Doraemon: Nobita in the Wan-Nyan Spacetime Odyssey

Doraemon the Movie: Nobita in the Wan-Nyan Spacetime Odyssey
Film Poster
Directed by	Tsutomu Shibayama
Based on	Doraemon Long Stories: Nobita in the Wan-Nyan Spacetime Odyssey by Fujiko F. Fujio Pro
Produced by	Junichi Kimura Toshihide Yamada Kumi Ogura Masataka Osawa
Starring	Nobuyo Ōyama Noriko Ohara Michiko Nomura Kaneta Kimotsuki Kazuya Tatekabe
Music by	Katsumi Hori
Production company	Shin-Ei Animation
Distributed by	Toho
Release dates	March 6, 2004 (2004-03-06) (Japan) August 3, 2006 (2006-08-03) (Hong Kong)
Running time	84 minutes (1h 24m)
Country	Japan
Languages	Japanese Cantonese
Box office	$27.9 million

Doraemon: Nobita in the Wan-Nyan Spacetime Odyssey is a 2004 Japanese animated science fiction disaster film, based on the 24th volume of the same name in the Doraemon Long Stories manga series. Directed by Tsutomu Shibayama, the film premiered in Japan on March 6th, 2004. It is the twenty fifth Doraemon feature film and served to celebrate both the 25th anniversary of the 1979 television series and the 25th anniversary of the feature film series. Partially based on the 1980 chapter "A Home for "Ruff", it was the final Doraemon film released in the 1979 series and to star the original voice cast.

Plot

The film opens with an elderly dog going onto a time machine, which he plans to use to drive to the future so he can meet with someone who gave him a kendama. However, the machine encounters a time-space anomaly and goes haywire and the dog regresses back to his infant state, eventually found by a researcher cat. In the present day, Nobita finds a stray dog drowning in a river after playing with Gian and Suneo by the riverside.

Feeling sorry for the dog, he decides to take it home by hiding it in a "kennel on the wall" and names it Ichi (originated from "One", which is a homophone of the sound of a barking dog in Japanese), and secretly feeds it and plays with Ichi with his kendama to find. Soon after, he also adopts a stray cat named Zubu (or wet in Japanese, due to the discovery of it in a rainstorm). Eventually, Nobita's mother gets suspicious and checks in on Nobita's room.

To avoid being caught with both of them, he and Doraemon travel through the Anywhere Door to the Mountains, but find more stray dogs and cats abandoned there who are endangered by deforestation. With so many pets, Nobita and his friends decide to send them back in time, 300 million years ago, where there were no other living beings around. After using the Ray of Evolution to allow them to operate a food-making machine, they depart, with Nobita promising Ichi that he will return later.

However, when they try to visit them the next day (from their point of view), they encountered a time-space anomaly, forcing them to land 1,000 years after their original time-destination; to their surprise, they found out the dogs and cats have overused the Ray of Evolution which makes them evolved enough to form a civilized society that rivals those of the future.

As the time machine is broken, they have to wait until it can be fixed. In the meantime, they explore the society, where they meet with a group of teenage thieves: Bulltaro, Duk, Chiko, and the leader, Hachi. Nobita is certain that Hachi is really Ichi in disguise, despite the difference in time. Nobita and his friends travel to an amusement park, which the thieves infiltrate due to believing that is the location where their parents are held prisoner.

After all of them agreeing to infiltrate the amusement park, they use a drill to do so. The group arrives at a room containing a time machine, but the group is attacked by the guards and separated; Doraemon is stunned and taken by the guards while the rest are taken prisoner. Meanwhile, the government predicts a cluster of asteroids that will collide with Earth and to evacuate its citizens, they order chunks of Noradium, materials capable of building spacecraft to be sent to the government, but they are stolen by Nekojara, a treacherous high-ranking official.

Doraemon awakes to meet Nekojara, who explains that he plans to use a Noradium-powered time machine to travel to the future so he can take revenge against humans for abandoning unwanted animals by using the "devolve" function on the Ray of Evolution as written in a prophecy book written by his ancestor, Zubu. He manages to trick Doraemon to fix the ray after threatening to kill Shami, an idol cat who Doraemon fell in love with earlier, is actually his underling.

After being freed from prison, the others stage a mission to rescue Doraemon and take the Noradium back. Doraemon manages to break the Ray of Evolution and escapes from the machine with Shami, who abandons Nekojara after seeing him attack Doraemon. Nobita and Hachi successfully stop the time machine from functioning. However, a meteor hits the machine and sinks it, rendering its Noradium unusable.

Hachi is also sent underwater and as Nobita rescues Hachi from drowning, Hachi then remembers that he is in fact Ichi and is the elderly dog shown in the beginning of the film. He remembers that he had stored a Nobita-shaped statue built purely by Noradium. The group takes the statue and delivers it to the government, after successfully defeating Nekojara once more after he tries to attack once more. The government successfully complete several spacecraft and quickly evacuate everyone, including Nekojara and his subordinates, right before the asteroids fall.

The film ends with Nobita and his friends bid farewell to Ichi and his friends, both of them departing right before the city gets destroyed by asteroids. In the credits, Nobita and his friends return to the present day and bid farewell to each other.

Cast

Character	Voice
Doraemon	Nobuyo Ōyama
Nobita Nobi	Noriko Ohara
Shizuka Minamoto	Michiko Nomura
Takeshi "Gian" Goda	Kazuya Tatekabe
Suneo Honekawa	Kaneta Kimotsuki
Hachi/Old Ichi	Megumi Hayashibara Osamu Saka
Chiko	Hitomi Shimatani
Duk	Tomokazu Seki
Bulltaro	Hisao Egawa
Shami	Mika Kanai
Nekojara	Shigeru Izumiya
Nyago	Toshio Furukawa
President	Tōru Ōhira
Zubu	Yūko Mizutani
Hachi's Mother	Keiko Han
Tama	Nana Yamaguchi
Nekojara's soldiers	Shin Aomori Shinya Ōtaki
Secretaries	Kenichi Ogata Bin Shimada
Advisor	Jun'ichi Sugawara
Attraction Presenter	Shinichiro Ohta
Policemen	Yuu Shimaka Kōzō Mito
Fish Vendor	Takashi Taguchi
Nyako	Yūko Satō
Anchorman	Noritsugu Watanabe
Nobita's Mom	Sachiko Chijimatsu
Nobita's Grandma	Akiko Takamura
Gian's Mama	Kazuyo Aoki

Release

The film was released in Japan on March 6th, 2004. It got released later on in Hong Kong on August 3rd, 2006.

Box office reception

Doraemon: Nobita in the Wan-Nyan Spacetime Odyssey grossed a total of $3,755,037 in its opening week in Japan. It was the second highest-grossing film in Japan in its opening week, only being beaten by The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. The film grossed a total of $26,114,674 in Japan.

Footnotes

Bibliography

• Galbraith IV, Stuart (2008). The Toho Studios Story: A History and Complete Filmography. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-1461673743.

External links

• Doraemon The Movie 25th page
• Official website
• Doraemon: Nobita in the Wan-Nyan Spacetime Odyssey at IMDb