[Spoilers Included] A Grand Review of the Doraemon Movie: Nobita's Earth Symphony

First and foremost, I do not always take a stance of absolute praise when it comes to Doraemon movies. Especially regarding works produced after the passing of Fujiko F. Fujio-sensei, I sometimes feel dissatisfied, regardless of whether they are original stories or remakes.

However, from my position as a supporter of Fujiko's works, I have decided not to easily criticize them just because they don't align with my personal tastes.

Therefore, if a movie comes out that I cannot personally endorse, I prefer to gracefully ignore it.

Fortunately, however, every "Doraemon" movie since I started the Fujiko F. Note has been a masterpiece, and they are all works that I want to support from the bottom of my heart.

My level of satisfaction with the recently released Nobita's Earth Symphony is also extremely high. It was a work to which I want to offer my sincere praise, saying, "Thank you so much for making this." First, I would like to express my gratitude as a Fujiko fan to everyone involved in the production of this film.

I wrote a spoiler-free review immediately after watching it the other day. Please refer to that as well.

In this article, I will be providing commentary and analysis with full spoilers!

◆ Regarding the theme of this work

The theme of this work is music, and I think this choice of theme is wonderful to begin with. The reason is that it is a theme that Fujiko F. Fujio-sensei likely never depicted.

I would like to start by talking about this point.

As you know, the "Doraemon Long Tales" series created by Fujiko F. Fujio-sensei incorporated themes and motifs that he loved every time.

Specifically, these include "dinosaurs," "westerns + space," "unexplored regions of Africa," "the seabed and Atlantis," "a tiny world," "underground spaces," "robots," and so on.

After the sensei passed away, I believe the staff and those involved faced great difficulties in choosing themes to continue the "Doraemon" movie series.

This is because it seems that almost all the themes the sensei wanted to depict had been exhausted. To put it bluntly without fear of misunderstanding, the theatrical versions must have been running out of ideas.

For that reason, there were many stories at first that felt like extensions of existing "Doraemon" medium-length stories, but gradually the trial and error of the staff bore fruit, and attractive original works began to appear.

For example, Nobita's Secret Gadget Museum, which focused on secret gadgets, Nobita's Great Adventure in the Antarctic Kachi Kochi, which was set in the Antarctic, and Nobita's Chronicle of the Moon Exploration, which combined the moon with the Moon Viewing Club Members Badge, were all wonderful ideas.

I believe every one of those was a thematic setting that Fujiko-sensei 'did not depict, but would not have been strange to depict.' It is fair to call this a legitimate successor to Fujiko-sensei's work.

However, what about the 'music' in this film? Is it a theme Fujiko-sensei would have tried to depict? While a sci-fi concept like a 'What-If Box' involving a 'world without sound' is plausible, I cannot imagine him drawing a feature-length story with the theme of saving the world through the power of music.

The reason for this is, first, that it is difficult to create an adventure out of music. In this film, they provided a stage called the 'Hall of Fare,' but there is no adventure to reach it. It does not fit Fujiko-sensei's conventional approach of taking Nobita and his friends on an adventure to some other world.

Next, it is difficult to set up a villain. This is because one cannot imagine a character who thinks music is unnecessary or a nuisance. In this film, they created an enemy character called 'Noise,' a giant life form that vanishes when it hears music, but setting up a villain as an incomprehensible life form is something Fujiko-sensei probably would not have chosen.

Also, looking at Fujiko-sensei's entire career, there are extremely few works that take music itself as a theme. There is only Gian's recital or Shizuka-chan's terrible violin playing.

From the above points, I feel it is a subject that, at the very least, he would not have actively chosen as a theme for a feature-length story.

However, it is not as if there are no works related to the theme of this film at all. For example, in the first book by the Fujiko Fujio duo, UTOPIA: The Last World War, there is a depiction where frozen music plays and the ruling robots cease to function.

The essence of this work was a backlash against anti-thought control under the Pacific War, asserting that the power of culture and art is the true power of humanity. This might be slightly different from the idea that 'the power of music connects the world,' which is the landing point of this movie.

By setting the theme of 'music,' which Fujiko-sensei probably would not have chosen, this film does not follow the conventions of feature-length Doraemon, such as the appearance of an ideological enemy character or an adventure to another world.

However, even so, this film contains relatable characters, a story, and a message, and it provides a natural, emotional stirring that is not just about making the audience cry.

