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Front and center: Doraemon; counterclockwise from top left: Nobita, Dorami, Shizuka, Suneo, and Gian.
"This is nice, I wish I could do that too
I have many dreams like this, but
Every single one of them,
He'll make them all come true
With the help of his mysterious pocket.
I want to fly freely in the sky!
(Here! The Takecopter!)
Ah! Ah! Ah! I love you so, Doraemon!
"
Doraemon's Song, the opening theme of the series in 1979 and from 1981-2005

Doraemon is the most successful work of Fujiko Fujio, and one of the longest-running anime series.

The title character, Doraemon, is the quintessential example of the Robot Buddy: he is a robotic cat from the future sent back to help the socially inept Nobita Nobi through the use of futuristic technology (known as Dogu, Japanese for "tools", or gadget) produced from his Fourth Dimensional pocket. Typically, the devices are used to impress his love interest Shizuka Minamoto or humiliate the bullies Takeshi "Gian"note  Goda and Suneo Honekawa. Inevitably, there is some form of Phlebotinum Breakdown, and Nobita must sort through the root problem himself. The overused story arc is somewhat of an artefact of the series' origin during The '70s, criticizing Japanese society's increasing over-reliance on superfluous technology.

It's the flagship anime of TV Asahi and one of that network's landmark anime franchises alongside Mobile Suit Gundam and Sailor Moon, though considerably less popular than those series in the English-speaking world.

The characters also go on epic adventures in Doraemon's Long Tales and the films based on them. All of these stories ended up being so many in number, and just so dang popular, that Shogakugan had to make a magazine to give the manga a permanent place to stay— which ended up becoming kodomomuke manga haven CoroCoro Comic, with Doraemon himself serving as Series Mascot to this day.

After a brief animated series in 1973 by Nippon Televisionnote , Shin-Ei Animation (which was eventually purchased by TV Asahi) produced an anime series of Doraemon. This series became incredibly popular and ended with 1,787 episodes on March 25, 2005. Celebrating the anniversary of the franchise, a new Doraemon series began airing on TV Asahi on April 15, 2005, with new voice actors and staff, and updated character designs.

Even though it's not really popular in certain western countries (such as the United States of America and Canada, which is significant as far as American-dominated websites like TV Tropes are concerned), Doraemon is a very influential series, particularly in the east and the non-English speaking west. For example, in 2002, Doraemon was featured along with Aung San Suu Kyinote  and Hamid Karzainote  as one of the 22 heroes featured in a special edition of Time Magazine on Asian Heroes. In a truly surreal moment, Doraemon has been designated by the Real Life Prime Minister of Japan as the Ambassador between the cartoon world and Japan, with the ceremony including a to-scale model of Doraemon.

The first attempt at an English dub of the anime came in the mid-1980s with an adaptation titled The Adventures of Albert and Sidneynote , produced in Montreal by Cinar Films; this dub never aired in the U.S. but became quite popular in Barbados. The gadget cat would have to wait nearly three decades more for his American TV premiere. In 2014, it was announced that Disney XD would air an English dub, licensed by Viz Media and produced by Bang Zoom! Entertainment, of Doraemon five days a week in the USA market as part of a block for elementary-aged children. And thus, Doraemon made a premiere on American televisionnote  after three decades of trying so. Despite achieving cult status, the dub's ratings massively declined and were put on indefinite hiatus after two seasons. Nevertheless, while this dub went more or less unnoticed in the U.S., it was big news in Japan - so much so that the edited American episodes were actually dubbed back into Japanese "as is" and aired on Japan's Disney Channel. A different English dub commissioned by LUK Internacional S.A. (who license Doraemon in Spain and Europe) - still using the American names for the characters, but with different voice actors from the US version, the original music intact and scripts closer to the originals - aired on Disney XD UK. In 2019, Disney Channel India began airing their own English dub that unfortunately wound up being short-lived.

For a list of Doraemon episodes, see its recap page here. For a list of movies and other adaptations, see the Doraemon Film Series page.


Doraemon provides examples of:

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    A-D 
  • Abandoned Pet in a Box: There are a few episodes revolving around them.
    • In one episode, Doraemon helps Nobita secretly care for a box of puppies/kittens. After some failures to find adequate places for the pets, Doraemon and Nobita send them to the past where there is plenty of space, and no human or any other dangerous animal threatening them, so they can live on their own. To provide them a source of food, Doraemon also leaves a food-producing machine to the pets and makes a dog slightly smarter to operate the machine by evolving it using the gadget Evolution-Degeneration Beam. Later, Doraemon and Nobita return to 1000 years after the time they put the abandoned pets in, only to find that the dogs and cats have become humanoid, gained the ability to talk, and built a sophisticated civilization with high technology, all due to Doraemon leaving the Evolution-Degeneration Beam in the past and the pets using it to perform a fast evolution on themselves. However, those dogs and cats have decided to leave the Earth to another planet because they've predicted that the Earth will be facing a world-wide disaster.
    • Another episode is about Doraemon helps a box of abandoned kittens feed themselves by setting program for them to catch mice at a set time at someone's house so that people will offer food to them as a reward afterwards.
    • In the 2005 series' episode "Shizuka-chan Disappeared!?", Nora's grudge against humans is because his owner abandoned him in a box in the park when he was young.
  • Absence of Evidence: Sometimes there are impossible cases that cannot be solved normally due to the usage of gadgets.
    • Prime examples in the gold coin's robbery case which the culprit is Doraemon who used Time Machine and later, Suneo's kidnapping case.
    • A darker example appears in Gian's murder case in which Suneo creates a theory of Gian's voice being used to murder a music school's principal. According to him, it would be a perfect murder as killing with Gian's voice definitely wouldn't leave any evidence behind. In the end, it was used merely as part of a "Before" and "After" comparison for their new advertising campaign, with Gian's singing serving as the "Before".
  • The Ace:
    • Dekisugi. Not only he is the smartest kid in the school, but he is also very athletic, has many other talents (like cooking and drawing), a Nice Guy, and a Chick Magnet. He's even called "Ace" in the Disney XD dub. In the Toyota commercial, he appears on TV as an Olympic athlete.
    • Shizuka is the second-best in this case: very smart too, a Dude Magnet and a very Nice Girl, very good at school, and a responsible daughter who is often implied to be good at cooking. But she lacks the numerous talents that Dekisugi has, sometimes struggles with The B Grade compared to Dekisugi's always perfect scores, and can't play the violin.
  • Ad-Break Double-Take: There are two in the American English episode "Experimental Dream Schemes". The first is during Noby's pirate dream when Big G appears as a pirate to attack Noby's pirate ship, and the second is when Doraemon warns Noby that he's broken the Dreamplayer and can't wake up from his dream because of it. Ironically, neither instance actually has a commercial break placed in-between them.
  • Adaptation Expansion: Many episodes from the anime that are adapted from the manga are extended to reach a conclusion or give good moral to the story. A notable one is "Mind Reading Helmet" which never reached conclusion in the original manga.
  • Adaptation Dye-Job: In the 1979 anime series, Shizuka's hair color is brown rather than black. It was changed back to black in the 2005 anime series. Similarly, Gian's skin tone is the same as everyone else in the original manga while all the adaptations have him tanned.
  • Adaptational Attractiveness:
    • One of the 2005 anime's notable features. An example is that Nobita starts off as plain (when he compared himself to Dekisugi). In 2005? He's revealed to have quite nice eyes under that glass.
    • Shizuka starts off as kinda cute in the original series, but later becomes much prettier (even more so in the 2005 anime).
    • To make his Chick Magnet status more justified, Dekisugi is more handsome in the 2005 anime (he has a better haircut) compared to his character design in the 1979 anime where he was just as plain-looking as Nobita.
    • The remake episode of the Lying Mirror makes this more pronounced.
    • Noramyako, Doraemon's former girlfriend used to look like this in the original and in the remake, she now looks like this and also become Ascended Extra and Took a Level in Kindness too.
  • Adaptational Karma: In "The Truthbeaker", Nobita lies to his friends about his dad being able to perform amazing feats, such as smashing a boulder with his bare hands, so Doraemon him gives a gadget that turns all of his lies into truths. In the manga and 1979 anime, Nobita suffers no consequences from this, and even makes his dad buy a telescope and bike for him (this is a callback to the beginning of the story. When Nobita is about to ask his dad to smash a boulder, his dad assumes that he's going to ask him for a bike or telescope). In the 2005 anime, after saying that his dad is a super hero, Nobita says that his his dad has zero tolerance for those who deceive others. His dad then flies towards him and punches him in the face, ending the episode.
  • Aesop Amnesia: It takes a long time for any lessons to stick to Nobita (and of course, he often jumps to the wrong conclusion as well).
