Doraemon Movie 20: Nobita no Uchuu Hyouryuuki

My overall take: Decent effort, but doesn't do much to stand out among the many other space-themed movies in the series.

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