And above all, it is overflowing with the sense of wonder that is quintessentially 'Doraemon'.

I believe this film should be highly evaluated for creating a new standard for 'feature-length Doraemon' through an approach different from the conventional path laid out by Fujiko-sensei.

◆ About the Characters

Let's look mainly at the naming of the characters original to the movie.

First, there is Mikka, a survivor of the planet Musica. Musica is a word born from a derivation of MUSIC, and Mikka (MIC) is likely the same. In other words, it is a character filled with music, representing 'the music of the music planet'.

Supporting Mikka is a robot aspiring to be a composer named Čapek. I am not entirely sure of the source of this name, but it might be taken from 'chapel,' corresponding to the 'Hall' of Fare.

The robots of Fare are characterizations of composers displayed in the music room.
・Vento → Beethoven
・Warkner → Wagner
・Bach → Bach
・Mozell → Mozart
・Takiren → Rentaro Taki
I remember how the theater buzzed with excitement when Takiren appeared.

Though not a character, the word Fare, which means "music" on the planet Musica, is taken from the word fanfare. It is said that the etymology of fanfare is the Arabic word for trumpet.

The Noise, a giant life form that devours planets, is, as mentioned in the film, a word meaning loud noise, and it carries the meaning of being an antithesis to beautiful music.

◆ About the Story

It is a staple for the Doraemon feature-length films to begin with a scene where "something is happening somewhere Nobita and his friends are unaware of." In this film, a scene is depicted where a boy who appears to be a resident of the Stone Age witnesses a meteorite fall.

Having just watched "Golden Kamuy" recently, I initially thought it was an Ainu setting, but it was an opening title that drew more from works like "Nobita and the Birth of Japan."

Inside the fallen meteorite, there is a mysterious baby and a strangely shaped recorder. While I wondered if this baby would grow up and meet Nobita, the time periods are too far apart, so it is unclear at this point.

After that, the opening scene plays, where the history of music starting from ancient times is quickly introduced like a picture story. Since music is the theme, I thought this was a fitting presentation.

However, watching until the end, you realize that this scene depicted the film's theme: that music was played because of the flute brought by the Musicans, leading up to the present day.

The story continues by depicting the daily lives of Nobita and his friends.

Nobita and his friends will soon have summer vacation, but they are practicing the recorder with everyone in the class for the autumn music recital. However, Nobita is bad at everything he tries, and he cannot play the high notes on the recorder, which requires difficult fingerings.

He makes a sound like "pew," which is both laughable and irritating, so he gets teased by Gian and Suneo.

Here, Suneo laughs at the sound Nobita plays, which is outside the "do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do" scale, calling it the "No" note, but this note, which is not normally used, also serves as foreshadowing that becomes useful in the climax.

The music teacher asks everyone what the first instrument in the world was. The answer is a "flute," and it is said that you can see an actual Stone Age flute at a museum in Ueno. This is also a casual line, but a scene comes later where this flute is needed. It is foreshadowing for that.

Nobita, having been teased mercilessly, hates the idea of practicing the recorder from tomorrow. Just then, when he returns home, he finds Doraemon eating a lot of dorayaki. He used the "Pre-Diary" to get the dorayaki.

The "Pre-Diary" is said to be the strongest gadget in Doraemon history, and anything written in this diary becomes true. The feature of this diary is that, unlike the "What-If Box," it causes unrealistic events to happen in a realistic way.

For example, if you write "candy will fall from the sky," an event occurs where an airplane flying overhead ends up dropping a large amount of candy.

Nobita writes in his diary that "there was no music," but it is not a parallel world situation like the "What-If Box" where sound simply ceases to exist; rather, music is lost for realistic reasons.

Specifically, at the home of his grandfather, who always listens to enka to cheer himself up, the radio-cassette player malfunctions. At the kindergarten where they are practicing piano, the piano breaks.

The voices of those who sing become raspy, traffic lights break and remain silent. Large screens in the city center malfunction, and Shizuka's piano teacher goes on an overseas trip. Street bands also find their amplifiers malfunctioning, which leads to a crisis that threatens to break up the groups.

In this way, although it is somewhat forced, music is "naturally" lost from the world.

Doraemon, having learned that music has disappeared due to the "Pre-Diary," tears out the page to invalidate it. In the short story The Pre-Diary is Terrifying Nobita finds himself in a desperate situation after writing that he would be eaten by a lion, but he avoids that fate by burning the diary.