  • Ageless Birthday Episode: Sue's age is never given in "Worst Birthday Ever".
  • All Men Are Perverts: Anytime that Shizuka is shown in stripperiffic outfit, you can expect that the boys will be quite eager to see it. Yes, including Doraemon and Dekisugi.
  • Alternative Continuity: The 2005 anime's continuity may be truer to the original manga compared to the 1979 anime's continuity. For example, the circumstances of Doraemon's birth in the manga state that he was originally yellow, and until after an accident that involved a mouse eating his ears off (then Noramyako laughed at him because he was earless), he fell depressed enough that his tears made the yellow paint to fade into blue. This was retold in the 2005 anime-original intro and expanded in an entire episode; however, the 1995 movie-special changes some important details as such that Doraemon was originally blue, and that he was kicked off the assembly line and that it broke him.
  • Alternative Foreign Theme Song:
    • The Disney XD English dub uses a different intro from the Japanese version in which Doraemon explains the premise of the show.
    • The Italian dub has two entirely unique theme songs. The first theme song was made in the 80s, the second comes with the redub made in early 2000s, it's the one most people are familiar with and it stills airs on television these days (for both original series and remake).
    • The Adventures of Albert and Sidney, unlike the Disney XD dub, has a proper song that wouldn't sound out of place in something like an 80's sitcom. ("Look! A propeller on top of your hat/Albert and Sidney, a boy and his cat...")
  • Alphabetical Theme Naming: You can tell if any characters are related to the main gang or not with Nobi-, Shizu-, Sune-, Jai- , and Deki-.
  • American Kirby Is Hardcore: The American dub of the 2005 anime is like this. The dub emphasizes more on the episodes that are action-oriented and mostly lacks the episodes that focus on heartwarming relationships. Even the background music in the dub is much more upbeat and action-oriented compared to the calm and lighthearted background music in the Japanese version. Not surprisingly, the season 2 promo heavily emphasizes on the action aspect of the dub.
  • Anachronism Stew: In one manga chapter, Nobita and Doraemon tries to bring dinosaurs from Early Cretaceous China to Japan. One of such dinosaurs is Tsintaosaurus, a hadrosaurid dinosaur that was only known from the Late Cretaceous formation. Funnily enough, it didn't goes unnoticed by Nobita of all people who mocks Doraemon for getting the period wrong, in which Doraemon Hand Wave it by saying that it probably also existed in Early period, only its fossils were not found yet.
  • Ancestral Name: In the future, Nobita would name his son Nobisuke, after his father. Future!Nobisuke's more assertive and outgoing personality (he's quite The Bully, unlike Nobita, who is a Bully Magnet) indicates that he's more similar to his grandfather (or rather, his grandmother) than he is to his parents.
  • And You Thought It Was Real: One episode involves the cast getting ready to fight a bunch of Mole Men after one of them had a premonition that they were invading the surface. Turns out, it was just shooting for a movie.
  • Animated Adaptation: Three of them, in fact — one that is one of the longest-running shows in history, and an immediate reboot after it ended that will probably go on to match it. And a 1973 anime that we don't talk about. And 30+ movies.
  • Animate Inanimate Object: A lot of chapters involve Doraemon giving life to inanimate objects, usually with the intention of it just being temporary.
  • Animation Age Ghetto: In "Defender of Justice: Masked Me!", Noby is a fan of the superhero Masked Me, and Doraemon thinks that he's too old to watch kids' shows. invoked
  • Animation Bump: Many late 1979 anime episodes saw a huge bump in animations after switching to digital animation in the early 2000s. The episode 490 of the 2005 anime ("The Old Man and the Elephant" in particular) also saw a nice increase in animation quality. Along with updated art direction that starts with this episode.
  • Applied Phlebotinum: Doraemon's dimensional pocket full of "Dogu".
  • April Fools' Plot:
    • An April Fool's plot beginning when Nobita uses the excuse of April's Fools to avoid getting beaten up by Giant for tricking him. Giant then asks if he's sure it's April 1st, causing Nobita to doubt if it's actually April 2nd, so Giant gets the right to beat him up. When all said and done, Giant revealed that it's REALLY April 1st so he gets away for bluffing Nobita about the date.
    • Another episode started with Gian, Suneo and Shizuka playing April Fool's jokes on Nobita. One of the jokes include his house is on fire, so he has the right to be panic being the paranoid kid he is. Enraged by his friends fooling him, Nobita pleads to Doraemon for a device that makes its user able to make all April Fool's joke become reality. And since this is Nobita we're talking about, he's going to abuse it for his own good.
    • The plot point of the Retcon used by the manga (first story in Volume 7) and the second part of the two-parter anime special to bring Doraemon back. After getting tricked by Gian and Suneo that Doraemon has returned (and a couple more pranks) due to it being the said date, Nobita remembers that Doraemon has left behind a special box that would grant him one more gadget that should only be used in case of an emergency. The box grants him a potion that would make anything he says become a lie. He quickly uses it to unleash revenge on Gian and Suneo, but then on the way home, muses about the prank Gian and Suneo pulled on him and how Doraemon would never return. Naturally, Doraemon returns at the end of the chapter/anime.
    • Another peculiar case is the episode in the manga where Nobita gets from Doraemon a gadget that allows him to change the date as he wishes. Nobita obviously abuses it to change seasons in order to try to go to the pool with Shizuka or shifting between Christmas and New Year's Day to get gifts and money, and as a result the gadget stops working and Earth stops spinning and starts to move towards the Sun. Doraemon manages to solve everything by fixing the gadget and changing the date to April 1, retconning the apocalypse to his April Fool's joke on Nobita.
  • Arc Number: According to official stats, Doraemon is 129.3 cm tall and weighs 129.3 kg, his head and body are both 129.3 cm in circumference, his legs are 129.3 mm long, he produces 129.3 horsepower, he can jump his own height and run at 129.3 km/h when frightened by a mouse, and his birthday is 2112/9/3. This number was apparently chosen because 129.3 cm was the average height of a Japanese fourth grader when the manga was written. (Ironically, Doraemon is drawn to be shorter than the main human characters, who are actual fourth graders.)
  • Arm Cannon: One of Doraemon's gadgets is an arm cannon that can shoot blasts of air to blow people away. He uses the arm cannon in "My Best Friend Doraemon" to blow Gian out of the way while he is under the control of Suneo, who is using the Buddy Beacon to make him his best friend. Other characters have also use it on few occasions, including Nobita, Gian, and even Shizuka.
  • Art Evolution:
    • Early in the manga and the 1973 series Doraemon's proportion varies, especially concerning his head and eyes. It took a while for him to look like the Doraemon that fans are more familiar with.
    • Initially the 1979 series barely looked any different from the 1973 one art style-wise, but around late 1981 the characters were redesigned to look chunkier. The 2005 series is closer to the later manga in style, but retains their height from the previous series.
    • Amusingly, one of the reasons they rebooted the anime series in 2005 was to give the character designs a quick makeover and to let some of the voice actors retire after 30 years of the same roles.
  • Artistic License – Biology:
    • Invoked in "Fossil Fools", which is about Noby and Doraemon making impossible fossils and pretending they really found them.
    • Sewashi plans at the start of the series about changing Nobita's life and "Transportation Logic" clearly is not possible. To elaborate; by changing the past and having Nobita marries Shizuka, Sewashi will cease to exist due to the fact that the Sewashi who is Jaiko's great-grandson and the one who is Shizuka's great-grandson is not the same person due to genetic differences. Unless of course, Nobita never married Jaiko in the first place.
  • Attack Reflector: In the episode "The Human Piggy Bank", when Nobita wants to get his money out of the Hypnotizing Bank, which hypnotizes anyone who comes near it, he uses a mirror to make it hypnotize itself.
  • Audible Gleam: In "Experimental Dream Schemes", at the beginning of Noby's "Chase the Sun" dream, when Sue, Big G, and Sneech find Noby, his mouth twinkles and has an audible gleam.
  • Audience Participation: Japanese viewers can use their TV remote to play Rock–Paper–Scissors with Doraemon (sometimes other characters) in the 2005 anime.
  • Author Avatar: "Funyako Funyao" from the episode "Ayushi! Lion Mask" although subverted that the kind of manga he authored is totally different (see The Chris Carter effect below) compared to Doraemon itself.
  • Bad Future: While not as extreme as some examples, if Nobita continues to live his life the way he does now, his life will fall apart so badly that he will end up a penniless laughing-stock, in so much debt that he will need to work for a century to pay it off, and married to Gian's sister.. It's also a bad future to Jaiko too, as, in the better future, she would have become a successful manga artist instead.
  • Badass Adorable: All of the Doraemons. But particularly Wangdora and Dora The Kid.
