and have distinct various personalities.
 * 6) * Nobita portrays a weak, lazy boy who has a crush on a pretty girl and wants to improve himself.
 * 7) * Shizuka is a girl who is often seen protecting Nobita from bullying and is friendly and kind.
 * 8) * Gian and Suneo, although usually portrayed as a bully and a rich, flamboyant boy respectively, they usually help Nobita and friends in many episodes, including the movies.
 * 9) The gadgets that Doraemon uses have various creative different characteristics, ranging from simplistic stuff such as a Bamboo Copter to even powerful gadgets, such as a telephone booth, that is able to change the world as the user wishes.
 * 10) *Some gadgets are very useful and make the viewers want them in real life, such as a door that makes the user travel everywhere.
 * 11) The theme songs and ending songs are catchy.
 * 12) Although Doraemon focuses especially on children, it is no stranger to showing serious themes such as death, long-distance friendship, self-esteem, existential crises, the damage of the human being to the world, clinging to a dream, slavery, the child abandonment, clinging to the past among many others.
 * 13) *At the same time, when he combines his main story with mature themes it doesn't feel anticlimactic or forced.
 * 14) Doraemon can be considered as a harsh criticism of how human beings should not cling to a dream or how the tools capable of solving life in a minute will not guarantee happiness.
 * 15) Pokes fun at family and teacher stereotypes in a rather comedic way.
 * 16) It explained time travel theory into an understandable format.
 * 17) The episodes of the 1979 series have very funny stories and various endings, such an ending when Gian and Suneo were getting punished after stealing Doraemon's gadgets and used it carelessly, or a heartwarming ending. Many episodes later became a meme in Japan.
 * 18) The movie adaptions prior to 2007 are very entertaining.
 * 19) It even spawned a CGI animated movie in 2014 called mh:greatestmovies:Stand By Me Doraemon, which was just as great as the show and was a beautiful and amazing way to celebrate the creator's 80th anniversary, as it was much sadder than the show and has very beautiful CGI animation in akin to that of The Peanuts Movie. It was released in Japan on August 8, 2014, and recieved acclaim from critics, audiences, and the fans of the show. A sequel was made in 2020.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) After 2006, the movies (except for Stand By Me Doraemon) became very boring and confusing for everyone as the creators often ripoff the old stories. Especially Nobita and the Island of Miracles and Nobita's Space Heroes, though they aren't bad and they have been improving throughout the years like Nobita and the Birth of Japan 2016.
 * 2) The 1979 series went downhill after Fujiko F. Fujio passed away in 1996, though not horribly. Many episodes have since used recycled plots with only a few additions.
 * 3) * Some Characters even got flanderized in the 1979 version like Nobita & Shizuka.
 * 4) While not bad, the Amazon Kindle version of the manga & the American English dub were heavily Americanized, such as renaming every character with American sounding names (Noby instead of Nobita, Sue instead of Shizuka, etc), and changing the setting from Tokyo to a town in the USA, and also replacing chopsticks with western eating utensils.
 * 5) Like most Animes made for childrens, there are some very inappropriate moments for a kids' show like Nobita sometimes acting like a pervert to Shizuka (which took Nobita's love for Shizuka to an extreme, not helping the fact that they are both below the age of 18) and Nobita and his friends being naked (due to Japan having different laws on what's considered child friendly), fortunately, they were censored in a handful of dubs of the show.
 * 6) A huge problem with the series is that it tends to limit the abilities too much or alter the personalities of the characters.
 * 7) * In fact, Doraemon can be considered as a god or more specifically "the 6 Gems of infinity" since he has artifacts capable of creating life, manipulating time, space, reality, the soul, the mind, and the life of the planet, However, even if Doraemon is limited in many of those aspects when they face a problem.
 * 8) **Not to mention that some episodes position him as someone of great strength and endurance capable of withstanding blows, explosions and attacks from wild animals, but in several episodes he is unable to withstand blows from Giant or cardboard boxes.
 * 9) *Nobita also suffers from these problems where he is shown as someone almost unable to move a ball or write his name well when there is a time when he can deal with problems of titanic magnitude.
 * 10) *Gigante and Suneo exaggerate their personality of being mean to Nobita, even though he is one of their best friends.
 * 11) *Dekisugi can be defined as a Gary stu par excellence, being able to get 100 in everything, or being able to solve any problem without any inconvenience.
 * 12) *Shizuka is somewhat way too perfect, which was fixed by the American version by giving her a tomboy streak.
 * 13) ** Even Ace himself is also very perfect, as he always gets high scores and is better at everything than Nobita.
 * 14) * Nobita's Mother can be a jerk sometimes, though this is justified since Nobita is close to being uneducated due to having a dislike on studying.
 * 15) ** In Fact, this led to her flanderization in the 2015 English dub of the same name.
 * 16) ** Gian's mother, towards him, is strict and far too stern than Nobita's mother.
 * 17) Despite the 1979 series being good, it has a lot of animation bugs or errors to list.
 * 18) * Doraemon's whiskers disappering.
 * 19) * Despite being a less fat in the 1979 series, Doraemon can be skinny in some scenes.
 * 20) * Nobita can be tall in certain occasions in most episodes which doesn't make any sense.
 * 21) While Doraemon was dubbed in many countries, some dubs are mixed in many ways.
 * 22) * The Balearic Catalan version is hard to find on YouTube, thankfully the Catalan central and Valencian versions still exist.
 * 23) * The Asian Speedy dubs are terrible.
 * 24) * The Hindi dub, while passable and faithful to the Japanese version, can have very annoying voice actors (however some of the voice acting, particularly Doraemon, is good)
 * 25) For fans of all the world, at times, is considered the most overrated and forgettable anime franchise, despite it is still long-lived.
 * 26) It spawned a unauthorized bootleg Chinese movie called Doraemon Robot War.
 * 27) Both Nobita & Shinzuka suffered from flanderization as the 1979 & 2005 series went on.
 * 28) * Nobita went from a clumsy, slow, unforgetable, average child, who relies on Doraemon most of the time but still tries his best to be good most of the time and is sometimes caring to his friends and even Doraemon, into absolute jerkish man-child that makes the season 6-8 counterpart of Spongebob look decent in comparison.
 * 29) *Shinzuka went from a simple character who was a love interest for Nobita, intro a flawless character who is perfect in everyway as possible, though not as bad as Nobita's.

