Perhaps everyone has a different idea of what a perfect world might look like, but I think most people would have in view a few core concepts such as a lack of suffering, availability of goods and foods for all, meaningful work, and a population of genuinely good and decent people who are treated fairly and equally under the law. How that surfeit of happy circumstances might be brought about is the more difficult quandary, and these issues are explored in Doraemon: Nobita’s Sky Utopia directed by Takumi Doyama (who also directed Chibi Maruko-Chan: A Boy from Italy [2015]). As part of the incredible cash-cow Doraemon franchise, Nobita’s Sky Utopia has already netted Toho and the other studios behind the film a significant pile of yen—but for moviegoers, it also provides a decent night out of skillfully-crafted, undemanding kid sci-fi adventure.
Although not at all popular in the USA, the Doraemon franchise is one of the most lucrative and ubiquitous of properties within Japan, instantly recognizable and beloved amongst the child populace—like Mickey Mouse with a science-fiction pedigree. The character of Doraemon (an earless robotic cat from the future) is so well-established that even Japanese kids with no drawing talent can sketch out his face from memory—just this past week some of my students were writing example sentences in class, and at least one doodled out Doraemon on her sketch pad. I have seen him appear over and over again on homework and on chalkboards and dry-erase boards, and concepts related to Doraemon have shown up multiple times in homework my students have turned in—if you ever ask a Japanese person to dream up an invention they would like to try, there is a good chance the resultant idea will come from Doraemon. Given his wild popularity, Doraemon goods of all sorts are easy to come by, from clips and bags, tissue-dispensers, keychains and cups, wallets, lunchboxes, snacks, games—even a Doraemon-branded version of Uno. Originating as a largely episode children’s manga title by Fujiko F. Fujio starting in the late 60s, the manga soon birthed an animated series, which later spawned a second, and a third, with the combined episode count in the thousands, and the robo-cat possesses a movie franchise with more entries AND more box office take than the Japanese Godzilla films—a distinction unlikely to change as a new Doraemon film has released nearly every year since 1980. Some years had two new Doraemon film releases, with a total of 44 films as of April 2023. Two of those films were directed or co-directed by Takashi Yamazaki, who is currently at work on the latest Godzilla film. The movie under review today has been wildly successful—since it was released on Friday, March 3rd, it has held the top box office spot five out of six weeks—losing just once to My Happy Marriage on March 17th. (Please note that this review was written before the box office numbers came in for the weekend of April 15 and 16—I am sure the new Detective Conan movie released last Friday will have beaten it.) Anyway, basically, this cat knows where it’s at.
I personally have some experience with Doraemon, but mostly with the manga. Many learners of Japanese are well-acquainted with the azure mechanical feline, as over ten volumes of his comic adventures were published in bilingual format. The key features of the tales deal with a moss-on-a-rock dumb ten-year-old kid named Nobita Nobi—a lazy, unathletic, and generally unreliable layabout. One day Doraemon appears in Nobita’s room, sent from the 22nd century to look after him by one of Nobita’s descendants. Doraemon is a kind and caring robot with a sweet tooth for Japanese snacks, and a belly pocket with infinite storage capacity like Felix the Cat’s “Magic Bag of Tricks.” Each episodic story generally follows a close pattern in which Nobita wants something or does something stupid, Doraemon introduces a solution to his wants or problems via a gadget from the future, and Nobita uses that gadget in irresponsible ways so as to create an even bigger comical mess. Eventually some of Doraemon’s future-tech toys became iconic to the show, such as the “doko demo door” (basically a teleportation portal) and helicopter hats. The Doraemon manga tales are usually over in one chapter, but the movies take longer narratives with more of an adventurous slant than most of the standard gag shorts.
In Doraemon: Nobita’s Sky Utopia, Nobita (played by Megumi Ohara) has once again failed at school with a host of tests coming back scratched over in red, and upon glimpsing a strange moon-shape in the sky, and hearing stories of lost utopias, he hatches a plan to escape his mediocrity and find a perfect world where he might become good at all the things he sucks at and so put his problems behind him. He snaps up Doraemon (Wasabi Mizuta) into his plot, as well as neighbor kid Shizuka (Yumi Kakazu, Full Metal Alchemist)—and two local bullies Gian (Subaru Kimura) and Suneo (Tomokazu Seki, Fruits Basket) also force the kid to include them in his schemes. They ride a time blimp checking out the origins of news clippings and reports on strange phenomenon in the sky throughout history and eventually find a real utopia in the sky—an artificial floating city within a great golden mechanical moon, protected by drones and a second, more realistically detailed cat robot named Sonya (Ren Nagase from boyband King & Prince). After an initial misunderstanding and resultant scuffle, Nobita and friends are welcomed to Paradapia (the name of the lost city) and given a guided tour by local gradeschooler Hanna (Inori Minase)—and it really seems as if everything is ideal in that fantastic futuristic milieu. The world is beautiful and self-sufficient, the people are wonderful and care about each other, and educational methods are fun and effective—to the point that everyone apparently can succeed at anything they put their hands to. As Nobita and the others enjoy the wonders of Paradapia and take some time to get acquainted with its luxuries, however, something strange is afoot behind the scenes, as the perfect façade covers over something darker beyond—something that could trap them and change their world forever.
