Doraemon Movie 12: Nobita no Dorabian Nights

My overall take: Not one of my favorite Doraemon movies, story takes major leaps in logic to work.

In this movie, Nobita's friend Shizuka gets literally lost inside an Arabian Nights story, so the others have to rescue her. I've never particularly liked this one. Reducing Shizuka's main narrative importance to "damsel in distress" is already not a winning premise, though this is at least not used as an excuse to sacrifice her characterization. Indeed, she responds to her situation with far more resourcefulness and composure than any 10-year-old should be expected to. (And her situation gets pretty dark, including her being marketed as a slave!)

There ... are other glaring flaws with the story, however. To start off, Shizuka is trapped inside the story from a physical book, which ends up getting burned, preventing the others from going back in themselves. Doraemon suggests that because Arabian Nights has characters inspired by real-world figures, it's possible that they'll be able to find Shizuka if they travel to 8th-Century Baghdad by Time Machine. This sounds like a big stretch, but it somehow works. (Uh, what about time-traveling to before the book was destroyed and retrieving the actual book...?) Not only that, but once the protagonists are in Baghdad, their entire search for Shizuka is founded on a series of vague hunches, visions in dreams, and rumors from unreliable sources. It's frankly miraculous that they eventually locate her at all.

Did I like anything about this movie? Well, the story moves at a brisk pace (if occasionally too brisk), so it's certainly not boring. Seeing Gian's protectiveness surface when Nobita gets heatstroke was nice. On the whole though, I have to say that Doraemon movies go, this is not one I rate highly.