Doraemon: Nobita and the Green Giant Legend is a 2008 anime film from the Doraemon Film Series.
An expansion of the manga short, "Goodbye, Kibō!", the adventure is kicked off when Nobita, while looking for his exam papers which had blown off in the wind, unexpectedly comes across a single green sapling in a dumpster. Deciding to sneak the sapling back home, after Tamako forbid Nobita from growing the plant despite protests, Doraemon eventually came up with the brilliant idea of giving the sapling sentience with a futuristic elixir.
The sapling eventually grows into an adorable, humanoid form, which Nobita names Kibō. But when searching for Kibō's birthplace in the hills, alongside Doraemon, Shizuka, Gian and Suneo, the gang encounters Plant Aliens from Planet Green, currently observing earth's non-sentient plant population and taking an interest on Kibō being the only sentient plant of his kind. And soon after, a conspiracy from the seemingly-friendly aliens arises, one which could lead to apocalypse on earth...
The movie was released in Japan on 8 March 2008. It was the 8th highest grossing animated film in Japan.
Doraemon: Nobita and the Green Giant Legend contain examples of:
- Adaptation Expansion: The feature film is an expansion of a manga story, "Goodbye, Kibō!" which totals to around ten pages in length. With a lot of new characters added and the plant aliens and their intentions adequately explored, as well as the introduction of a different, far more benign alien tribe absent from the original.
- Apocalypse How: A Class-4 example, which the gang must race against time to prevent, when Shirah, the Elder of Planet of Green decide to nuke the surface of earth with a vegetation bomb, turning everything on earth's surface, including humans, animals and buildings into plants.
- Animate Inanimate Object: When facing a junkyard overspilling with trash (dumped by irresponsible neighbors from all around), Doraemon produces a new gadget, a Life-Spray which makes inanimate objects grow legs and come to life, telling the trash to "find their original owners".
- Art Shift: "Yume o Kanaete Doraemon" in the opening credits is animated in a papier-mache Stop Motion-esque style, in comparison to the rest of the movie which follows traditional animation. It's likely intentional due to it being the first Doraemon film post-reboot to follow an original premise.
- At Arm's Length: Nobita attempts to grab Kibō, who was captured alive by Shira and Baruna, only for Baruna — a huge plant alien brute — to hold Nobita back with a single hand.
- Beneath the Earth: As it turns out, the surface of Planet Green, filled with buildings where most of the plant alien population lives, is just half of their world — there's a second, far more benevolent tribe of plant aliens living in a series of underground tunnels, which Nobita, Doraemon, Kibō and the gang find themselves in after their escape.
- Blatant Lies: Early in the film, Nobita's attempts to sneak a plant (the not-yet-sentient Kibō) into his house is caught by his mother Tamako. A sheepish Nobita then claims the plant "followed him home".
- I Choose to Stay: The movie ends with Kibō — who just learnt how to speak! — telling Doraemon, Nobita, and the others that he will not be following them back to earth, and will instead remain on Planet Green to learn more about the population of plant aliens across the galaxy, where he truly belongs. The farewell between Kibō and his earth friends are as heartwarming as expected, with the gang waving Kibō farewell as the plant aliens, Kibō within their ranks, departs.
- Comedic Underwear Exposure: Suneo accidentally ripped his belt halfway into the film when the gang made it to Tama's underground world, and spends much of the second act walking around with his hands holding his pants and nearly tripping. Luckily it gets fixed once the gang reached Tama's underground village.
- Convenient Escape Boat: After Doraemon and the others escaped from their cell, they made it to an underground lake with the waterways leading outside, and conveniently enough Baruna's speedboat is still parked there. Cue the gang jumping aboard and taking off, and Baruna with a few mooks on skis in pursuit moments later.
- Darker and Edgier: The movie itself is this compared to the two-part episode, "Goodbye Kibo!" which it's adapted from, as well as most previous installments adapted from the Doraemon's Long Tales series. Themes like genocide, planetary extinction, and Fantastic Racism between the Plant Aliens are explored, the impending nuke from Planet Green is portrayed as a genuine, apocalyptic threat, and the movie actually ends with earth's near-destruction and Kibo dying (though he does get better) which is portrayed as seriously as the movie allows.
- Depopulation Bomb: The aliens from Planet Green intends to wipe out all non-plant living organisms on earth in order for the existing vegetation to grow and flourish.
- Deranged Animation: Late in the film, both Nobita and Lire momentarily goes through this when they stepped into the pool where Kibō - now converted into a bioweapon - is spawned from.
- Edible Ammunition: The final battle have the gang on Doraemon's hot-air balloon, pursued by Baruna and his men, who tries shooting them down using "grape" cannons. Gian accidentally took a giant grape in his mouth, swallows it, and exclaims, "Delicious!"
