is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by . First serialized in 1969, the manga's selected chapters were collected in 45 volumes published by Shogakukan from 1974 to 1996. The story revolves around an earless robotic cat named Doraemon, who travels back in time from the 22nd century to assist a boy named Nobita Nobi in his day-to-day life.
The manga spawned a media franchise. It was adapted into three different anime television series in 1973, 1979, and 2005. Additionally, Shin-Ei Animation has produced over forty animated films, including two CGI-animated films, all of which are distributed by Toho. Various types of merchandise and media have been developed, including soundtrack albums, video games, and musicals. The manga series was licensed for an English language release in North America via Amazon Kindle, through a collaboration of Fujiko F. Fujio Pro with Voyager Japan and AltJapan Co., Ltd. The anime series was licensed by Disney for an English-language release in North America in 2014, and LUK International in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Doraemon was well received by critics and became a commercial success in many Asian countries. It won numerous awards, including the Japan Cartoonists Association Award in 1973 and 1994, the Shogakukan Manga Award for children's manga in 1982, and the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize in 1997. As of 2024, it has sold over 300 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling manga series of all time. The titular character is considered a Japanese cultural icon and was appointed as the first "anime ambassador" in 2008 by the country's Foreign Ministry.
Synopsis
Set in 20th century Tokyo, Japan, the series revolves around Nobita Nobi, a ten-year-old school boy who is kind-hearted and honest, but also lazy, clumsy, and hapless, performing poorly in both school and sports. One day, a blue robot cat from the 22nd century named Doraemon is sent back to the past by Nobita's future great-great-grandson, Sewashi Nobi, to take care of Nobita so that his descendants can have a better life. Doraemon has a four-dimensional pocket in which he stores tools, inventions, and gadgets from the future to aid Nobita whenever he is faced with a problem. Although Doraemon is a cat robot, he has a fear of mice because of an incident where robotic mice chewed off his ears. Afterwards, Doraemon lost his original yellow color and turned blue from sadness.
Nobita has three main friends: Takeshi Goda (nicknamed Gian), Suneo Honekawa (Gian's sidekick), and Shizuka Minamoto (Nobita's love interest). Gian is a strong, leading and domineering boy, but also loyal to his friends. Suneo is a wealthy and spoiled boy who uses his friendship with Gian to win the respect of other schoolmates. Shizuka is a gentle and kind girl who frequently plays with Nobita. Nobita has a crush on Shizuka; she is his prospective future wife (Nobita's future wife is initially Gian's younger sister). Although Gian and Suneo are Nobita's friends, they also typically bully and abuse him. Nobita normally responds by using Doraemon's gadgets to fight back against them, but Nobita has a tendency to get carried away with using the gadgets (or Gian and Suneo, if they steal it away), which typically results in unintended consequences for him and others.
Dorami and Hidetoshi Dekisugi are also recurring characters. Dorami is Doraemon's younger sister, and Dekisugi is a gifted student boy who, as Shizuka's close friend, frequently attracts the jealousy of Nobita.
Production
Development and themes Doraemon was written and illustrated by Fujiko F. Fujio, the pen name of Japanese manga artist Hiroshi Fujimoto. According to Fujio, the series was originally conceived following a series of three events: when searching for ideas for a new manga, he wished a machine existed that would come up with ideas for him; during this, he tripped over his daughter's toy, and heard cats fighting in his neighborhood. To set up the plot and characters, he used some elements from his earlier manga series, Obake no Q-Tarō, which involve an living with humans, with a similar formula. Fujio said that the idea for Doraemon came after "an accumulation of trial and error", during which he finally found the most suitable style of manga to him. Initially, the series achieved little success as was well known at the time, and it only became a hit after its adaptation into an anime TV series and multiple feature films.
Doraemon is mainly aimed at children, so Fujio chose to create the character with a simple graphic style, based on shapes such as circles and ellipses. He used the same sequences of cartoons with regularity and continuity to enhance the reader's ease of understanding. In addition, blue, a characteristic color of Doraemon, was chosen as the main color in magazine publications, which used to have a yellow cover and red title. Set in Tokyo, the manga reflected parts of Japan's society, such as the class system and the "ideal" of Japanese childhood. Problems, if they occurred, were resolved in a way so as not to rely on violence and eroticism, and the stories were integrated with the concept of environmentalism. The manga also insisted on the ethical values of integrity, perseverance, courage, family and respect.
In order to underline the crucial role of the younger generation in society, the manga's creator chose to have the act carried out in a "children's domain" where young people can live with happiness, freedom and power without adult interference. As Saya S. Shiraishi noted, the existence of the "domain" helped Doraemon to have a strong appeal in various Asian countries. During Doraemon's development, Fujio did not express a change in characters; he said, "When a manga hero become a success, the manga suddenly stops being interesting. So the hero has to be like the stripes on a barber pole; he seems to keep moving upward, but actually he stays in the same place."
