Doraemon Movie 32: Nobita to Kiseki no Shima - Animal Adventure

My overall take: Conceptually appealing, but sad to say, one of my least favorite Doraemon movies.

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. As both a paleontologist and a Doraemon fan, by all rights I should love this movie. 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. 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.