'Stand by Me Doraemon 2' review: Childhood revisited with Japan's most popular children's cartoon
Stand by Me Doraemon 2 is a full-length anime film adapted from the hugely popular Japanese children's manga. Doraemon is one of the most beloved cartoons that won children's hearts all over the world.
The manga and cartoon were adapted into the movie Stand by Me Doraemon in 2014. It was billed as a “special film” that attempted to tell the popular cartoon's more mature and adult-oriented story.
Stand by Me Doraemon was a monumental success, grossing US$200 million at the Japanese box office and winning the Japanese Academy Award for best-animated feature. Stand By Me Doraemon 2 is a sequel to the first part and continues with the adventures of Nobita and Doraemon.
Watch the all-new Stand By Me Doraemon 2 on Netflix.
Plot of 'Stand by Me Doraemon 2' explored
The sequel of Stand by Me Doraemon is a little more complex in terms of the timeline than its first part. This movie sees Nobita encounter both his younger and older selves, and attend his wedding. They pay a visit to his dearly departed grandmother, all in one day, to fix his life with the help of Doraemon.
The sequel starts with Nobita getting scolded by his mother again for failing his tests. Angry, he declares that he must be adopted, as his birth parents would never mistreat him.
Rummaging through his room, he comes across an old battered teddy bear and Nobita is instantly reminded of his doting grandmother, who passed away when he was very young. He starts missing her terribly and pleads with Doraemon to let him go back in time and pay a visit to his grandmother one last time. As usual, Doraemon relents Nobita's requests and the two set off for the past.
Nobita goes back some years and meets his grandmother, who instantly recognizes him. The two shared some emotional moments after which Nobita's grandmother revealed to him her final request to see Nobita's bride.
Nobita urges Doraemon to take out the Time TV to play the future Nobita's wedding scene to fulfill her wish. Much to their horror, the two find that Nobita himself is absent from his wedding.
Doraemon and Nobita must now step up and redeem the situation. The two travel to the future and Doraemon convinces Nobita to stand in for his older self at the wedding. However, nothing goes as per plan when their time machine is stolen and they both realize that the older Nobita had run away from his wedding, leaving his bride Shizuka, and gone back in time.
Doraemon and Nobita must now retrieve the time machine somehow and convince the future Nobita to go back to his wedding where everyone, including his bride, would be waiting. Troubled by his failures, it takes some time to convince the adult Nobita that he will make his to-be wife happy.
However, when the older Nobita witnesses the love between young Nobita and Shizuka, he realizes Shizuka's happiness. Nobita goes back to his era and fulfills his duty.
Why the movie is worth the watch
Stand By Me Doraemon 2 is highly sentimental. But it does not lose out on entertaining value and employs equal parts of playful mischief and sobriety to deliver a wonderfully dense storyline. From time travel to body-swaps, writer-director Takashi Yamazaki employs it and imbues the story with plenty of humor and heart. The top-notch visual effects lend photorealistic quality to the animation and make the cartoons almost life-like.
But that is not all. The characterizations and Nobita’s relationships with those around him matter most in a film like Stand by Me Doraemon 2. The director has skillfully woven the relationships between Nobita's past, present, and future selves and Nobita's maturing relationships with those around him with the storyline.
Overall, the anime film Stand by Me Doremon 2 is an engaging one and a half hours watch that will make viewers time travel back to their childhoods once again.
This article reflects the opinions of the writer.
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Srijan Sen