According to Zensho Ito, Fujio's former student, the "length" of time in the universe is one of the ideas that inspired Fujio to make Doraemon. Frequently displayed in its stories is Nobita's desire to control time, and there exist time-control gadgets that he uses to satisfy that desire, particularly the "Time Machine", which lies in his desk drawer. Unlike Western works of science fiction, the manga does not explain the theory nor the applied technology behind these tools, but instead focuses on how the characters exploit them to their advantage, making it more child-friendly.
Origin of name The name "Doraemon" can be roughly translated to "stray". Unusually, the name is written in a mixture of two Japanese scripts: katakana () and hiragana (). "Dora" derives from , and is a corruption of nora ("stray"), while "-emon" (in kanji ) is an old-fashioned suffix for male names (for example, as in Ishikawa Goemon).
The name "Nobita Nobi" refers to "nobi nobi", meaning "the way a young child grows up free, healthy, and happy, unrestrained in any sense".This meaning is explained by Nobita's father in
The name "Tsukimidai-Susukigahara", the fictional neighborhood in Nerima Ward, Tokyo where Nobita Nobi and his friends live, refers to the Fujimidai neighborhood, where Osamu Tezuka's residence and animation studio, Mushi Production, is based.
Gadgets
Gadgets, or , are Doraemon's hi-tech tools from the future, used to assist the characters. Fujio said that Doraemon has a total of 1,293 gadgets; according to a 2004 analysis by Yasuyuki Yokoyama of Toyama University, there are 1,963 gadgets found in 1,344 sketches. The most recurring gadgets include "Take-Copter", a small piece of headgear made out of bamboo that can allow its users to fly; "Time Machine", a machine used for time travel; "Anywhere Door", a pink-colored door that allows people to travel according to the thoughts of the person who turns the knob; "Time Kerchief", a handkerchief which can turn an object new or old or a person young or old; "Translator Tool", a cuboid jelly that allows one to converse in any language; and "Designer", a camera used to instantly dress-up the user.
Saya S. Shiraishi wrote that most of the gadgets were "an impressive testimony to the standards of quality control and innovation that exist in the twenty-second century". The gadgets are an essential part of the series so as to reflect a positive point of view concerning the association of technology in children, and to express the wishes of modern society.
Conclusion The series ceased its original run in 1994 and was not given an ending before Fujimoto's death in 1996; this has since aroused numerous urban legends throughout the years. One of the most well-known "endings" of the manga was by an amateur manga cartoonist under the pen name "Yasue T. Tajima", first appearing on the Internet in 1998 and made into a manga in 2005. The story takes place when Doraemon's battery dies, and Nobita later grows up becoming a robot engineer, potentially reviving Doraemon and live a happy life. Tajima issued an apology making his own ending in 2007, and the profits were shared with Shogakukan and the copyright owner, Fujiko F. Fujio Pro.
Ryūichi Yagi and Takashi Yamazaki, the directors of Stand by Me Doraemon, confirmed that it had only one opening, while the ending has been rewritten several times. Because of this, Shogakukan had to clarify that only if the marriage of Nobita and Shizuka is finalized will the mission be accomplished, and then Doraemon will return to the future.
Media Manga
+ Main Title Note Label Volumes Chapter count Publication date Publisher Doraemon The Complete Works of Fujiko F. Fujio201326 2009–2012 Shogakukan Kindle Edition2001311 2013–2016 Shogakukan Chūkō comics: Fujiko Fujio Land45833 1984–1990 Chūōkōronsha Normal volume Tentōmushi Comics822 1974–1996 Shogakukan Doraemon Plus 7145 2005–2006, 2014, 2023 Doraemon Color Works Tentōmushi Comics Special6119 1999–2006 Doraemon Volume 0 Tentōmushi Comics19 2019
In December 1969, the Doraemon manga appeared in six different children's monthly magazines published by Shogakukan: Yoiko, Yōchien, Shogaku Ichi-nensei, Shogaku Ni-nensei, Shogaku San-nensei, and Shogaku Yo-nensei. The magazines were aimed at children from nursery school to fourth grade. In 1973, two other magazines, Shogaku Go-nensei and Shogaku Roku-nensei (aimed at fifth-grade and sixth-grade students respectively), started publishing the manga. In 1977, CoroCoro Comic was launched as the flagship magazine of Doraemon.
Since the debut of Doraemon in 1969, the stories have been selectively collected into forty-five volumes that were published under Shogakukan's imprint from July 31, 1974, to April 26, 1996. These volumes are collected in the Takaoka Central Library in Toyama, Japan, where Fujio was born. Between April 25, 2005, and February 28, 2006, Shōgakukan published a series of five manga volumes under the title Doraemon Plus (Doraemon+), featuring short stories which did not appear in the forty-five original volumes; a sixth volume was published on December 1, 2014. Additionally, 119 unpublished stories were compiled into six colored-manga volumes under the title Doraemon Kara Sakuhin-shu , published from July 17, 1999, to September 2, 2006. For conception, see pp. 158–159. Between July 24, 2009, and September 25, 2012, Shogakukan published a master works collection, consisting of twenty volumes with all 1,345 stories written by Fujio. In December 2019, on the 50th anniversary of Doraemon, a "Volume 0" was published by Shogakukan featuring six different versions of Doraemon's first appearance.