  • Bag of Holding: Doraemon owns one - Other robots similar to Doraemon also seem to have one as well.
  • Bait-and-Switch: In "Sequence Spray", Noby uses the Sequence Spray on a photo of Sue and Ace. The resulting scene shown in the picture makes it look like they're about to kiss, until Noby uses the Sequence Spray again to reveal that Ace just noticed a leaf in Sue's hair.
  • Balloon Belly: In the reboot's take on the classic "Memory Bread" story, Noby uses the Bread slices to copy the notes taken for homework. This backfires when he decides to have a snack in-between while studying with Shizuka, which makes him feel sick when he tries to eat another slice of Memory Bread. It doesn't help that Noby's mom made a special dinner with a lot of shrimp, which Noby eats anyway, and he ends up so stuffed that he's ready to explode.
  • Bamboo Technology:
    • A name-only example. The iconic take-copter literally means a "bamboo helicopter". However, it was named as such only because its namesake is from a Japanese toy under the same name. Which is a small bamboo stick with propeller blades and if you spin it in your hands, it will fly for a short while. This gadget, on the other hand, is not made from bamboo whatsoever. Completely averted in the English dub where this gadget's name is shortened to "Hopter".
    • Somehow implied in the episode where Nobita and Doraemon visit a planet which is basically a Bizarro World. Not only that Doraemon of that planet is a Gender Flipped version, the gadgets she pulls out look like they have been around for a really long time. This suggests Doraemon of this world may come from the past, instead of future.
  • Banana Peel: At the end of the episode "The Not So Lucky, Lucky Cards!", the person who winds up with the deck of cards, which now consists of only the joker card, ends up slipping on a banana peel and falling into a sewer.
  • Barbie Doll Anatomy: Averted quite a bit is in the original manga and 1979 anime from the late 80s where Nobita's penis and Shizuka's nipples are seen countless times. It is, however, important to note that the manga is completely lacking in Fanservice outside of Parental Bonus — all nudity is Played for Laughs. Played straight in the 2005's anime remake when the censorship is stricter.
  • Batman Can Breathe in Space: Doraemon has multiple gadgets that allows one to breathe in space without a suit.
  • Beach Episode: Several. Some which Suneo doesn't invite Nobita or Doraemon (but they find a way to join anyway.) Nobita and the Castle of the Undersea Devil itself is an undersea episode.
  • Behind a Stick: Nobita tries this quite often, but he fails.
  • Big Ball of Violence: In "The Action Planner", the Action Planner kicks up a big cloud of dust when he attacks Doraemon while trying to get him to stick to Noby's schedule.
  • Big Fancy House: Suneo's house. He always brags about how large his house's yard is, so large that it has a pond.
    • Nobita's house in "Deluxified", thanks to the gadget Deluxifier, it's so fancy that it's actually a Big Fancy Castle.
  • Bigger Stick: Doraemon's not terribly powerful on his own, but his gadgets grant him various powers up to Reality Warper levels. His losses are often due to his opponent neutralizing his gadgets in some way. For example, in Nobita and the Birth of Japan as Doraemon fought the Big Bad:
    Doraemon: No way... How could the latest stun-spear of 22nd century be defeated?
    Gigazombie: This is the latest model from the 23rd century!
    Doraemon: Damn, I lost by a century... *faints*
  • Big Guy, Little Guy: Gian and Suneo. Though the leader role usually belongs to Gian, since Suneo is scared shitless of him.
  • Binocular Shot: In "Rub-a-Dub-Dub, See the World from a Tub!", Doraemon spots Sue in the Bathmobile while looking through binoculars, and a shot of her through the binoculars is shown.
  • Birthday Episode: Every major character has had episodes about their birthday.
  • A Birthday, Not a Break: The episode "Shizuka-chan Disappeared?!" is about Shizuka celebrating a birthday that gets cut short when she drinks one of the Transformation Drinks that Nobita gave her by accident, gets turned into a cat, is mistaken for a stray, and is kicked out of the house, forcing Doraemon and friends to go find her.
  • Bizarro Universe: Happened in one episode when Doraemon and Nobita enter and explore a mirror planet and interact with their counterparts. This planet is literally mirrored of having mirrored writing and east is west. Other differences include reversed gender roles showing Nobita's mom as the breadwinner, all males dressed as females, and different teachings in school. Nobita and his counterpart decide to swap roles for a day.
  • Black Bead Eyes: Usually reserved for fat characters like Giant and Nobita's father. Averted in the 1979 anime. This returned in the 2005 anime where the art style is (slightly) closer to that of the manga.
  • Blow You Away: One of the very common gadget is an Arm Cannon in the shape of a tube with front sight that shoots pressurized air. It's also apparently voice-activated.
  • Blush Sticker: The cloud creatures from the episode "My Own Golden Cloud" have permanent blush stickers.
  • Book Dumb: Nobita gets bad grades but can be pretty smart at times, just look at the creative ways he uses Doraemon's gadgets!
  • Bowdlerise:
    • This happened to any episodes or movies except those during the mid-1979 anime series.
    • The manga often shows how bad Nobita is after being maimed, usually by Gian. The anime often tones down this. Both often played for Amusing Injuries except for that Series Fauxnale.
    • The English dub that airs on Disney XD is this. One notable example of this is that in certain episodes, Nobita or the other characters end up naked due to Doraemons' inventions or another reason. Due to catching up with the times, the only nudity from the remake is from the back, showing their butts in Japan. In the Disney XD English version, however, their backsides are completely censored, despite the fact that it aired shows like Kick Buttowski and others that occasionally showed characters naked from the back and despite having cartoons on other networks showing characters naked from the back with little to no outrage from anyone about it.
  • Breaking the Cycle of Bad Parenting: More than once Nobita has vowed to become an Open-Minded Parent to his future child after getting a harsh scolding from his own parents, only to find out by time travel that his adult self will not always be able to live up to his ideals.
  • Broke Episode: One episode has Suneo's family gone completely broke on his birthday, as part of Suneo's birthday wish (after having his friends left his birthday party, thanks to Suneo being snooty), using What-If Phone Box. Even when he's poor, he's still a snob. Leading him to ask Doraemon to turn his life back to normal, due to his friends still despising him for being a snob.
  • Broken Aesop: The Woodcutter's Pond. The moral of the fable is that one should always be honest. A device that exploits this morality tale by allowing you to upgrade junk into good stuff by telling the truth...is about as far from honest as it gets.
  • Bruiser with a Soft Center: Gian, especially later movies where little touching moments can make him cry more than anybody else.
  • Bully and Wimp Pairing: Gian and Suneo could be considered this as they generally appear together.
  • Buried Alive: At one time Nobita misuses a gadget that lets him hide in anything to cause mischief. When it malfunctions, he is unable to get out, and start to worry about buildings crashing on him or being stranded forever (even with an image of his skeleton remains included). Cue his friends putting up a victorious arm fold on the spot he's hiding (as payback for the pranks he pulled on them earlier).
  • Butt-Monkey:
    • Nobita. So much that one of his descendants has to send him his robot to help to deal with that. Not that it's getting any better.
    • Doraemon himself is a Butt-Monkey from times to times, especially around the time the series started.
  • Cartoon Cheese: The show has conveniently held this kind of cheese. This trope is international, and most likely due to American (especially Disney) influence in early anime.
  • Casting Gag:
    • Some of the voice actors who were in the 1973 anime returned to voice different characters in the 1979 anime version, such as Kameta Kimotsuki (Gian) as Suneo, Yoshiko Ohta (Nobita) as Sewashi, and Noriko Ohara (Tamako Nobi, Nobita's mom) as Nobita.
    • Tomokazu Seki voiced a younger version of Suneo in a late 90s TV Special inspired by "Memories of Grandma", before being officially cast as Suneo for the 2005 anime.
  • Casual Time Travel: Time travel is extremely commonplace in Doraemon's universe. Apparently everyone can afford a Time Machine in the future. As a result, many lunatics have the idea of using future tech to exploit and alter the past, which calls for the existence of Time Police.
  • Catchphrase:
    • Shizuka has "Nobita-san no ecchi!" for whenever Nobita sees her in the bath or flips her skirt.
    • In the 2014 English dub, Nobita/Noby is given the catchphrase "Why do I make such poor choices?"
  • Celebrity Is Overrated: An episode is focused on this. To elaborate: When Doraemon and Nobita discover an Idol Singer napping in secret while she's hiding, they, after waking her up and agreeing to her request to keep her location a secret, invite her to their house so she can rest more comfortably. When she expresses her wish for someone else to trade places with her due to her sheer workload, Nobita, with the help of a gadget from Doraemon, swap bodies with her. Soon after receiving the loving attention he craves, he's joined by the Idol Singer's Stage Mom, who puts such an intense amount of work on "her" that he quickly wishes to be turned back to normal. note 
  • Censor Steam: In a twist from the manga's Barbie Doll Anatomy subverting roots, recent episodes do this with Shizuka whenever she's taking a shower. This has not escaped the notice of the series' long time (40+ years) fans.
