Adventures of Doraemon - High Fantasy edition
Doraemon and friends in Dream Land.
Doraemon: Nobita's Three Visionary Swordsmen is a 1994 anime film, the fifteenth in the Doraemon Film Series, based on the entry of Doraemon's Long Tales of the same name.
After Nobita had a sweet dream of his interrupted, he pleads for Doraemon to use the Dream Machine to let him have another good dream, one which Shizuka, Suneo and Gian gets to participate as co-stars. But the Dream Machine is actually a prototype, and thanks to the intervention of some outside forces that "really" wanted Nobita and friends to become part of the dream world, Nobita ends up in the dream universe of Yumemiru, a European Medieval High Fantasy-inspired kingdom besieged by demonic forces led by a Sorcerous Overlord named Odorom. A powerful villain who had no intentions of allowing Nobita and gang to leave the world of dreams...
Doraemon: Nobita's Three Visionary Swordsmen contain examples of:
- Accidental Hero: Nobisuke Nobi, trying to wake up Nobita and Doraemon, stumbles across the Dream Machine. Fiddling with it out of curiosity, he accidentally cancelled the dream, causing Nobita and friends to be ejected from the dream dimension - moments before they're all about to be killed by Lord Odorom.
- Adaptational Wimp: In the movie, Ganbosu falls to his death after Nobitania slices off one of his ears. In the manga, he survives and enlarges himself to continue the fight. It takes the other knights using Donbura Powder to turn the ground around him to quicksand before he is defeated.
- Alternate Self: Nobita, Gian, Suneo and Shizuka in the real world have their own dream counterparts, respectively Nobitania the Silver Knight, Sunemisu, Giantosu and Shizukaria.
- Bears Are Bad News: Subverted. Nobitania and the knights are assualted by a huge bear the size of a carriage, but as it turns out, this bear is the father of a cub Nobitania released from a Bear Trap some time ago. The cub quickly stops his father, and the bear quickly apologizes for attacking and become one of the knights' allies offering to escort them to the dragon's cave.
- Bedsheet Ladder: How Princess Shizukaria managed to sneak out of her bedroom atop a tower in Shalpero Castle, without alerting the guards.
- Contrived Coincidence: When Nobitania realize Doraemon actually brought the Obtaining Bag along into the dream and is using it to pull objects from the "real" world into the dreamland, including Nobita's zero-score exam sheets, an angry Nobitania grabs and chucks the Obtaining Bag away, getting latched on a passing shooting star. Said star then lands with the Obtaining Bag in the middle of an empty field, a few thousand miles away…. right beside Shizukaria who is about to pass out from hunger. Probably justified since this adventure is a "dream" the entire thing is likely scripted.
- Disney Villain Death: In the movie, Ganbosu falls to his death after Nobitania slices off one of his Ear Wings.
- Dramatic Unmask: Spoofed in Nobita's first dream in the Action Prologue. Nobita dreams himself as the masked superhero, Golden Mask, who had rescued Shizuka, Suneo and Gian from the Demon King and his army. But right before Nobita-as-Golden Mask can remove his mask, it suddenly got stuck, and Nobita wakes up because it's morning.
- Dream Land: The setting and bread-and-butter of this adventure. Thanks to the Dream Machine putting the main characters into different dream dimensions, all the adventures occur in the dream world, and one of them, the Kingdom of Yumemiru, is facing destruction in the hands of Lord Odorom.
- Dream Walker: A comedic version, thanks to Doraemon and Nobita having the Dream Machine's remote, they can drag Gian and Suneo into part of their dream quest to save Yumemiru, much to Gian and Suneo's chagrin (they were, respectively, dreaming about hosting a worldwide rock concert and going on a vacation in outer space).
- Dream Weaver: The Dream Machine can modify the contents of dreams and plan the "scripts" on how each dream will turn out. Doraemon being the machine’s controller can even enter the dreams of the person using the machine!
- Embarrassing Damp Sheets: Before the dream journey into Yumemiru, Nobita decides to test another dream in Atlantis where he's a heroic shepherd who rescues the princess (played by Shizuka, unsurprisingly) in the sinking of Atlantis. Unfortunately for Nobita, it turns out every time he had a dream involving water, he would wet his pants in his sleep.
- Empty Piles of Clothing: Everytime Lord Odorom disintegrates his victims with his Magic Staff, leaving behind their clothing, armour and weapons. Nobitania and Shizukaria both suffers this fate in their first confrontations against Odorom, but thanks to having bathed themselves in the dragon's pool they return to normal within a few minutes.
- Forced to Watch: Lord Odorom, seeing his disintegration ray failed to work on Nobitania thanks to Nobitania having washed himself in the dragon's cavern, instead decide to paralyze Nobitania, telekinetically drag Nobitania's companions – Doraemon, Shizukaria, Giantosu and Sunemisu, and kill them one at a time before his helpless foe. But in the real world, Nobita’s father Nobisuke tampering with the Dream Machine suddenly cuts the dream short, pulling the knights' real-world counterparts back to reality.