To get ahead of the story, Nobita writes in the "Pre-Diary" that "there was no music today. It was fun," but in his summer vacation diary at the end, he writes, "We played music together. It was fun."

This work serves as a kind of coming-of-age story until Nobita learns the joy of music. A tool that makes this growth visible and easy to understand is the Musician License mentioned later.

Deciding that he has no choice but to practice, Nobita practices the recorder alone by the riverbank. This is where Nobita meets Mikka for the first time. Since she looks like the baby who arrived on a meteorite at the beginning has grown up, this is where the audience gets confused.

The next day, he decides to practice the recorder with Gian, Suneo, and Shizuka. Because Nobita doesn't improve at all, the atmosphere becomes tense, but then he meets Rikka again, and a scene is depicted where everyone plays together happily.

It is said that it is difficult to depict playing musical instruments in animation, but this work boldly takes on long performance scenes. It is an important scene where Nobita, who thinks music is boring, begins to think that music might be fun, and it is a wonderful scene that fully achieves its purpose.

Doraemon uses the Robotter to make the toys everyone has move, and uses the Mood-Boosting Orchestra to liven up the atmosphere. In this work, Doraemon does not play any instruments and is strictly there to support everyone.

A mysterious message card arrives at Nobita's house telling him to come to the music room tonight. Speaking of music rooms at night, there is an urban legend familiar from the Seven Mysteries of the School that Beethoven's portrait laughs. There is a bit of horror direction using this mystery.

It is not the music room, but the music preparation room that serves as the entrance to another world. I wonder if this is a parody of "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time," where they go back in time from the science preparation room, but what do you think?

Wrapped in a mysterious light, they ascend into the sky at high speed. They fly out into outer space and are sucked into a structure that looks like a giant space station. This is the Hall of Fare.

This work has no scenes of adventuring into another world, and basically, the "Hall of Fare" is the main stage. Of course, to keep the audience from getting bored, the setting is that areas that had gradually stopped functioning are revived by the power of music, giving the stage breadth.

The "Hall of Fare" gives the impression of being similar in scale to Paradapia from the previous movie, "Nobita's Sky Utopia." This is also common in "Secret Gadget Museum." I wonder if this is a trend at Fujiko Pro.

It was Micca and her supporting robot, Chapek, who welcomed Nobita and his friends. Seeing how they livened things up with music at the riverbank, they invited them, thinking they were the virtuososwho would save Fare.

Virtuoso means a master of musical performance, but I didn't know this word, so I couldn't catch it accurately during the film.

Since children probably wouldn't understand it either, I think it would have been better to have an alternative for this part.

In the "Hall of Fare," original characters based on the aforementioned musicians and unique areas appear one after another. Among these, the cemetery guarded by Takiren is unusual, as it is revealed here that many Musica people have already passed away.

It is also revealed that the cause of the destruction of the planet Musica was the work of a giant lifeform called Noise. Noise has a weakness to Fare (music), but it has the characteristic of targeting worlds where music has been lost.

It seems Noise sends spores throughout the universe to scout for planets it can prey upon, and it appears to have reached Earth long ago. Since Earth is a planet wrapped in music, the activity of the Noise spores remained dormant as long as things were normal.

However, because Nobita used the "Pre-Diary" to erase music for half a day, he gave Noise an opening to exploit. In other words, the crisis of world destruction this time was caused by Nobita.

Furthermore, Doraemon used the "Pre-Diary" first for his own selfish reasons (i.e., dorayaki), so I feel Doraemon's guilt is not light either...

Now, the most unique secret gadget in this work is likely the "Musician License." It involves choosing an instrument connected by a "Red String of Fate," and by practicing with that instrument, the performer's level increases.

I think this is an idea that perhaps even Fujiko-sensei wouldn't have thought of. The license starts at beginner, then grows to amateur, professional, and finally virtuoso.

Nobita is left behind as the only beginner, but by coming to love music and sincerely wishing to play better, he is promoted to amateur. This scene of "what one likes, one does well" was very moving.

Regarding the instruments connected by the Red String of Fate, Nobita's recorder is expected, and Suneo's violin fits his image, but Shizuka's percussion (bongo) was a surprise. Since she usually plays the piano, perhaps her ability as a rhythm section was recognized?

