“Doraemon” has been on Indian television for 21 years; That’s long enough, by TV Asahi’s reckoning, for the series to begin to cross over from one generation of viewers to the next. Now the Japanese publisher is bringing the series to theaters.
“Doraemon Movie: New Nobita and the Undersea Demon’s Castle” will be released in India on October 2 in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu, leading the theatrical release on Japan’s TV Asahi and India’s PVR Inox Pictures. Licensing and brand consultancy Black White Orange (BWO) handles fan engagement, consumer experiences and promotional activations, and Happening 365 Synergies advises on strategy and market.
Before publication, Diversity He spoke to three companies interested in the franchise: TV Asahi; Shin-Ei Animation, which produced the film; and Fujiko Pro, the office representing creator Fujiko F. Fujio, the pseudonym of Fujimoto Hiroshi.
“The success of TV Asahi in India is longevity,” says Sumida Maiko, director of animation and sales in TV Asahi’s international business department. “We have had ‘Doraemon’ for 21 years, but we are looking at 50 and 100 years… To achieve this, we plan to expand the ‘Doraemon’ brand with a 360-degree approach.”
Sumida says TV Asahi is biding its time until Indian audiences are ready to embrace animated features on the big screen, and the submarine adventure is “a very strong film that will suit Indian fans.”
The language strategy comes directly from television; where “Doraemon” has long been reaching what Sumida calls “our little ‘Doraemon’ fans” in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. “We wanted to keep it that way for the theatrical release,” he says.
India’s anime market has grown rapidly, largely thanks to young and intense fandoms. “Doraemon” includes a broader pool of kids, parents and adults who grew up with the series, and Sumida says the current anime boom won’t change TV Asahi’s approach to the series. “’Doraemon’ was born as a manga comic dedicated to children, and we are proud that animation is recognized as children’s and family content,” he says. “It will be passed down from kids who watched ‘Doraemon,’ to those who grew up watching ‘Doraemon,’ and then to the kids of those who watched ‘Doraemon.’ It transcends generations.”
A new “Doraemon” movie opens in Japan almost every year. “There will always be the possibility of doing something like this here in India in the coming years,” Sumida said, adding that India is among TV Asahi’s most important markets and the company wants to expand and explore new businesses there.
The film retells a story that first reached Japanese cinemas in 1983.
“I wanted to do this because the original is exactly the same age as me. Just kidding,” says Shin-Ei Animation’s Nakajima Susumu, the film’s executive producer.
The studio has remade several “Doraemon” stories, but Nakajima says this story stands out as a feature-length debut and is also a huge audience favorite. “This is true of all our remakes, but I firmly believe that Fujimoto-sensei’s work will continue to be entertaining no matter how many years pass,” he says. “This work was also serialized as a manga and was produced more than 40 years ago, but I believe that when children watch it today, they will feel the same emotions and pleasures that children experienced at that time.”
Some things are off limits. Nakajima says the team kept the original’s fun, narrative structure and emotion that viewers took home with them. “Since it is an original manga, we transform the ‘post-reading emotion’ into a ‘post-watching emotion’ for the film, paying great attention to whether that emotion changes and whether we successfully express the fun inherent in the original work,” he says. “Because it’s a remake, we’re not intentionally thinking, ‘Let’s change things from the original.'”
Visuality is a completely different matter. Nakajima says that with so many works being published around the world, audiences have become much more understanding and the scope of what animators can express has expanded significantly in 40 years. The production relies on CG and compositing, but Nakajima says: “It may seem counterintuitive, but we also value the appeal of hand-drawn animation, that kind of ‘ripple’ or analog warmth.”
Undersea environments are no longer as new as they were in 1983. What makes this story different, according to Nakajima, is that Nobita, a human, is buried beneath the waves as he is bathed in the glow of the Adaptation Ray. “Therefore, we aimed to create visuals that consciously differentiate our work, especially in terms of what the underwater world looks like from the moment it is exposed to light and afterwards, and the colors used.”
Scale brings its own problems. A “Doraemon” movie must be larger than a television episode without losing the characters audiences know.
“’Doraemon-ness’ is a big deal, right?” Nakajima says. “Even though it’s a movie, the way Nobita and his team behave the way they always do and portray them that way is exactly what creates that sense of intimacy.”
He says the five core characters act the same as they always have. What changes is their circumstances, which makes Nobita’s words easier to relate to and Gian’s actions more credible.
“The spectacle and adventure parts are always the ones we struggle with and ask, ‘Where should we go next…?’ These are the things we wonder about. With the Time Machine, Everywhere Doors and other secret gadgets, every dream can come true; “So we shape the story with careful consideration of the overall balance.”
For the Indian versions, Shin-Ei checks whether the names of gadgets and other proper nouns fit the local context. Since the production team is not very familiar with the intricacies of the languages, it coordinates the localization through its international team.
In Fujiko Pro, it starts with Fujimoto himself. “Even if times change, the essence of children remains unchanged,” says Yoshida Kenji, the company official in the office. Yoshida says that as adults’ perspectives increase, they move further away from the child’s heart and eventually begin to portray their own ideas of what a child should be. “So Fujimoto-sensei confronted the heart of his inner child and incorporated that child into his work.”
This belief shapes how Fujiko Pro handles the property. Yoshida says the office does not intend to “improve” Fujimoto’s work. “This is because we believe the world he created has universal value, loved across ages and borders,” he says.
If he had to say what should be protected, Yoshida says that “Doraemon” was created for children first. “Therefore, whatever we do, we want to keep the goal of ‘for children’ in mind. At the same time, we produce it keeping in mind the ‘child’s heart’ that exists in adults as well. In this sense, we consider it a work loved by every generation.”
Today’s kids are growing up around artificial intelligence, robots, and gadgets that once belonged to science fiction, and Yoshida admits that in some ways, reality has caught up with Doraemon’s gadgets.
“But I don’t believe that Fujiko F. Fujio-sensei was trying to predict the future when she drew these ideas,” he says. “I think he was just expressing his own childlike curiosity and desires through hidden devices, and as a result, some of these devices have become reality today. So, no matter how much it changes, I believe the world of ‘Doraemon’ will continue to move forward as it always has.”