    • In the Disney XD English dub, this is used in the episode "Transformade" (dub title) to cover up naked Noby (Nobita) so all nudity from the back, which was in the Japanese version is all gone, both in his own form and when he accidentally transforms into naked Sue (Shizuka-chan).
  • Challenging the Bully: In one chapter, Doraemon has to go back to the 22nd century because his duty has been "fulfilled" (i.e making Nobita happy), but he's reluctant because he comes to care about Nobita too much. Nobita tries to prove that he doesn't need Doraemon anymore, one of the methods being challenging the local bully, Gian. While Nobita is badly beaten, he keeps coming after Gian, who ended up getting scared of him because he just won't back down. This at least convinces Doraemon to go back "home".
  • Chekhov's Time Travel: Doraemon himself comes from the 22nd century with a time machine to help Nobita in his school days. At least in some episodes/chapters, Doraemon and/or Nobita has to solve the problem of the day by going to the past or future with said time machine.
  • Chick Magnet: Doraemon who managed to capture many cats' hearts, Dekisugi, Nobita in the movie for Creme, Suneo during his (VERY) brief stint as a pop star (episode "The Rich Kid Mambo"), Miyoko and possibly Riruru. Doranichov and finally Wang Dora who tends to get beat up by Mimiko.
  • Child Prodigy: Nobita becomes one in the episode "The Life Do-Over Machine", where he uses the eponymous machine which allows him to do over his life while keeping the mind of his current self. As a result of this, he is able to write kanji and do multiplication at the age of four. This eventually backfires on him, though, as Doraemon points out that if he were to grow up like this he would actually be worse off than his normal self - since he's super smart, he starts to lose interest in actually doing his schoolwork, causing him to become much dumber than he had expected.
  • The Chris Carter Effect: In-universe example, One story, "Ayushi! Lion Mask" concerns a manga series that suffers this trope. Apparently the Lion Mask story always involves the title character being killed and replaced by another person bearing the Lion Mask moniker. The author end up having breakdown over confusion on how the plot will move forward, haunted by monthly deadlines, so Doraemon had to use time travel to help. In the end, Doraemon end up ghostwriting the manga series due to the author falling into a stress-induced illness.
  • Chronic Pet Killer: An episode begins with some goldfish in Nobi's residence die again, causing Doraemon to solve a problem by using the special paint that can create multiple types of pet from rocks.
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Early in the manga's run, there was a character named Gachakko, a female robot duck that pestered Doraemon and Nobita. The character stopped appearing due to the creators' dislike towards her, and consequently none of the manga featuring the character was reprinted. Gachakko also appeared in the 1973 anime, but not in the 1979 and 2005 anime.
  • Classical Antihero: Nobita is a total loser, a crybaby, and a lazy bum who prefers using tools to cheat than trying to improve himself, but he is naturally a kid with a gentle heart who can be brave and reliable when he needs to.
  • Clock of Power:
    • The Scheduler Clock is a clock-shaped gadget that forces the person who inserted the schedule inside to follow schedule, no matter the weather, condition or even if the task has already been finished.
    • The Ultra-Stopwatch is a stopwatch that is used to freeze time and only the person who touches it can move within the frozen time.
  • Closet Sublet: Doraemon sleeps in Nobita's closet.
  • Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Nobita. He sincerely believes in outlandish things such as that the dinosaurs are still alive. Of course, he is right "every" time...somewhat.
  • Comic-Book Time: The series has outlived the creators, and yet poor Nobita is still in the fourth grade.note 
  • Consummate Liar: Lying is second nature to Suneo. He literally cannot go a day without lying about something, which bites him in the ass when he was given a device that makes all his lies true.
  • Continuity Nod: 40 years of chapters leads to quite a few of these.
  • Continuity Cameo: In some anime episodes, there are characters from other Fujiko Fujio works such as Perman and Esper Mami. There's one notable chapter where Doraemon's featured gadget is a portable runway that makes flying objects land on it automatically (Nobita wants to use it for catching butterflies) - cue Little Ghost Q-Taro and Mami unexpectedly landing on the gadget.
  • Cool Car: Suneo's cousin has one and thanks to Doraemon's gadget, Inanimate Object-Hypnotizing Megaphone, it becomes a garbage truck without changing its outward appearance.
    • Before this, Doraemon turns a vacuum cleaner with the same gadget into a sports car.
  • Cool Gate: One of Doraemon's recurring gadgets is the "Anywhere Door", which when walked through brings you to any location you tell it, as long as you made sure you worded your request carefully.
  • Cool Ship: The Time Patrol's ships, which not only could travel through different timelines, it could also phase through solid matter if need be.
  • Compound-Interest Time Travel Gambit: Nobita has Doraemon do this in an attempt to get a better allowance; though he does earn a buttload of interest, the bills are in future currency, so it only nets him a modest increase when it gets exchanged for present-day bills.
  • Cowardly Lion: Despite being generally considered a coward among his friends, Nobita is shown to be quite brave in dangerous situations, mostly in the movies. The Dirty Coward role is given to Suneo instead. Fridge Brilliance when you realize that his star sign is Leo.
  • Cranial Eruption: In "Action Quiz", both times Big G hits Noby, the latter gets a noticeable bump on his head.
  • Creator Cameo: There are some appearances of Fujiko F. Fujio.
  • Crossover:
    • Has had several over the years. They are mostly crossovers with other Fujiko Fujio works, but there are some crossovers with other series, such as Super Mario Bros.
    • Tamagotchi has the toy Doraemontchi and the functionally-equivalent Doramitchi.
  • Cultural Translation: The English dub of the 2005 series replaced most of the Japanese cultural icons and items with objects that were familiar to American young viewers. For example, yen notes were replaced with dollar bills, chopsticks with forks, and Japanese text with English text, and Doraemon's Trademark Favorite Food, dorayaki, were referred to as "yummy buns."note  These edits, though they were condemned by many purists, were somewhat justifiable, since many American elementary school children were unlikely to be familiar with some of the Japanese cultural items (such as a dorayaki). The setting was changed to America as well. It should be noted that these Americanizations were insisted upon by TV Asahi, who wanted to increase the franchise's chances of success in America.
    • The Korean and Vietnamese versions are this as well.
    • The Latino Spanish dub of the anime calls dorayaki "galletas" (the Spanish word for "cookies").
    • In an early Thai release of Doraemon, Dorayaki is referred to as "Fried Flour". This gets reverted back to Dorayaki in the later release.note 
    • Several (probably bootleg) Chinese translations go as far as localizing Nobita's home country as Taiwan (without changing any of the aerial shots that clearly show them living in Japan).
    • The only thing done in the Tagalized dub of the 70's series is dorayaki being referred to as hopia (There are some hopia that resemble dorayaki), and at one episode, the Tokyo Tower being referred as the broadcast tower of GMA-7! (To be fair, it was a shout out to the said channel airing the 70's series in the Philippines, and never mentioned again afterwards.)
    • Early Indonesian translation (around late 80's until much of the 90's) also did this to the manga. Replacing much of the pop cultural references into those popular in Indonesia at that period or localizing several character names. The publisher even goes as far as localizing places, people, and product names (Such as changing Nobita's aunt's home from Kyūshū to Surabaya, singer Yamazakura Momoko to Titi DJ, Tokyo University to UGM note , and several manga into manga that were popular in Indonesia at the time, which double as Product Placement since said manga was published by the publisher of Doraemon). The manga itself become somewhat prized amongst the fan because the sheer hilarity of the translation and the rarity of the copies as well, as the latest reprints are retranslated straight from the Japanese version, with footnotes to explain Japanese specific gags and references.
  • Custom Uniform of Sexy: Whenever the main cast play dresses up in a Sentai fashion, Shizuka will end up wearing a different outfit - often a more revealing one.
  • Cute Kitten:
    • He doesn't look much like one, but Doraemon is a robot cat. He had cat ears once upon a time, but they were chewed off by a mouse when he was sleeping. Poor guy is now terrified of them.
    • His sister Doremi invokes this trope full force.
  • Dancing Theme: One of the renditions of "Doraemon no Uta", the opening theme.
  • Darker and Edgier:
    • The 2005 anime has its moments. Best illustrated with "The Girl Who Loved Nobita", and at first simple story, but it's full of villains who sent Lulli to kill Nobita for indirectly foiling his ancestor's attempt to hack the military. When she overcome their control, they tried to bomb her along with Nobita, which caused her to sacrifice herself to put them down.
