The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle

空を自由に飛びたいな

「はい、タケコプター」

「ドラえもんのうた」（大山のぶ代）

I'd love to fly freely in the sky

- Here, a Bamboo Copter!

(The Song of Doraemon) (Ooyama Nobuyo)

Huh, I never had expected to be writing about Doraemon here. And I'm even now really weirded out by the notion I even have to explain him. For in essence, it's like having to explain Mickey Mouse. Doraemon is a long-running children's comic and cartoon that has not only found succes in Japan, but in the whole of South-East Asia. It's immensely popular there and several generations have grown up together with the blue robot cat. So it feels weird to have to explain such a cultural icon, a figure everyone knows by sight. I mean, Doraemon is so intertwined with Japanese culture he was appointed a special ambassador for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics (Remember seeing him in the closing ceremony for the 2016 Olympics?). Anyway, for the people who don't know Doraemon: Doraemon is a blue robot cat from the future, who has been sent to the young boy Nobita. Nobita's a failure at everything he tries, who always gives up and cries the moment things go wrong and that's a habit that sticks. His great-great-grandson Sewashi therefore decides to send his robot cat Doraemon to his great-great-grandfather in the hope Doraemon can help Nobita shape up and change his and his family's future. Doraemon has all kinds of fantastic secret gadgets from the future hidden in his pouch, like the Anywhere Door which can open doors between any location. Many episodes are about Nobita (or his friends Shizuka, Gian and Suneo) coming to Doraemon asking for some gadget to help them out (for example, because they forgot to make their homework) and the kids eventually abusing the gadget until it backfires. While the television series is a comedy series, the long-running theatrical releases take on more epic forms with long adventures. One of my favorites is Doraemon: Nobita no Parallel Saiyuuki (Doraemon: Nobita's Parallel Journey to the West, 1988), where monsters from the Chinese classic Journey to the West take over modern-day Japan, and Nobita, Doraemon and their friends must fight the monsters as the Monkey King and his allies.

It would take until the thirty-third movie until Doraemon would try its round hands at a mystery-themed story in the theaters though. 2013's Doraemon: Nobita no Himitsu Dougu Museum, which also has the English title of Doraemon: Nobita's Secret Gadget Museum, starts with the theft of Doraemon's cat bell by Phantom Thief DX. Desperate to find the bell (actually a secret gadget), Doraemon has Nobita wear the Sherlock Holmes Set, a set of detective-related secret gadgets. With the help of the Clue Lens (which can show clues for any mystery you want to solve), the duo learns the bell is somewhere in the Secret Gadget Museum in the twenty-second century, an institution that exhibits all kinds of secret gadgets and their history. Doraemon receives an invitation for the museum from his sister Dorami, and Nobita, Shizuka, Gaian and Suneo all join to help Doraemon find his bell. Arriving at the museum, the gang are given a tour by Kuruto, a young boy and aspiring gadget inventor who works at the museum. They learn that Phantom Thief DX has struck here too earlier, stealing a secret gadget from the museum. When the following day Phantom Thief DX announces they will steal more gadgets from the museum, the gang prepares to catch the thief and retrieve all the stolen gadgets.

A somewhat odd Doraemon movie as it's set in 'just' the Japan of the future and mostly inside a museum too, instead of some parallel or magical/fantasy world like in most of the other (older) movies. While I am reviewing this movie here on the blog, I wouldn't want to disappoint people, so let me emphasize first that this is mostly a comedy-action movie like you'd expect from Doraemon, and not some kind of hidden mystery gem that will go into the annals of modern mystery fiction. That said, the mystery plot is really not that bad considering this is at the core a children's/family comedy film  and overall, I did enjoy the Sherlock Holmes Set-wearing Nobita vs. Phantom Thief DX story, as it's a genuinely fairly played mystery plot.

Speaking of the Sherlock Holmes Set, you'd think it's a total cheat right? It consists of some nifty gadgets that come in handy when working on a case, like the Radar Stick (falls in the direction of the culprit), Clue Lens (shows clues of the mystery you're trying to solve) and the Detective Hat (gives the wearer a spark of inspiration that solves the case by flipping the rim of the hat). It's not nearly as much as a cheat as you'd think though, as like many of Doraemon's gadgets, they are err... somewhat behind on maintenance, so it's not like Nobita would be able to solve the case within the first five minutes of the movie (in fact, the set was featured in the manga in the past, where Doraemon explicitly said the gadgets were all broken). The whole movie is full of wonderful gadgets which don't exist in the real world though. The Anywhere Door, Big Lights (a flashlight that enlarges the thing it enlightens), Gulliver's Tunnel (shrinks the person who walks through the tunnel), they are of course all items don't exist in the real world.

Yet, the mystery plot of Nobita's Secret Gadget Museum is fair: like any good supernatural/fantasy/science-fiction mystery story, it might have an unrealistic setting with items and tools that don't exist (yet), they are properly introduced to the viewer and all explained, so they are used fairly in the mystery plot. In fact, that was the thing that surprised me the most about the movie: it does a great job at introducing all kinds of Chekhov's Guns and other hints in a completely natural manner in the first half of the movie, which all come back in regards to the mystery plot in the denouement. Nobita uses the Detective Hat to solve the case and guess who Phantom Thief DX really is, but the viewer is capable of doing that too without Nobita's handy gadget, as all the essential clues were shown on the screen to the viewer (who only has to remember how the fantastical secret gadgets can be used). So I'd say Nobita's Secret Gadget Museum is an entertaining example of how to do a proper science-fiction mystery story, even if it's clearly meant for children. There's even room to do some misdirection, and the first half does a good job at keeping things just mysterious enough to make sure the viewer won't be able to solve everything too soon.

The movie also has quite a number of Sherlock Holmes references by the way, and even opens with a sequence of Nobita dreaming about the Sherlock Holmes vs. Lupin movie he saw the night before. As a 'possibly-first-movie-for-kids-that-talks-about-Sherlock-Holmes', it's pretty decent, and there are some funny references here and there hidden that only fans will pick up, so you can tell the screenplay was written by someone who likes Holmes. As a Doraemon movie too, this is fun to watch. It focuses more on the friendship between Nobita and Doraemon compared to other movies in the series and even has a flashback scene to when Doraemon was first brought to Nobita by his great-great-grandson Sewashi.

Doraemon: Nobita's Secret Gadget Museum is on the whole an amusing Doraemon movie that features a simple, but properly presented mystery plot and is likely to amuse fans of Doraemon that also like mystery fiction. It's unlikely I'll be discussing Doraemon here on the blog any time soon again, but this one side trip with the robot cat was certainly no disappointment.

Original Japanese title(s): 『ドラえもん　のび太のひみつ道具博物館（ミュージアム）』