The Era Shifts from New Construction to Renovation! 'Athletic House' & 'Home Maze' and More / Dream Home Part 3

For a time, home renovation shows were quite popular. The most famous one is likely 'Dramatic Before & After', known for its iconic narration, 'What a surprise...'

It was one of the few shows my family recorded and watched religiously, and we would often find ourselves tearing up along with the families who were moved to tears by the work of the 'Takumi' (architects) at the end.

The basic flow of the show involved taking cramped urban houses with various problems and transforming them into comfortable living spaces through the renovation ideas of the Takumi.

In contrast to the age-old tradition of seeking new land to build a new house, the method of renovating existing, cramped, and aging homes within a limited budget actually held a certain sense of romance.

Up to this point, under the title 'Dream Home', I have covered two stories about families aiming to purchase land and build new homes.

In this article, I will introduce an episode from 'Doraemon' that focuses not on new construction, but on renovating (or remodeling?) an existing house. Furthermore, I would like to present three similar works all at once as a Future Renovation Trilogy.

In these days of the sports club boom, such as RIZAP, I think you could actually get just as much of a workout by weeding your garden, but having a sense of purpose makes a difference.

If possible, I want to use the latest scientific equipment to shape up efficiently and without waste, and build muscle too.

However, going to the gym takes time and money. Efficient body building doesn't come for free.

So, for those who have no money or time but want to exercise in a fun way, I recommend the 'Athletic House'.

To force Nobita, who has been lounging around the room all day, to exercise, Doraemon sets up the 'Athletic House' in the attic. Once this is set up, the inside of the house transforms into an athletic field.

Specifically, the hallway becomes a 'Hallway Runner' that moves in the opposite direction of your walking, and the stairs become taller than your height. Floor cushions turn into trampolines, and the shoji screens become incredibly heavy, refusing to budge with just a little effort.

On the second floor, holes suddenly open in the hallway that you have to jump over, and if you fall, you have to use a horizontal bar to climb back up.

It was a setup that would make any RIZAP member drool, but while Doraemon was preparing the 'Athletic House,' Nobita uncharacteristically went out to play baseball, leaving Doraemon, Mom, and a friend of Mom's who happened to be visiting to fall victim to it instead.

The next renovation is one packed with playfulness, based on the idea that it would be fun if a house were as vast as a maze... However, the extreme nature typical of Doraemon's gadgets kicks in, and it stops being just a game.(If things go poorly, you could die, like from starvation)

At my parents' house in the countryside, if about three people played hide-and-seek, there is a possibility that you would never be found unless you searched in earnest. That is how vast and complex the structure is.

However, that is not the case in the city. Far from hide-and-seek, it is a level of proximity where you can tell if everyone is alive or dead in a very short amount of time.

That is where the Home Maze comes in, allowing you to complicate the layout by changing the combination of rooms and hallways rather than making the rooms larger. Its shape is similar to the lottery drum used in raffles.

When I tried turning the Home Maze just once, the stairs that usually go down to the first floor were heading to the third floor. It is a relatively simple maze where, for some reason, you arrive on the first floor when you go up them.

Nobita then suggests making it more difficult and, without thinking, spins the "Home Maze" at full speed.

It seems the Home Maze was a gadget that was sufficient even if turned just a little, and if you spin it around and around, it becomes a great labyrinth from which you can never escape.It is a terrifying gadget where a small child's prank can ruin your life.

And, just as Doraemon pointed out, the Nobi house transforms into a great maze where they can never return to the same place again. After wandering around the house extensively, they suggest turning the machine in reverse, but it is already too late. Nobita and the others are unable to return to the room where they started, and are successfully trapped in the house forever.

By the way, Mom also gets caught in the middle of the maze, but she displays a unique lightness, saying, "That's strange, I want to go to the kitchen, but I just can't get there."

The punchline is famous, so I will omit it here, but the thought occurred to me that the answer is surprisingly right at the beginning.

The next renovation gadget is a convenient one that allows you to easily build additions to your house upwards. A two-story house can easily be expanded to three, four, or even twenty stories if you wish. But, of course, it doesn't seem to be all good things...

The start of the renovation was Doraemon and Nobita beginning a game common among children, fighting with rolled-up futons, which they titled "Mat Fencing." Due to the nature of the battle, it is a noisy new sport, but if this is done on the second floor, Mom on the first floor cannot overlook it.

Scolded with "You must not rampage on the second floor," Doraemon suggests doing it on the third floor instead, and takes a block shaped like a house called the "Four-Dimensional Expansion Block" out of his pocket.

This is an excellent renovation gadget; the mechanism is that if you sandwich the block between the first and second floors, you can increase it to any number of floors. Even if they rampage on the third floor, Mom on the first floor only feels like "children are making noise in a house somewhere far away."

By the way, even if the number of floors increases, the exterior remains the same as the original. The reason is a rough explanation that "it's four-dimensional," but the word "four-dimensional" has a power that makes you somewhat convinced.

Well, it was fine until they called Shizuka-chan, but because Doraemon left saying, "Don't mess with it on your own, nothing good will come of it if you do," Nobita, conversely ignited, escalates his actions as usual.

First, he gets the idea to increase the number of rooms and turn it into an apartment building, launching a super-bargain rental business with rent at 100 yen per month. He rents to Suneo, rents to Gian, and because Gian's singing voice is terrible, he puts two floors in between... and before he knows it, it's a nine-story building.

Eventually, Nobita is chased after Mom finds out he is renting out rooms without permission, and he stacks the expansion blocks one after another, thinking, "I'll escape upwards." As a result, the Nobi house becomes an incredible skyscraper, but there was a fatal flaw here. The toilet was only on the first floor...

By the way, even in this episode, despite the house's structure changing drastically, Nobita's mom says,"That's strange, no matter how much I climb, the stairs just keep going..." and her reaction is, as expected, quite casual.

Well, that was a quick look, but I have introduced the three major renovation stories from "Doraemon".

One was turning the house into a gym, another was turning it into a maze, and the third was turning it into a skyscraper; those were the renovations. Personally, I would love to try out the "Home Maze," which creates an instantly inescapable dungeon, at least once.