- Everybody Cries: Well, the gang (Nobita, Doraemon, everyone else) did when they made it back to earth... only to realize they're too late to save the world, whose surface is now overgrown with plants and vegetation, growing from the surface to the top of ther Tokyo Tower. Gian urges everyone that crying won't save their world, but eventually breaks into Ocular Gushers when he realize his mother and his sister Jaiko are among the victims of the green nuke.
- Fantastic Flora: The surface of Planet Green is filled with giant trees and plants, which doubles as houses for their plant people residents.
- Garden-Hose Squirt Surprise: Early on when Nobita tries getting water for the recently-revived Kibō, just as Tamako is watering the garden with a hose. Nobita briefly removes the hose to fetch some water, causing the water to stop for a few seconds. Cue Tamako looking into the hose when Nobita re-attaches it.
- Go Mad from the Apocalypse: The gang have a particularly nasty Heroic BSoD when they realize earth has been nuked and turned into a world consisting entirely of plants, with Doraemon nearly being Driven to Suicide if Nobita, Suneo and Gian didn't restrain him.
- Green Aesop: Value the beauty of nature and learn to preserve the environment, or else a group of hostile plant aliens fighting for the rights of their non-sentient plant brethren will nuke the surface of earth with their technology turning all life on earth into non-sentient plants. A lesson that the aliens themselves had forgotten in their rage against humans.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Kibō pulls this off at the end in order to stop the apocalypse from destroying earth. Fortunately he gets better.
- Inadvertent Entrance Cue: When Nobita wonders if Kibō misses his home in the hills (having spent the past few days in the Nobi household), Doraemon assures Nobita that it's normal to feel homesick, and that sometimes he'd miss his sister, Dorami, even if she's annoying at times. And then Dorami suddenly drops in from the drawer, knocking Doraemon off his feet in the process.
- Lily-Pad Platform: While underground, the gang crosses a stream atop a series of giant lily pads en route to Tama's village.
- Losing a Shoe in the Struggle: The first encounter between Princess Lire and Kibō have the curious Kibō clinging behind Lire, until in a moment of frustration, Lire then drops her sceptre to distract Kibō before kicking him into a distance. Except she didn't, Lire only succeeded in kicking her left shoe off with Kibō comically clinging to her leg, much to Lire's frustration.
- Mythology Gag: Doraemon's hot-air balloon is powered by blowing into a tube, much like the Rocket Straw Shuttle from the manga short, "Rocket Straw". Also, the movie have a scene similar to the short where Gian, in a desperate attempt to speed up the transport, accidentally blows his snot into the tube. Which he then passes to Suneo, much to Suneo's chagrin.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Jii reveals that the area outside of Planet Green's core is a wasteland ruined by war, showing the aliens that they were just as irresponsible and neglectful to the environment as the humans.
- Organic Technology: The technology of the inhabitants from Planet Green are, naturally, developed from plants, from levitating pods as their transports to natural cages made of roots and binoculars grown from flowers.
- Plant Aliens: The inhabitants of Planet Green are plant-aliens, and there's also the new character, Kibō, who starts off as a green sprout Nobita dug out from a dumpster before being bestowed life by Doraemon's Green Elixir.
- Spoiler Opening: The opening credits shows Doraemon, Nobita and the entire gang on a hot-air balloon in the shape of Doraemon's head. They did in fact board one such balloon as part of the climatic battle, when they're hovering above the plant-infested surface of Tokyo while battling Baruna and his soldiers.
- Time Stands Still: As Doraemon, Nobita and everyone else gets accidentally abducted by Planet Green's alien saucer, a bunch of Doraemon's gadgets fell out of his pockets, one of them being the Stop Watch, which freezes time on earth as everyone goes to space. This ends up being crucial in the climax, when Planet Green managed to drop their green bomb on earth, but thanks to the Stop Watch they're given a second chance to reverse it's effects.
- Tiny-Headed Behemoth: The gang managed to escape from their cells on Planet Green by wearing Doraemon's transformation mask that turns them into gigantic tree-people, but then the gadget's effects wears off, starting with their craniums. For a few brief seconds, their heads are seen on gigantic hulking wooden trunk bodies, giving off this effect (before the rest of their bodies revert to human as well).
- Transflormation: Should the Planet Green's operations succeed, this is the fate of the entirety of earth's (non-flora) population.
- Unwilling Suspension: Late at the end of the film, an unconscious Kibō is suspended atop a pool of alien liquid, to grow him into a second World Tree in Tokyo.
- World Tree: The core of Planet Green is supported by one such tree that reaches all the way to the stratosphere, and it is the source of life for their inhabitants — how their citizens become living, sentient plants. Also, the sap from said tree is used for creating their nuke to be used on earth.
- You Are Too Late: Doraemon, Nobita, and everyone else made it back to earth at the end of the film, only to realize Planet Green's nuke has been dropped, with Tokyo — and the rest of the world — now covered in endless vegetation, with trees and shrubs growing to the tip of the Tokyo Tower. But just then, Gian sees an airplane frozen in mid-air thanks to the Stop Watch being prematurely activated, and that they still have a chance to save Earth.