Also, Gian playing the tuba seems like a good choice. The film mentions his incredible lung capacity as the reason, and since he has a large body, it seems he was a good match for a large instrument.

As for Gian and music, one might expect his terrible voice to ring out, but in the film, every time Gian tries to sing, there is an interruption or everyone stops him, so he never gets to sing until the very end. (Even his partner, the tuba, stopped him.)

Once the Hall of Fare is mostly restored and the characters and the existence of Noise are all introduced, the foreshadowing that had been built up until then is rapidly resolved.

It turns out that the recorder brought to Earth by the ancient Musica people is necessary for the complete restoration of the hall, so they head to the Ueno Museum in search of it. This is where the music teacher's line at the beginning serves as foreshadowing.

They sprinkle Memory Cologne on the recorder to awaken ancient memories. "Memory Cologne" is a gadget that appeared in the short story "Heart Cologne" and is making its first appearance in a long-form feature.

Memories of the recorder come flooding back, revealing that the Musica people once visited the Stone Age and that Mikka's twin sister had arrived on Earth ahead of them. At this point, the audience finally understands the meaning of the opening scene.

The spotlight then turns to the foreign singer, Mina, whose name had been mentioned sporadically since the beginning of the film. If you only watch the movie, the structure is cleverly designed so that you don't immediately notice her as a high-importance character.

However, since it was widely advertised that guest voice actress Kyoko Yoshine was playing Mina, you recognize her as an important character from the start. Therefore, the narrative surprise of an unexpected key character appearing is lost.

It is revealed that Mina is a descendant of Mikka's sister, and when they go to meet her, she predictably has the Musica flute. She says she received it from her grandmother in Germany.

This flute is a super-important item that brought music to human society, but is it really plausible that it could be passed down through generations so conveniently? It felt a bit too perfect.

In the final battle, the Space-Time Changer plays a crucial role.

This gadget was used earlier to go get the Anywhere Door, and was later used in a scene where Nobita goes to the bathroom to look for his recorder, making you think the foreshadowing had been resolved at that point.

However, in the final battle, the fact that Nobita and his friends' music resonated in the silent vacuum of space is a second instance of foreshadowing being resolved, as it was connected to Nobita's bathroom through the Space-Time Changer. I honestly thought this was clever.

◆ Summary

To reiterate, under the theme of "music," this film is crafted with an approach different from the traditional storytelling of past Doraemon feature films. It avoids adventures to other worlds and does not feature a villain with a specific philosophy.

Also, I don't think there has ever been a film with so many original characters. While there is a bit of a traffic jam of new characters, each is given enough personality and a chance to shine. In particular, Ishimaru Wagner Kanji, who speaks as if he is singing, had a huge impact despite having surprisingly few scenes.

Nobita's dislike of music brought about the crisis of Earth's destruction, but conversely, it was Nobita learning to love music that made it possible to defeat the formidable enemy, Noise. The "Diary" and "Musician License" were used to clearly show Nobita's growth.

This film depicts one of the staples of Doraemon feature films: Doraemon breaking down. This was interesting, but overall, Doraemon's presence in the film feels somewhat thin.

Nobita and his friends are each provided with instruments, and by playing them, they are able to fight Noise. In other words, there are clear highlights. On the other hand, Doraemon does not have an instrument and uses the Maestro Hat and Conducting Baton to act as a conductor, supporting everyone.

However, in the final battle, he yields the conductor's seat to the robot Čapek, who has grown as a composer, and Doraemon's opportunity to shine is lost. Perhaps the film struggled a bit with how to handle Doraemon.

As a result of packing in foreshadowing, characters, and the joy of music, the film ended up being quite long, but I think it has the power to keep you engaged until the very end.

The reasons for its success include the ability to provide convincing music, the meticulous instrument-playing scenes that synchronize with the music, and the ability to arrange fun secret gadgets and new characters one after another.

◆Bonus... Next year's teaser

The final treat of a Doraemon movie is the post-credits scene. In the previous film, 'Nobita's Sky Utopia,' it was clearly established that the next installment would have a music theme.

In this film, a castle-like building, presumably somewhere in Europe, is shown. Doraemon's outfit is also a bit old-fashioned and Western-style, making him look somewhat like a wizard.

Honestly, I have no idea what the next story will be about, but if I had to venture a guess, it might be set in medieval Europe, based on 'Moving to the Haunted Castle'.

Does that mean... the prediction in this article might have come true??