    • Early The Doraemons spinoff manga is this, with more emphasis on action and life-threatening hijinks.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Doraemon and Suneo are the snarkiest, though Nobita also has his moments.
  • Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: There are a few occasions in the anime where the characters sing the show's theme tune or their own character songs. Shizuka singing the theme tune at the end of "Flying Dress" is even a plot point (she is wearing a dress made out of fabric that, unbeknownst to her, flies into the air whenever someone nearby says any word relating to flight). Of note is that the original manga chapter already included this part of the story, making the anime theme song "Doraemon no Uta" a Canon Immigrant to the manga.
  • Dinosaurs Are Dragons: Doraemon: Nobita and the Knights on Dinosaurs would become Doraemon: Nobita and the Dragon Knights if the Japanese title was to be translated directly.
  • Disappointing Heritage Reveal: "Chin Up to the Ancestors" has Nobita seeking his heritage after his classmate Suneo boasts about his Blue Blood due to being descended from a Samurai bloodline. After asking his father Nobisuke and getting an unclear answer, Nobita and Doraemon decide to travel to feudal Japan via Time Machine to seek the truth. It turns out that Nobita's ancestors were peasants and hunters who earned a bare living when Nobita's great-great-great-grandfather Nobisaku unexpectedly shoots Doraemon with an arrow and proudly proclaims he "hunted a racoon-dog". What's even worse is that Nobisaku is both near-sighted and a coward who "hunts only rabbits and tiny birds", fleeing at the sight of a wild boar.
  • Disney Acid Sequence: Most of the anime openings show the main characters hanging out and using Doraemon's most iconic gadgets. The 8th opening for the 1979 series, however, is accompanied by an especially energetic version of "Doraemon no Uta" and features some bizarre scenes, like Nobita dancing in nothing more than swimming trunks and a lifebuoy, a stream of dorayaki being pumped into the air where they float away, an endless line of Doraemon-like vehicles morphing into television sets and broadcasting to people around the world, tiny Doraemons traveling through what appears to be a bloodstream, and ending on a shot of the Earth from space, wearing several Take-copters and covered by a giant dorayaki while everyone on its surface dances with smaller dorayaki. The sun and moon are also each shown with their own Take-copter.
  • Disneyfication: In one story, after Nobita tells The Little Mermaid unmodified to his little cousin, she wails without a break. To make her happier, Nobita attempts to Disneyfy the story by entering the story world and making Sophia and the prince together Happily Ever After. He succeeds, yet his cousin still cries, this time for the changed ending.
  • Ditching the Dub Names:
    • The first Italian dub of the 79 anime series renamed almost every character. The second dub and everything else after it kept the original names instead.
    • The first release of the manga in Vietnam, which was unlicensed, renamed all the characters. The officially licensed translation that came later on uses all the Japanese names.
  • "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune:
    • The main characters get to sing the theme song "Doraemon no Uta" for the 40th anniversary of the anime series.note  Doraemon himself also get to sing other songs from time to time. Most notably "Boku Doraemon".
    • The characters sing the theme song in the Spanish dub of the 2005 series.
  • Downer Ending: Most episodes for Nobita. There are a few exceptions though.
  • Dreadful Musician: Gian has a horrible, devastating singing ability, and Shizuka plays the violin as badly as he sings. Heck, one episode even has Suneo make up a conspiracy theory about a guy using Gian's voice for assassinating people which is, fortunately, not true. And in the movies, his singing drove away a group of sirens, an accompanying whale monster, and, in another unrelated occasion, knocks out two battling giant monsters. And in the 2005 remakes, one of the special episode involves combining both of their "talents" to defeat the Dracula Robot in the future where they play/sing for the ENTIRE earth!
  • Dream Episode: "Livin' the Dream" is about Doraemon using a dream director's chair to direct one of Sneech's dreams to Noby's liking.
  • Drop-In Character: Dorami occasionally travels to Nobita's time to hang out or to help Doraemon with something.
  • Drunk on Milk: One of Doraemon's gadgets is a bottlecap that turn any soft drinks into something that made its drinkers drunk.
  • Dub Name Change:
    • The American English comic and show change most of the names of the characters and items. While Doraemon retains his name, Nobita becomes Noby, Shizuka becomes Sue, Suneo becomes Sneech, and Gian becomes Big G.
    • The English dub produced by Cinar gives Doraemon and Nobita the even more distinctly American-sounding names of Albert and Sidney respectively, with the dubbed show renamed to The Adventures of Albert and Sidney to match.
  • Dub Pronunciation Change: The second Italian dub has Gian's name pronounced "Jan" instead of being the same as "giant". Also, Dekisugi is pronounced with a soft G.
  • Dub Species Change: In the original Japanese version, Doraemon is sometimes mistaken for a Tanuki by people. In foreign dubs this is either changed to a seal or a raccoon.

    E-H 
  • E = MC Hammer: In "Experimental Dream Schemes", as Noby's Dreamplayer dream starts to malfunction, Princess Sue from his earlier sci-fi dream tells him to solve some math problems. The math problems written on the chalkboard are entirely nonsensical ones such as "monkey + dog - cat =", "ABC + DEFG =", and "sunflower x watermelon =".
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • The very first Doraemon chapter, "All the Way From a Future World" have its share of oddities. Nobita is introduced to his Bad Future where he marries Gian's sister, Jaiko, and have six children with her (all which went the way of Chuck Cunningham and ceased to appear in future stories). The story is also set up as having Doraemon and Sewashi (Nobita's future great-great-grandson) being recurring characters in the Nobi household as well (Sewashi appearing in the next story, "Prophecy of Doraemon"), but the plot point was dropped in later episodes with Doraemon being Nobita's sole caretaker and Sewashi only appearing once in a while.
    • Said story also introduced the iconic Takecopter where Doraemon said it "could be worn anywhere" - even if placed on the user's backs, but that was the only time the Takecopter have this particular feature (with all subsequent stories have them being worn on the users' heads). The story ends with a Comedic Underwear Exposure involving Nobita who tries putting the Takecopter on his pants only to slip out, but that contradicts the Takecopter's usage in later stories - there are multiple episodes and movies where characters wear Takecopters over their caps or hoods, but the gadget still works without the clothing article getting in the way.
    • The manga's entire premise - Doraemon being sent by Sewashi to change Nobita's life - seems to contradict with later stories, since changing the past is considered a crime and there is a Time Police preventing people from doing so (later stories Retcon that Doraemon is merely there to help Nobita when needed, but Nobita still needs to stand on his own feet most of the time). In fact, a volume 1 story "Chin Up to the Ancestors" have Doraemon deciding to Time Travel to Feudal Japan to change Nobita's ancestral line from farming peasants to royalty (after Suneo boasts of his family being descended from samurai) - an action that's a strict no-no in future stories.
    • The second manga short, "Prophecy of Doraemon", have the Time TV (a recurring gadget) given the ability to project a hologram of what's going to happen in the future. It lose this function in subsequent shorts. The same story has a major dilemma (Doraemon had a prophecy of Nobita getting into a life-threatening accident en route to Shizuka's house) that can be resolved instantly by teleporting with the Anywhere Door, an iconic gadget that have not been created at that point. Later chapters implies Doraemon had this gadget the whole time (a prologue manga reveals Doraemon was given this tool in robot school), making the entire conundrum rather pointless in hindsight.
    • Doraemon had a few moments where he borders on The Ditz in early chapters, which was later phased out. For instance, the second volume (which introduces the recurring Time Cloth gadget) sees Doraemon pulling a I'll Never Tell You What I'm Telling You! on Suneo.
    Suneo: Where are you going with all those junk?
    Doraemon: You're too crafty, I'm not telling you anything. If I told you we're going to revert the junk to brand new using the Time Cloth, you might try to steal it.
    [guess what happens next. Go on, guess.]
    • On a related note, earlier chapters of the manga tend to portray Suneo as big a bully as Gian (notably his debut in "Secret Agent" note  and also in "Voodoo Camera" note  and "The Fish Flag Float" note ). This phased out gradually in later stories, where Suneo is snobbish at worst but mostly serves as a frenemy.
    • In the first one year and six months of the 1979 series' broadcast, It was a 10 minutes daily anime series, airing one episode each day. (saved for Sunday) Until 1981 when it became a half-hour weekly anime, airing two episodes each week (with some weeks airing one episode as a two-parter) until the series ended. And the background of the title card was originally yellow before they changed it to a different colour with Doraemon being animated.
    • The early episodes of the 2005 series also bear resemblances to the 1979 series in term of character designs at times.