- Golem: Lord Odorom's invasion forces consists entirely of these, including Mud Golems led by General Spider, and Water and Iron Golems serving Ganbosu. They are prone to having their own Logical Weakness, however - the Mud Golems are easily defeated once they're Lured into a Trap and sealed in Shalpero Castle's basement while Doraemon uses the Obtaining Bag to empty the contents of a nearby river right on them, the Water Golems get frozen instantly by the Cold Waves Fan leading to their Literally Shattered Lives, while the Iron Golems are blasted with ease by the Mini Thunder Clouds.
- Heroic Fantasy: The dream adventure in this story seems to be modelled after the archetypical sword-and-sorcery fantasy world popular in the late 70s and early 80s. Nobita and friends are reborn as heroic knights in a Medieval European-themed world, with the villains being forces of chaos lifted from Robert E. Howard's and J.R.R. Tolkien's works.
- Horse of a Different Color: Nobitania rides a steed called a Unicornsaurus – a reptilian-hybrid unicorn creature – while in Yumemiru, while Lord Odorom's foot soldiers ride floating seahorse-like monsters.
- Mistaken for Badass: When the gang gets assaulted by a bear, Giantosu, Sunemisu and Doraemon starts fleeing… only to realize Nobitania isn't following. Doraemon then reminds the other two that they're here to slay a dragon and the powerful Lord Odorom, why are they running from a bear instead of standing and fighting like Nobitania?... as it turns out, Nobitania is actually too afraid to run.
- Nobody Here but Us Statues: Approaching the dragon's lair, Nobitania, Doraemon and Shizukaria, realizing the massive amount of petrified statues belonging to failed adventurers around the cavern, tries thinking an idea to sneak in unnoticed. It's Doraemon's broom who came up with a plan by sweeping the surrounding stone dust all over the trio until all three of them are covered by the grey dust. They then look just like the various statues in the cavern and could sneak past the dragon by remaining motionless. This works long enough until Nobitania saw the petrified, real statues of Giantosu and Sunemise...
- Pinned to the Wall: The final confrontation between Nobitania and Lord Odorom has Odorom unleashing a wave of star projectiles that pins Nobitania - still holding his sword - by the armour and cape into a wall. Lord Odorom, in typical villain fashion, stops to indulge in some Evil Gloating - allowing Shizukaria, from an adjacent tower, to save the day by using the Enlarging Light on Nobitania's sword until it extends enough to skewer Odorom's heart.
- Shared Dream: Thanks to the 22nd Century Dream Machine, Nobita, Doraemon, and all their friends ends up sharing the same dream, their quest in Yumemiru where Nobita, Gian Suneo becomes the Fantastic Three Musketeers while Shizuka is a Warrior Princess.
- Ship Tease: By the end of their adventure together, Shizuka (as Shizukaria) admits that she would be willing to marry Nobitania, even telling the real Nobita the next day that he was "very cool" in her dream despite not knowing that he was Nobitania.
- Shout-Out:
- While perusing through the options of "dream scripts" from the Dream Machine, one of the available scripts is a dinosaur-themed adventure called "Jurassic Planet by Spielberg". Which Nobita turns down when he realizes the cast consists of only three boys, meaning Shizuka won't have any roles in this one.
- More of a Take That! than a shout-out, but another alternative dream available from the Dream Machine's catalogue stars a superhero with a bread roll for a head. Nobita rejects it by complaining "It's way too childish" while Doraemon remarks, "Really? I thought it suits you."
- The Siege: Lord Odorom's forces are consistently laying waste on Yumemiru Kingdom, with various strongholds getting conquered and Shalpero Castle being one of the last remaining citadels. They are pretty much hopeless and waiting for the prophesized Silver Knight to save Yumemiru.
- Stab the Sky: Nobitania, Sunemisu and Giantosu all raise their swords together into the air while making a vow they would destroy Odorom and save Yumemiru.
- Sword Fight: Tons and tons of sword-battles abound, since this is a medieval-themed adventure, from Nobitania and his knights fighting Spider together, to Nobitania battling Ganbosu in a mid-air sword duel.
- Taken from a Dream: Zig-zagged. Thanks to Torinho's intervention, objects from reality can enter the dream-verse, and vice-versa. Doraemon and the dream-verse Alternate Self of Nobita, Shizuka, Suneo and Gian enjoys a massive feast in the dream world, and in reality, Nobita's mother Tamako realize someone had emptied their larder. The third act notably has Fairy Shizu from the dream world literally breaking reality and entering the real world to tell Doraemon and Nobita that in their absence, the dream world is about to be destroyed by Lord Odorom's demons.
- Weird Moon: The story opens with a blood-red moon in Nobita's first dream, where he is a super-hero called Golden Mask saving Shizuka in a demonic planet.
- Your Mind Makes It Real: What makes the new prototype Dream Machine so dangerous - it's implied that anyone who dies in it, dies in real life. Nobita and friends nearly suffers this fate when Lord Odorom had all of them trapped, but Nobisuke Nobi fiddling with the Dream Machine in the real world unintentionally saves them all in the last minute.
