Doraemon Movie 37: Nobita no Nankyoku Kachikochi Daibouken

This was my first Doraemon movie in like two years.

As someone who has always loved Doraemon movies, as well as the series itself, the enjoyment I had while watching this movie had more to do with nostalgia than with the actual aspects of the movie.

...There are only a few hrs left till the New Year, I came across this movie, and ended up watching out. I didn't have a lot of expectations, all I was looking for was a nice wholesome doraemon movie.

And that's what I got.

It's light, it's wholesome, it's Doraemon, it's good!

It explored a crucial geographical aspect of our ... planet and added a fantasy touch to it.

But as you all know, not all Doraemon movies are created equally, and this one definitely falls short when compared to Steel Troops or Explorer.

Of course, I wouldn't have liked it if I wasn't already a doraemon appreciator.

So I don't think this is for everybody.

The visuals may be glorious, but there is no considerably depth to this one.

I'd say, it's more of a light change of pace than the emotional rollercoasters that some of the Doraemon movies are!

First of all, please do not expect me to really 'formal' here. I will not really specifically talk about the story, art, sound , character etc... I will spontaneously talk ok, let's be fair.

Ok, no spoilers ok. shh..

Before I tell you what I think about this movie, I wanna tell you a bit about my trip to Kanagawa prefecture, Japan where I visited F.Fujiko Fujio museum. It is about 1000 Yen , I booked a ticket just in the freaking morning at Tokyo before going there (which is about 9 hours before the visiting time!) which actually I am so fortunate to be able ... to get 2 free seats , one for my sister and one for myself.

'Yo , hey we are discussing review here hey...!' Oh wait, just let me slowly , immerse you into the creator's mind.

Fujiko-sensei is really someone (just when I typed this I really ....ahh... think he is just..) he is just super captivating and the motives and he tries to deliver via his works mostly focuses on one thing : 希望 , if I romanize this, it becomes 'kibou'. Kibou means hope

It is a highly , and furthermore, let's say 'heavily' mentioned in his interview which was documented and displayed at the museum. I still remember holding a small toy-like phone which can translate to other languages (hmm as I recall it has Korean, Chinese, Spanish, English, Portuguese and Russian!) I hear him talks in Japanese rather than English. Let's pretend you do not understand at all what he says, I replayed thrice on his speech, he literally says : 'Spread the hope to the world'

And there's one picture I remember, he went to Egypt to get some ideas about Nobita's and Doraemon adventure....oh my God, please take me back to Japan haha....

Moving next to this movie, there's a part where a villain being portrait as the same as the main character and I appreciate Takahashi-san 'brings' out the emotions at that part (this part of the movie is the huge mystery) because they did not actually 'explains' who is the one that mimics the main character!! But in the end Nobita , Sunyo, Giant, Shizuka and of course not being said Doraemon had a really great time on their adventure.

At the course of ending the adventure, of course, 'kibou' appears and embedded deep within my fragile heart… and woke me up from the long hibernation so I can take my first step again to realise longed dream.

My overall take: A visual treat that has its merits, but makes a few puzzling decisions in the use of its setting and story.

In this movie, Nobita and Doraemon build an amusement park on an iceberg for their friends, but then discover a mysterious artifact from Antarctica. I have mixed feelings about this one. I found several story elements here to be odd: for example, Dorami makes a voiced cameo telling Doraemon that she's been fortune-telling and her readings indicate that he should stay away from ice, a prediction that Doraemon dismisses. Although intended as foreshadowing, I thought that this interaction was strange, because Dorami ... doesn't usually come across as the superstitious type. Even as a means of foreshadowing, the scene seemed unnecessary, because after all, the title of the movie already indicates that the protagonists will be visiting Antarctica, so ice being involved is a given.

Then there's the imposter situation that occurs partway through the adventure, in which a shapeshifting robot pretends to be Doraemon while leading the other main characters into an obvious death trap. Why there is a shapeshifting robot guarding the particular abandoned tower they're exploring is never explained, so the whole thing felt as though it were inserted just for the sake of creating a mid-story conflict. The imposter conundrum isn't resolved in a particularly clever or heartfelt way either; instead, Nobita "just knows" which one is the real Doraemon without much supporting evidence. I get that it is supposed to show the close bond between Nobita and Doraemon, but I would have preferred if this had been represented in a more subtle way—perhaps Nobita could have picked up on some telltale body language from the real Doraemon, for example. At the very least, the main characters could have tried quizzing the imposter on some harder questions than just Gian and Suneo's names.

On the bright side, some of the visuals in this film are really pretty. In addition, though most of the protagonists don't receive much characterization here, I thought that this was actually quite a good movie for Doraemon himself. Not only does he come up with a clever solution to help the others save himself when they get separated from each other in time (probably the best-executed subplot in this film), but he also plays a key role during the final battle. Furthermore, his gigantic, flying, ice-drilling vehicle might be one of the most impressive gadgets he's ever pulled straight from his pocket.

I also appreciated that there are a fair few references to Earth science in this film: Snowball Earth, the Cambrian explosion, and the history of Antarctic glaciation are all mentioned. (Just don't write down the part about aliens being the cause of Snowball Earth if you're taking an Earth science exam...) Something I'm surprised that this movie does not explicitly address, however, is anthropogenic climate change. Considering that the film begins with reports of record high temperatures in Tokyo, I was fully expecting that climate change would play some role in the plot, especially given that environmentalism is a recurring theme in Doraemon.

In fact, I even have to wonder whether this movie might give some young or impressionable viewers the wrong idea about ongoing climate change. The main threat in the story poses the risk of freezing the entire world, with similar entities having already frozen other planets, so when the protagonists' movie-exclusive allies are shown to have successfully melted the ice on their own home planet in the end, this is portrayed as a positive outcome (and in the context of the narrative, it certainly is one)... yet would this imply that the melting of polar ice in the real world is a good thing? Maybe I'm overthinking it, but it seems to me that a plot emphasizing the importance of ice caps to maintaining current Earth systems would have been a more appropriate use of the setting and premise of this movie.