    • Early on, Doraemon used to have the ability to turn invisible by pulling his tail. His tail later changes to function as a power switch after several gadgets that could turn the user invisible were introduced.
    • If you watch the first episode of the 1979 anime, "Nobita's Dreams Town", you'll see a random, unnamed tall guy that was friends with Gian and Suneo, he never shown up again until the series' finale. He is however occasionally shows up in the manga along with a nameless fat guy to serve as random extras.
    • Doraemon is more of a Butt-Monkey in his earlier appearances. This is reflected on how he was drawn during the early days of the manga's run.
    • Nobita's voice sounded much more different in the early episodes of the 2005 anime than how it is now. It was higher pitched and levelled. His height also seemed shorter, when in later episodes, he's taller. He also didn't wear his usual yellow shirt. This also goes for characters who had slightly different designs, voices, and clothing.
    • Gian Gouda's sister, Jaiko in the earlier stories is a mean, snobbish bully and pretty much a female version of her brother, with scenes of her repeatedly picking on Nobita in the single-digit volumes. Character Development kicked in later as she becomes sweeter, kinder, in order for the stories to have a contrast between the Gouda siblings. Some of Jaiko's old persona was later recycled into a new character, Botako.
  • Edutainment Game: Several for the Game Boy Color, and several for the Sega Pico and Advanced Pico Beena.
  • Embarrassing Damp Sheets: In "The Insect of Ignorance", Nobita reads Suneo's diary and finds out that he is a bedwetter.
  • Episode Title Card: The 1973 anime have Doraemon holding the title card. While both the 1979 anime and the 2005 anime have a few variations over the years.
  • "Everybody Laughs" Ending: Several episodes, usually at the expense of one (or more) character. If it's not Nobita, it will be Gian or Suneo or both of them.
  • Everyone Chasing You: Happens often to Nobita due to misusing a gadget and an episode sometimes ends with this.
  • Everyone Has Standards: While Gian is the closest the series has to a regular antagonist, he does have standards. Such as when Suneo brags about his 'Koinobori' note  and feels "pity" for kids that their parents doesn't buy one for them. A kid who happens to be one hears him and runs up crying to beg his mother buy one for him, but unfortunately, since the family is poor they can't afford to buy one. Gian (who usually sides with Suneo) is not even amused and scolds Suneo for being so heartless.
  • "Everyone Is Gone" Episode: One chapter has Nobita being given a device that can erase someone's existence, with him accidentally using it to erase everyone else while taking a nap. At first, he's overjoyed to be able to do anything he wants with no repercussions and quickly goes to raid various stores for food and toys. However, he soon gets lonely, and when there's a power outage, Nobita very quickly realizes that he couldn't survive on his own. Thankfully, the device's effect is apparently not permanent, and by the end of the chapter, everything is back to normal.
  • Expy: Some of Doraemon's gadgets are very similar to gadgets from other series, either in function or in appearance. For example, the What-if? Box is a red telephone booth that can essentially jump dimensions.note 
    • The character designs in the anime and manga shares a template with many of the Fujiko duo's other creations. Take, for example, Kiteretsu Daihyakka. From the character design perspective, they all look almost the same. The only twist here is that Nobita's counterpart in Kiteretsu, Eiichi, is a Child Prodigy while Doraemon's counterpart, Korosuke, is bumbling and incompetent. The other characters are pretty much carbon copies of Gian, Suneo and Shizuka.
  • Elaborate Underground Base: One of Doraemon's gadgets allow to create one of these instantly. It can be big enough to become a city of its own, which Nobita then exploit to create his own dictatorship (Played for Laughs). However, one of the movie deals with the sinister encounter with The Reptilian Conspiracy when Nobita and co Dug Too Deep...
  • Eyelid Pull Taunt: In "Noby, the Great Illusionist", Sneech taunts Noby by doing this when the latter asks for his Cardosaur trading card back.
  • Face on the Cover: The cover for the first manga volume is Doraemon's face.
  • Fairy Tale Motifs: All over the place, Most notably "Doraemon: Nobita's Mermaid Legend" follows the basic plot/theme of "The Little Mermaid" in Sophia's arc to a Happily Ever After.
  • Family Theme Naming: Pretty much all the male Nobis are named after their last name: Nobita, Nobisuke, the other Nobisuke, Nobirou, Nobiru...
  • Fanservice: Shizuka naked in the bath (or in the shower) and her Panty Shot scenes. Downplayed in the remake.
  • Fantastic Firearms: The franchise has more than one futuristic firearm among the various Gadget-of-the-Week.
    • The Air Cannon, one of the series' most recurring gadgets, is a metal tube worn around the user's hands which fires compressed air blasts. It could fire an infinite amount of shots since it uses, well, recycled air, but it's rather weak and lacks range. As it's one of the cheapest gadgets available, the Air Cannon has been around for at least 70% of the movies.
    • Another gadget, the Bullet Liquid, is applied by dripping drops on the users' fingers. After drying, each drop can fire a single knockout round that renders a target unconscious for an hour without any ill effects (since it's a toy used in the future).
  • "Fantastic Voyage" Plot: An episode features the title character and Nobita going inside Shizuka's body to retrieve a diamond she accidentally swallowed.
  • Fartillery: Multiple times.
    • One manga episode deals with Nobita trying to come up with a neat trick for a New Year's talent show. Doraemon gave him a bunch of sweet potatoes that, when eaten, produces melodic 'gas'. Unfortunately, Doraemon forgot to tell him not to eat more than one at a time...
    • Another episode deals with the "Strengthening Gas", a gas that when sprayed on a body part, strengthens said body part. When Gian heard about this, he demanded Nobita spray it all over his body. Unfortunately, after one spray on the butt, the gas ran out. As Giant was about to beat Nobita, he farted and said fart launched him to the sky.
  • Fat Bastard: Gian, who else? He does get some Character Development over the series' run, however, turning into a big guy with a temper, especially in the movies. In some episodes, Bochako counts too.
  • Fear-Induced Idiocy: The titular robot tend to go Rummage Fail on his 4-dimensional Pocket whenever he's panicking when the situation suddenly becomes tense or dangerous.
  • The Federation: The Space/Time Patrol Squad. The Space division generally concerns itself with intergalactic matters in its relative present, while the Time division acts as Time Police.
  • Feud Episode:
    • "Goodbye, Nobita! Doraemon, Goes Back To The Future" has Nobita and Doraemon argue after the former misuses a gadget to hide his test papers which eventually results in Dorameon going back to the future with Sewashi and leaving Dorami to look after Nobita in his stead. They later reunite after Dorami requests Doraemon to help him resolve a fight between Gian and Suneo.
    • "The Conclusion Yarn" has Nobita arguing with Shizuka over a silly reason, after which she refuses to speak to him. The rest of the episode focuses on Nobita using titular gadget from Doraemon to pull Shizuka towards him so that he can apologize.
  • Fictional Holiday: Nobita once uses one gadgets to declare "Do Nothing Day". Hilarity Ensues.
  • Fire-Breathing Diner: Dora-nichov, one of the spin-off characters has the ability to transform into a wolf when he looks at a moon-like object and can breathe fire when eating something spicy.
  • First Contact Faux Pas: In one story where an alien scout ship was sent to earth, the (mini) ship comes across Nobita and Doraemon watching a kind of Super Sentai-like show where they beat up aliens and the aliens in the scout ship concludes that Humans Are Warriors who are too violent for further contact.
  • Fleeting Demographic: Young children, though adults can still get a good laugh out of it.
  • Floating Clocks: Nobita's desk drawer is linked through some kind of hyperspace that, with a special vessel, you can use to travel through time. Said hyperspace has a lot of distorted clocks flying around.
  • Flying on a Cloud: In the episode "My Own Golden Cloud", Doraemon catches a cloud creature for Noby to ride so that he can avoid being late for school. As usual, Noby is still late for school because he didn't have time to practice riding the cloud.
  • Foregone Conclusion: Every single episode concerning Nobita and Dekisugi's rivalry will end up badly for the former.
  • The Foreign Subtitle: The American English dub is titled Doraemon: Gadget Cat from the Future.
  • Forgotten Phlebotinum: One of the most Egregious examples. There are several predicaments that Doraemon and co. face that one of his gadgets that have been mentioned in previous episodes could have easily get them out but for some reason, Doraemon seems to have to use the gadget that was introduced in the episode they were in. One the early gadgets of the week (chapter 54, "Lies Become Truths") was a beak-like toy which one could wear, and anything uttered while using it will be spontaneously proven as fact. Nobita lied that his father can shatter a huge rock with his bare hand, and then he can do it with ease. Quite frankly this should have made any other gadget Doraemon had introduced, or will ever introduce, completely and utterly obsolete. It was never mentioned again ever since. Particularly frustrating in Doraemon feature films and volume-length comics, which featured life-threatening situations.