Reception and Legacy
Until 2015, more than 100 million copies of the manga have been sold and the animated series is available in over 30 countries.

Doraemon was awarded the first Shogakukan Manga Award for children's manga in 1982. In 1997, it was awarded the first Osamu Tezuka Culture Award. In 2008, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs appointed Doraemon as the first anime cultural ambassador.

On April 22, 2002, on the special issue of Asian Hero in Time magazine, Doraemon was selected as one of the 22 Asian Heroes. Being the only anime character selected, Doraemon was described as "The Cuddliest Hero in Asia". In 2005, the Taiwan Society of New York selected Doraemon as a culturally significant work of Japanese otaku pop-culture in its exhibit Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture, curated by renowned artist Takashi Murakami.

Jason Thompson praised the "silly situations" and "old fashioned, simple artwork", with Doraemon's expression and comments adding to the "surrounding elementary-school mischief".

On September 3, 2012, Doraemon was granted official residence in the city of Kawasaki, one hundred years before he was born.

With the 2013 film, Doraemon: Nobita and The Gadget Museum, Doraemon has surpassed Godzilla in terms of overall ticket sales for a film franchise as Toho's most lucrative movie property. The 33-year series (1980–2013) has sold a combined 100 million tickets vs. the 50-year Godzilla series (1954–2004), which sold a combined 99 million tickets. It also became the largest franchise by the number of admissions in Japan.

Trivia

 * Most of the original 1973 series is lost. While there are not much videos, there are many pictures, scripts, and audio.
 * Doraemon is the most aired show in India on Hungama and Disney Channel India.
 * There was an obscure American dub for the show called The Adventures of Albert & Sidney, which replace both Doraemon and Nobita's names as Albert and Sidney, in which it only aired in the small island of Barbados, instead of Canada, where the dub was made.
 * The Baleric Catalan dub is lost media due to it only airing the early 1979 episodes, however the intro only survived and can be seen on YouTube.