Doraemon the Movie 2018: Nobita's Treasure Island

xcomprr★ 8

As Nobita hears a pirate story, he dreams of going hunting for treasure himself and using Doraemon's gadgets he surprisingly discovers some undiscovered treasure. The treasure was located on a newly formed island of rock outside of Japan but as they make their way there, they are attacked by a group of time travelling pirates and Shizuka is kidnapped. Now they must rescue her from these mysterious assailants. A new original movie for 2018 even though the pattern's been remake of an old movie followed by an original. Interestingly enough, Genki Kawamura was responsible for the screenplay - he was one of the producers for YourName and also The Boy and The Beast. As usual the art is good and this was actually quite a good action comedy. Shizuka gets a lot more screen time than she usually does. They added in a bunch of little riddles in for fun too and movie doesn't forget to empthasise on protecting Earth and its environment as its been with previous movies. Worth a watch for Doraemon fans.

SapioGalion★ 5

Overall take: Confusing premise and superficial characters, but the action kind of makes it worthwhile. First off, the visuals and sound are really nicely done. Quiz the riddle robot is such a cute character for the kids to have fun with. The ending theme by Gen Hoshino is a nice touch, and it also featured a quote of the original TV series ending theme composed by the inimitable Shunsuke Kikuchi. You can enjoy "watching" the movie through and through. But the overall experience of the movie wasn't as thrilling as its visuals. The biggest drawback from this film is that we seealmost no personality in any of the characters. We don't really know what kind of people any of the guest characters are, making a lot of the movie's plot devices feel unnecessary or out of place. This is particularly critical in a movie where familial bonding and expressing your love for your family is a central theme. Yet this theme ends up feeling superficial because the characters don't have a lot of depth to them. While the action scenes were great, especially in the climax, the repercussions of the antagonist's actions are never explained. It's almost like he gets away with it without any consequences. On a related note, the whole setting of the Treasure Island feels haphazardly put together with very little fleshed out for it to feel natural in the movie. For example, it does not resolve the opening sequence of the news broadcast of the new island coming out of the ocean. There were so many opportunities to utilize the time travel element to the movie that was explained once, but even that also felt like it was conveniently used solely to keep the plot moving forward without stretching the pacing. Perhaps a lot of problems came about through the production team's effort to not make the movie feel too similar to the 1998 Doraemon film, also themed about pirates. And while the 1998 movie was really really weak too, this one was not much of an improvement.