  • "Freaky Friday" Flip: Played out several times, usually with Nobita trading places with Shizuka. Needless to say, it turns out that Nobi is just as big a loser no matter whose body he's wearing. Worse still, Shizuka decides she actually likes being a boy and refuses to give Nobita his body back. She only relents around bathtime, when she suddenly realizes exactly what Nobi will see whenever "he" removes "her" clothing.
  • Freeze-Frame Ending: "Battle of the Dueling Nobys" ends with a freeze-frame of Doraemon and Noby.
  • Frothy Mugs of Water: Averted. Aside from how several adult characters are depicted drunk and drinking beer, one of the Doraemon's gadgets is basically an instant beer in capsule form, diluted by water.
  • Full-Body Disguise: In "Noby, the Great Illusionist", Noby uses a full-body disguise of Sneech's mom to retrieve his rare Cardosaur trading card from Sneech. He does the same thing to retrieve his Beast Mask comic from Big G by disguising himself as Big G's sister, but Big G doesn't fall for it and Noby runs away in panic.
  • Furo Scene: Shizuka spends much of her free time bathing. And almost every time she gets in the bath, Nobita (sometimes Doraemon, Gian or Suneo) ends up accidentally walking in thanks to Doraemon's gadgets.
  • Generation Xerox: Every single one of Nobita's ancestors (including his father) is a loser with no backbone who is constantly bullied by Gians and Suneos. This gets swapped with Nobisuke (Nobita's son), though, as he is the one who bullies Gian and Suneo's sons. Also, it seems that they all have Nobi somewhere in their names.
  • Gilligan Cut: Inverted. In one of Disney Channel India's English-dubbed episodes, "Welcome to the Haunted Inn", the Hazy Inn's owner gladly says he'll do his best to prepare food for his guests. Cut to the next scene, he informs Nobita, Doraemon, and Shizuka that he only has enough food for them and it would take a long time to be able to feed everyone in the inn.
  • Girl Next Door: Shizuka, to all three boys — but especially to Nobita.
  • The Glasses Gotta Go:
    • Nobita eventually has eye surgery and fixes his eyesight. In 1979 anime, however, he gets to keep his glass.
    • 2005's anime show that in the young days Nobita's mom looks very good when removing her glasses.
  • Gonk: Suneo and Gian, while not absurdly ugly, are certainly not handsome. Their designs are substantially different from the designs of the other main and background characters, and other characters have often described them as being quite ugly. However, due to the art style of the show, they don't really look all that ugly and may even be cute to some.
  • Gratuitous English:
    • The Hindi dub uses little bits of English in many of its episode titles.
    • The Japanese song "Happy ☆ Lucky Birthday!" has the English lyrics of "Happy Birthday to You".
  • Gratuitous German: In the manga Moving to a Haunted Castle, Doraemon and Nobita visit Germany to buy a cheap medieval castle. Once they manage to find the owner, Doraemon and her initially speak only in German. Their dialogue only becomes translated once Nobita uses the Translation Tool.
  • Gratuitous Spanish: In the American English-dubbed episode "Rub-a-Dub-Dub, See the World from a Tub!", when Sue is sent to Spain in the Bathmobile, Noby says "Off to Spain!", and Doraemon replies with "Vaminos!" (Spanish for "Let's go!").
  • Green Aesop: Many of Doraemon's stories revolve around how humanity should take care of its home planet carefully and learn how to not to spoil and damage the environment if humanity doesn't want to be put into a situation where their survival is threatened. In fact, many of the villains in Doraemon's theatrical movies have a recurring motive to destroy the natural environment for their own nefarious purposes, which prompts our heroes to defend nature at all costs.
  • Hammerspace: Doraemon's pocket holds a ludicrous amount of gadgets, several of which (such as the Anywhere Door) is much bigger than even Doraemon himself.
  • Happy Birthday to You!: "Happy ☆ Lucky Birthday!" starts out as a standard version of "Happy Birthday to You" before it turns into its own unique song.
  • Hard Truth Aesop: One manga story involves Gian trying to be a nicer person after Doraemon points out that his bullying scares away his friends. Soon after Gian's Heel–Face Turn, all the other kids take revenge by breaking his stuff and picking on him since he won't beat them up now. In the end, it drives him to go back to his old ways. The message we get is "Even if you change yourself for the better, people won't just forget the trouble you've caused them in the past, so you shouldn't expect to be Easily Forgiven."
  • Henohenomoheji: Pretty much anytime Nobita is asked to sketch someone, this would be the end result to rub it in that Nobita does not have artistic skills.
  • Hit Flash: Two appear in "Action Quiz" both times Big G hits Noby.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Nobita's attempts to solve his problems with the help of Doraemon's gadgets pretty much always end up making things worse.
  • Hollywood Tone-Deaf: A recurring gag is that Gian/Big G is a terrible singer. One time he was on TV, his singing voice was so bad that it actually hospitalized several people. Doraemon and Nobita are also portrayed as bad singers In-Universe. This is usually ignored for soundtrack-quality releases of Do It Yourself Theme Tunes and Image Songs, even for Gian.
  • Human Cannonball: One gadget, the Youzooka, is a big gun that can be used to shoot people into the air.
  • Hypno Pendulum: One of Doraemon's gadgets, as shown in "Doraemon's Time Capsule", is a wand that acts as a hypnotic pendulum that can hypnotize even artificial intelligence such as robots.
  • Hypnotism Reversal: Doraemon had a gadget called the "Hypnosis Bank", a money box which hypnotizes anyone that attempts to steal from it making them pass out. Nobita managed to bypass the gadget using a mirror, causing the bank to knock itself unconscious instead.
  • Hypocritical Heartwarming: One episode is about Doraemon taking a day off, hoping Nobita would be able to take care of himself without him. Unsurprisingly, Gian and Suneo tell Nobita that he can't do anything without Doraemon, and deliberately mess with him to get him in trouble. However, after seeing Nobita being picked on by two older thugs who were ready to beat him up, they decide it's too much and try to defend him, telling the thugs to leave their friend alone.

    I-L 
  • I Am Not Weasel: A running gag: when someone first meets Doraemon, they think he's a tanuki. This makes Doraemon really mad since he's a robotic cat without ears.
  • I Heard That: In "Action Quiz", Big G says that the Action Quizzer's problems are hard enough that only a really smart person would be able to answer them correctly. Noby comments he wanted to choose Ace as his helper because of this and Big G yells "HEARD THAT!" and hits Noby.
  • Iconic Outfit: A yellow shirt and black shorts for Nobita, a pink dress for Shizuka, and an orange shirt with the letter "G" on it for Giant. As a whole, the series typically averts the Limited Wardrobe trope though (without going into Unlimited Wardrobe territory).
  • Idiot Ball: Many characters hold it, in order to make the repetitive plotlines work.
    • Nobita is the biggest offender, combined with endless Aesop Amnesia. In every episode, he makes the same mistakes that always end up blowing up in his face, over and over again.
    • Gian and Suneo are a close second. Every time Nobita shows a surprising talent/ability/power that he didn't have before, they are shocked. This, despite that fact that they know everything about Doraemon's reality-warping gadgets and they also know Nobita uses these gadgets all the time. Yet Nobita manages to fool them for a good part of the episode and only towards the end, they come to realize that maybe this has something to do with Doraemon's gadgets.
    • Not even Dekisugi is immune to this. In his A Day in the Limelight "It's Solved! The Dekisugi Case", he keeps being harassed by anonymous phone calls for entire nights (he has a phone in his bedroom), to the point that he has a hard time sleeping and concentrating at school. This is a rare episode where we see Dekisugi struggling and needing Doraemon's help... Except that the solution to his problem was actually very easy: unplug/turn off the phone every night before going to sleep.
  • Identical Grandson: Taken to ridiculous extremes. All of the main cast has almost-look-exactly-the-same parents, siblings, relatives, ancestors and descendants.
  • Improvised Imprisonment: In Nobita and the Steel Troops, Riruru had a Heel–Face Turn halfway into the film after realizing humans are capable of love and care, and decided toturn herself in to self-confinement as punishment for being a robot spy. But having became close friends with Doraemon and gang, understandably none of them wants to inflict any sort of punishment for Riruru, so instead Doraemon uses his Shrink Ray to reduce Riruru's size to a doll and keep her in Shizuka's birdcage as an impromptu prison.
  • In Space, Everyone Can See Your Face: In "Experimental Dream Schemes", during his science fiction dream, Noby's face is clearly visible through his space helmet.
  • Inconsistent Dub: The English comic and show aren't consistent with each other's titles. An example would be 'Big G's Special Stew' in the comic and "Big G: Master Chef" in the show.