On the level of the story, without giving away the twist, the climactic action and conclusion are surprisingly satisfying, bringing in early established plot elements that seemed quite forgotten and giving them new significance or purpose in the denouement. There is also an attempt at a melodramatic self-sacrifice with an unsurprising resolution for this kind of narrative, which I think was all overdone, but that sort of strained emotion seems almost expected for the genre. Still, even with that predictability worked in, I came away surprised at how well the plot pieces clicked into place.
A big part of the joy of Doraemon is in the dream-like technology that comes into play, and we get a lot here to satisfy fans. In addition to the floating moon-city of Paradapia and the drones and time blimp, Nobita and the others are gifted special outfits that unfold into personal airplanes, and Paradapia is decked out in a math-teaching amusement park, a flash-freezing energy field, and other magical accoutrements. There are beams that change things into bugs, mysterious badges, a bag that recycles trash, and a slew of Doraemon’s already-established widgets and doohickeys from his belly. Given how all-powerful Doraemon would be if he had full disposal of his tech, though, the movie engineers an excuse why some of his most useful gear (such as his doko demo door) are out of commission for the adventure—much like how the Star Trek franchise is forever dreaming up means to chuck a wrench into their teleportation system to maintain narrative tension. These and other whatzits make for an inventive, creatively abundant atmosphere.
Animation, while not up to Pixar standards of fluidity, nor the spectacle of a Demon Slayer title, nevertheless moves with fluidity—and the traditional cel animation flows together smoothly with computer animated elements. The action sequences and panning shots of wonder displaying the world and workings of Paradapia sustain a frisk of wonder even at the lower budget point. I am not the greatest fan of the low-detail stylings of Fujiko F. Fujio’s art style (that funky upper lip…), but the point of the art here is not to create overweening awe or strike home with a clever Avant Garde twist. I think rather the goal was more to provide a bonhomie familiarity for the fans realized via enough budget, enough small-scale grandeur, to justify the theatrical ticket price. The art on display is a step or two above adequate and good for the intended audience.
Performances range from good to grating, but I am coming in as an outsider to the anime—the main cast have been doing these parts for years, so whatever ticks and quirks there actors have are expected and enjoyed by the regular fans. I liked Megumi Ohara as Nobita—she gives him pathos and humor and ridiculousness when needed, and when things get hairy and frightening, she has the dramatic chops to pull off the needed fuss. Wasabi Mizuta as Doraemon, on the other hand, wrings out a whiny, braying nuisance of a voice that had me wincing, and Suneo’s Tomokazu Seki produced a similar idiosyncratic noise. Better was the whomping deep tones of Subaru Kimura as Gian, or the simple stubborn kindness of Yumi Kakazu as Shizuka. King & Prince’s Ren Nagase produces a smooth, emotionally troubled vocality that I liked—but which sounds almost out of place in the stylized Doraemon world. That alienation might have been deliberate, however, given his equally set apart character design.
Music by Takayuki Hattori (Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla [1994], Godzilla 2000: Millennium [1999]) surprised me, too. The mix of appropriate calm electronic clatter glitzes up milder sequences for when characters cheerfully go about their comical lives, but Hattori also provides more sweeping, melodic, powerful instrumental numbers that give unexpected dramatic heft to sequences of battle and expansive displays of the Paradapia sweep.
I have some reservations on some touches on themes in the film, so in this paragraph I will be tripping through some pretty HEAVY SPOILERS. You have been warned. As with a lot of false utopia narratives, Paradapia ends up another in the line of frauds achieving perfection-via-mind-control. In this case, the villain behind the machinations was motivated by his disgust with the war and suffering that comes as a result of free will. Unsurprisingly, though, the story doesn’t really deal with this theme in any depth, as the dark side of humanity is portrayed in a very simplistic way, and so why a world with bad actors kicking off wars is better than pleasant robots is never really probed. Instead of any real engagement with the philosophy, we get Nobita and the others breaking their mental bonds through simple encouragement, and even the abusive bullies are suddenly saints and heroes so everyone can escape and the kids in the audience can nod along to the simplistic message.
One other bit had me even more troubled. It’s a fleeting moment in the film, but it really struck me as horridly distasteful. Shortly after Nobita and the others arrive on Paradapia, we get a quick shot of the kids sleeping in their bunks. Well, almost all the kids. Nobita, Gian, and Suneo are snoring away—but as for Shizuka, we get a shower scene where we get to view her soap up for several seconds on screen. We don’t see any nakedness per se, but it seems clear that the scene is meant as a sort of kid-level cheesecake. Only thing is, Shizuka is canonically TEN YEARS OLD. No way were we going to get Nobita suggestively soaping his shoulders or Gian relaxing nude in a bath, and I am thankful for that, but NEITHER SHOULD WE GET A TEN-YEAR-OLD GIRL SHOWER SCENE IN A KID’S MOVIE!
Doraemon: Nobita’s Sky Utopia is an occasionally clever and well-packaged kids’ entertainment with some discouraging weak points. The imaginative sci-fi elements jerry-rig together twinkling glee, the predictable humor may engender soft chuckles, the action is pleasantly mild, the animation strikes a balanced and colorful quality without straight wowing us. What most impressed me was a narrative deliciousness right at the end when a few elements spring back into the story at just the right time to provide a pretty, tied-up bow. That said, the themes can be barebones, a tiny clip that arguably sexualizes a child provides a yuck factor, and some of the performances register high on the annoyance meter. This was my first Doraemon movie, and it was easy to follow and enjoyable—but not overly special. Better than I expected, but not a perfect Doraemon movie for our imperfect world.
