(I’m always happy to hand over the license request reins to an enthusiastic guest, so this week we’ll hand the proceedings over to Ed Sizemore, manga reviewer for Comics Worth Reading. Ed casts his gaze upon “Fujiko F. Fujio’s” much-loved robotic feline.)
For this week’s License Request Day, our revered Curmudgeon has been generous enough (and saintly in patience) to let me discuss one of my biggest wishes, Doraemon. Spend enough time around manga or anime and you find numerous references to this robot cat from the future. Like Peanuts, Doraemon has become part of the air of Japan and all the main characters have been iconic symbols in their own right.
The original manga ran from 1969 until 1996 and has 45 collected volumes. The first Doraemon anime ran briefly in 1973. The second Doraemon anime series first went on air in 1979 and is still running today. In fact, the five main characters had the same voice actors for 25 years. They retired as a group in 2005, when the anime changed production companies.
The setup is pretty basic. Nobita Nobi is a good-for-nothing, lay about. One of his great-great-grandsons, Sewashi, travels back in time to give Nobita Doraemon. Turns out Nobita grows up to be an extremely irresponsible adult, piling up enough debt that his great-grandchildren are still trying to pay it back. Sewashi hopes Doraemon will help Nobita avoid such a mistake. I have to give credit to the creators, they do quickly address the classic time travel paradox this might cause, even if the solution isn’t very convincing. Here are some pages from the first Doraemon story.
The manga is very episodic and formulaic. Doraemon’s greatest ability is him being able to pull an endless array of gadgets from the pouch on his stomach. It’s called a fourth dimension pouch and it appears to be limitless inside. Nobita has either gotten in some trouble or is trying to avoid some chore. He requests Doraemon manifest a gadget that gets him out of his current predicament without any effort on his part. Of course, Nobita begins to use the device beyond its intended design and this creates new problems. Below are two pages showing the typical results of Nobita’s adventures.
The stories I’ve read are very universal in nature and I can’t imagine American children having any difficulties comprehending and enjoying them. Nobita deals with bullies, homework, school trips, household chores, etc. So I’ve never understood why this series still is unlicensed. Won’t someone please think of the children and bring Doraemon to the US? We want to love that dorayaki scarfing robot cat too.
Kodansha has released 11 volumes of the manga in a bilingual format. You can buy them either from jbox.com or Kinokuniya bookstores as import books, but they’re a little pricey for kids books. You get about 150 pages for $12.50. I’d like to see the series offered at the same price point as most kids manga, which is about 200 pages for $7.99.
Wikipedia has an excellent Doraemon webpage with tons of detailed information on both the manga and anime series.
Thanks to David for letting me share this amazing series with you.
(And thanks to Ed for making this eloquent pitch. Would you like to sing the praises of an as-yet-unlicensed comic? Contact me, and we’ll see what we can work out.)
The Manga Curmudgeon 
Man, this brings back my childhood memory. I practically grew up with Doraemon. Even now, more than 15 years later, I still love this series.
In Japan, they’ve recently started releasing completist Doraemon volumes (I got vol.1). One rather charming feature is that they’re arranged so that, first, the stories read by kids born in 1959 appear, then all the ones for kids born in 1960, and so on.
Ed and David, thanks for highlighting this series! I’ve always thought Doraemon was a no-brainer for the US: the humor, artwork, and short stories are appropriate for young readers, while the book’s historical significance all but guarantees that older fans will be curious about it. Thanks also for providing information on the bilingual editions, which can be very hard to track down if you don’t know where to look.
>So I’ve never understood why this series still is unlicensed.
Once upon a time, I believe Viz had intended to publish Doraemon, but it was canceled.
Apart from Doraemon’s cultural status in Japan that is on par with that of Mickey Mouse in the US, there are elements in Doraemon that might not go over well here, in the same way that the sexual comedy in Dragonball didn’t find favors with the Wicomico school district. There is some “nudity” in the comic… some characters more often than others.
Simon, I’ve only read the 11 bilingual volumes. I don’t remember nudity in those, but I could have overlooked it. It was probably pretty innocent stuff. But, you’re right; someone in the US would make a media circus out of it. Because we all know that American society is so fragile that the sight of a naked child taking a bath would cause more ruin than a nuclear holocaust.
>sight of a naked child taking a bath
Funny you should say that. One of the recurring gags has Nobita using the teleporting door to visit Shizuka, only to find her in the middle of taking a bath.
Oops, hit submit too early…
Because of Doraemon’s status, any negativity, from a minor censorship skirmish to not meeting commercial expectations, may be seen as an affront to the Japanese people. I think that’s the main reason why it hasn’t been brought over. It’s a very protected property.
Simon, that’s an excellent point that I hadn’t thought about. Still, I’d wish they would take the risk.
[…] as the effort may have been, it’s left some really terrific-sounding comics in licensing limbo. Doraemon, [Update: KBC can't be blamed for that one.] Sazae-San, Section Chief Kôsaku Shima, and others are […]