Who is Doraemon?
Doraemon's Shaping Influences
The Creation
Doraemon is the creation of Hiroshi Fujimoto and Motoo Abiko. The duo was known by their pen name Fujiko Fujio. They drew many mangas together from 1951 till 1987 when they split (Min). "Dora" is a play on words. It can mean "stray" in Japanese, and has connotations of being unwanted. It also means "gong," which is a reference to Doraemon's round body, and his favorite food, dorayaki (sweet Japanese pancakes with a red bean filling); emon is a suffix and means male to show the gender of Doraemon (Min).
See Character Timeline for more information.
Doraemon: The Show's Lead
Doraemon is a future cat robot that belongs to preteen boy Nobita’s future generation. In order to save themselves in the future, Nobita’s future generation, more specifically his great-grandson Sewashi Nobi, sends Doraemon to help Nobita. Doraemon takes out futuristic gadgets to help Nobita with his personal life, and especially prominent is Nobita’s conflicts with the “antagonists'' of the series: Suneo and Gian. Now here is the twist, Sewashi initially wanted to send a super-robot to protect Nobita, but with his meager allowance, he could only afford an imperfectly-made factory-rejected toy: an anthropomorphic robot cat called Doraemon. DORAEMON, although a robot, acts like a HUMAN.
Doraemon’s Legacy
Doraemon’s gadgets: An estimated 4,500 gadgets have made their appearance in the thousands of comic books, cartoons, and movies based on Doraemon (Min). For instance, consider the Anywhere Door. There was an exhibition in 2010 which showed how modern technology could approximate the marvels that come out of Doraemon's pocket (four-dimensional pocket).
Doraemon in Indonesia: Doraemon is one of the most popular manga characters in Indonesia. Almost everyone familiar with this character - both adults and children (Arifin).
Doraemon has inspired many comic books, mangas, and graphic novels. In fact, using the characters from Doraemon, TV Yashi has created many movies, making the beginning of the post-animated Doraemon (Arifin). Different movies of Doraemon have been released throughout the years; Space heroes, The Gadget museum, The Birth of Japan 2016, Kachi Kochi are the most prominent ones.
Popularity: Doraemon’s popularity is apparently comparable to that of Mickey Mouse of the US. In the past decade, Doraemon became available to Americans, marking the arrival of Doraemon to the US (Bricken).