Hello Kitty seems to have no reason to exist other than to be cute. Indeed, Doraemon's crossover appeal may be best appreciated if you set him next to the other cartoon figure that Japan has long made ubiquitous. At heart, Doraemon is profoundly human: it's the very essence of his charm that he has a girlfriend-a small cat called Mi-chan-but she always seems a little out of reach. There is a distinctly Japanese quality to all this, in the ingenuity of the Doraemonic gizmos (all portable), his determination to put a bright face on things and never to give up, and even in some of the little cat's idiosyncrasies (one of his machines allows him and Nobita to watch Shizuka-chan, the little girl who is the object of Nobita's affections, in the shower). The suspicion persists, in fact, that in the realm of 22nd century cats, Doraemon is something of a Nobita. The reason Doraemon is blue, according to the most recent accounts, is that a robot mouse bit off his ears, and he was so rattled by his girlfriend's ensuing laughter that he turned a little turquoise. But the two can only fly low over the suburban houses in the neighborhood, and the dokodemo door often takes them to the places they most wish to avoid. Each time Nobita is being afflicted, Doraemon will reach into the fourth-dimensional pocket in his stomach and pull out a takekoputa (flying device) or a dokodemo door, which allows them to go anywhere. Part of Doraemon's particular appeal though, is that, like Hanna-Barbera's irresistible Top Cat and Yogi Bear, he is ready to take on every situation-and likely, somehow, to get it wrong. While Japan's idoru, or mass-produced pop stars, often seem as generic as machines, the country's animated characters, like Doraemon, have the bigheaded individuality of real rebels. He has a favorite food ( dorayaki-sweet bean paste sandwiched between two small pancakes) and a little sister, Dorami, who is yellow and has ears and long eyelashes (a cousin, perhaps, of Hello Kitty). He weighs 129.3 kg, his height is 129.3 cm and his birthday is Sept. Like the most immortal of such characters, in short-one thinks of Snoopy or Paddington Bear-Doraemon comes with a personality and a history. His time machine is, well, to be honest, in a desk. Unlike most best friends however, Doraemon sleeps (as Nobita lays down his futon on the floor) in a closet. Like any good buddy, Doraemon accompanies his pal to baseball practice, sits by his side as he wrestles with his homework and tries to protect him from evil-eyed Suneo and the lumbering Gian. His best friend, Nobita (the name means knocked down), is a classically helpless, bespectacled fourth-grader who is always being bullied by classmates and shouted at by mother or teacher.
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But none of Japan's cultural exports, it could be said, has the warmth, the companionable charm or the zany humanity of the 22nd century cat who has a gadget, if not quite an answer, for everything.ĭoraemon lives in a world indistinguishable from our own: his weekly TV shows and annual movies have him inhabiting a typical street in a typical Japanese (and therefore quasi-Western) neighborhood.
Athletes like Ichiro Suzuki and Hidetoshi Nakata are increasingly electrifying international sporting arenas with their blend of smooth craft and high efficiency. But more than that, he transmits a message that transcends every language: the future can be likable, the present is redeemable, and you can be happy even if you're blue.įor many years now the Japanese have given us all snazzy machines and elegant styles their animE and manga designs are so globally compelling that the hip trans-Atlantic music group Gorillaz uses animE figures as virtual front men, and Disney's Lion King was said to have been inspired by the masterful cartoons of Osamu Tezuka. Yes, he sells fireworks, adorns postage stamps, blinks as a cursor on Sony PCs and appears in movies about the Dorabian Nights. That bubble-headed creature with a broad smile, a paw raised in greeting and a disarming blueness beams down at us not only across Japan but on the streets of Hanoi, in courses at American colleges, in cinemas in Hong Kong (where he chatters away in Cantonese).
And if you've seen him, you've been warmed-even inspired-by his energized air of optimism. You've seen him, even if you don't know his name. DORAEMON may be Japan's cutest export, says Pico Iyer, and his relentless optimism inspires a continent