  • In Spite of a Nail: Nobita's still going to have the same great-great-grandson even though he's marrying someone else. The Doraemon Fukayomi Guide compiled under the supervision of Fujiko Pro explains this by suggesting that in the timeline where Nobita married Shizuka, Nobita's son Nobisuke married one of Jaiko's daughters and thus Sewashi still inherited Jaiko's genes as a result. Notice they said in the very first manga chapter that even if Nobita changes his wife, Sewashi will still be born and it is just like getting to the destination by a different method of travel.
  • Incredible Shrinking Man: Doraemon has various gadgets with this effect like the "Small Light", a flashlight that can shrink objects and people to minuscule sizes. Another tool that is used in a similar capacity is the "Gulliver Tunnel", which causes a person to grow or shrink depending on which entrance they take; however, its ratio of shrinking and enlarging is fixed.
  • Ingesting Knowledge: In one chapter, Nobita eats a special kind of bread that lets him remember anything printed on it...until he poops it back out...
  • Instant Bandages: Several times. For example, in "The Action Planner", Doraemon suddenly gets bandages on his head after the Action Planner attacks him while trying to get him to stick to Noby's schedule.
  • Instrumental Theme Tune: The early episodes of the 2005 series use an instrumental version of "Doraemon no Uta" as the opening.
  • Interspecies Romance: In the 25th movie Doraemon has his love interest Sharmee. Sure they're both cats, but let's not forget Doraemon is also a robot. So this is technically played straight.
    • Doraemon has a neighbor cat named Michan as his girlfriend during the normal time.
    • Previously, Mii chan was a toy cat. Although mechanical at that, so not too much of an example if you think about it. Ended with the Unsettling Gender-Reveal.
    • Also in The Doraemons Special series, in a few story arcs, being robot cats doesn't stop the Doraemons from getting human love interests. Examples are:
      • Dorarinho had Uno during the Dinosauroid arc and in a limelight chapter of his, he had Izami who even turned out to be a guy no less.
      • Doramed fell in love with Queen Supika of the Kouzai Kingdom that results in a very sad scenario.
      • Also, Matadora had Iris during the Medusa arc and also Ship Tease with Carmen, his boss's daughter.
      • Doranichov fell in love with an ill girl named Mari who wanted to watch Milky Way as her last wish before she die, the Little Mermaid Princess which he chose to give her happy ever after with the prince, and his current girlfriend is Nina, a songstress.
  • Introductory Opening Credits: The opening of the 2005 anime has many variations, one of them being the five main characters introduced with their names in the background in big roman letters.
  • Invisibility Cloak: Some of Doraemon's gadgets are capable of invisibility. Fujiko F. Fujio was mindful of why true invisibility and vision didn't mix, and so the ones that can be applied to humans mostly work on perception filters. For example, the 'Blind Spot Star', which makes the image of the one who wears it always fall on the others' blind spot, and the 'Pebble Cap', which makes the one who wears it as unnoticeable as a pebble at the side of the road.
  • It Tastes Like Feet: In the American English version of "Big G: Master Chef", Sneech mentions that Big G's food tastes like feet as he is eating it.
  • Jacob Marley Warning: It's Doraemon's raison d'etre to stop Nobita from becoming a Future Loser, but occasionally, Future Nobita himself appears to whip his younger self into studying diligently. These are some of the most unsettling episodes since Future Nobita knows his past-self's tricks and possess Doraemon's future gadgets.
  • Jerkass: Some adult characters are downright assholes. For example, when Nobita comes across a box full of abandoned kittens, a mean-looking man nearby accuses Nobita of bringing the little ones there, then chases the boy and forces him to bring the box away.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Nobita (defaults to selfish and lazy), Gian (defaults to mean and bullying) and Suneo (condescending and a liar) can definitely come across as jerks, but in the end, they're still good-hearted kids who are capable of caring about others, which is much more profound in the movies.
  • Karma Houdini:
    • One episode has Nobita using Microphone Interviewer Gadget to find out about a relationship between two actors which cause mayhem but ultimately brought the two of them closer and avoided a scold from Doraemon because of this.
    • Most of the time Gian bullies Nobita and gets away with it. Even if Nobita temporarily gets back at him with Doraemon's gadgets, he (and Suneo) will still be back on top by the end of the episode. He also steals and breaks Suneo's toys and gets away with it because Suneo is terrified of him.
    • Again in "Victory Cheerleader Pompom". Nobita uses the gadget on Tamako to avoid the scold from Nobisuke. The gadget allows the user to win anything with the cheer from the wearer that is female.
    • Believe it or not... there is an item from the future that creates Karma Houdinis called "Passport of Satan". Nobita would do something horrible and if it flashes it to the nearest person he gets away with it. Subverted as eventually, Nobita does feel guilt for all the bad things he got away with and the guilt makes him make amends for it.
  • Karma Houdini Warranty: Mrs Goda is pretty much humanized of this trope for Gian.
  • Kid Detective: At least one episode has Nobita becoming Sherlock Nobita and using the Sherlock Holmes Kit to solve a mystery.
  • The Kiddie Ride: Unavoidable. All made by Namco Bandai under the Banpresto brand, there's a Doraemon time machine ride with an interactive screen and buttons (actually, there are two versions of the time machine ride- the one with the interactive screen mentioned, and an older, smaller version of the ride that lacks the screen), a Giant Doraemon that fits two kids and move in a spinning motion (also having an interactive screen and buttons), a Doraemon pirate ship (again, with an interactive screen and buttons), one with Doraemon sitting on a cloud with the rider, and a fire engine with Doraemon on it. Again, sadly, officially they're No Export for You and can only be found in Japan, although like other Japanese arcade machines they've been unofficially exported to other Asian countries via grey-market imports. Aside from that, however, there are also dozens of Chinese-made unlicensed knockoffs which are sadly, much more prevalent.
  • Kissed Keepsake: In "The Connection Cap", Noby uses the Connection Cap to meet the celebrity actress Serra Ivy. She holds Noby's hands, and he is very flattered and exclaims that he'll never wash his hands again. Serra comments that doing that would be very unsanitary.
  • Landing in Someone's Bathtub: A Running Gag is that Shizuka never gets a bath without Nobita, Doraemon, Gian or Suneo accidentally entering with the Everywhere Door or other like gadgets.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: Pretty much every episode that Nobita misuses Doraemon's gadgets.
  • Last One's Ploy: Nobita tries to invoke this by using a gadget to turn himself into an endangered species so that he will be protected by everyone instead of being scolded and bullied as usual. However, this backfires spectacularly that not only he is now protected as he wished, his house has also been modified into a zoo-like structure where everyone can enter to see his 'ecology', and he himself is later brought to a lab for study. While no such thing as cutting him up occurs, the experience is still unpleasant for Nobita as he is treated like a Chimpanzee, complete with a fruit-only diet and a playroom that consists of only a tire swing.
  • Late for School: Nobita, frequently. Some episodes have him finding a way to avert this with varying degrees of success.
  • Latex Perfection: In "Noby, the Great Illusionist", Noby uses a Full-Body Disguise of Sneech's mother to retrieve his rare Cardosaurus card from Sneech, and later uses a similar disguise of Big G's sister to retrieve his Beast Mask comic from Big G. Both times, he uses latex masks of whoever he is disguised as that fit perfectly over his head.
  • LEGO Body Parts: Several gadgets have resulted in characters' heads being swapped with each other, such as the Switcherator from the episode "Invasion of the Body Swappers!".
  • Lethal Chef:
    • Gian's cooking is just as bad as his singing. Or maybe worse. The most common result is food-poisoning. He even accidentally poisoned himself in one episode, much to the relief of his friends.
    • Annie, the daughter of the sheriff of the planet where Dora the Kid protected is also one. In her case it's lethal Food Porn.
    • Nobita himself as well, as illustrated in the "Home-Ec Apron" episode when he and Dekisugi compete in a fried-rice cook-off. Nobita had been using one of Doraemon's gadgets to make himself an ace at housework (including cooking), but the gadget short-circuits and Nobita's true culinary ineptitude is exposed. Nevertheless, Shizuka, realizing how hard Nobita worked on it, manages to get it all down.
  • Letterbox: Inverted. When some classic episodes air on Boing, they are zoomed in and the top and bottom are cropped off to make the show match a 16:9 TV screen.
  • Licensed Game: Unavoidable, but some were surprisingly good.
  • Lighter and Softer:
    • Almost all of the Big Damn Movie and video games, no matter how dark it is, portrays the kids as True Companions with little to none of the Jerkass attitude exhibited in the regular show or manga. And the movies usually have a Happy Ending instead of the sometimes Downer Ending of the regular episodes.
    • Later volumes of The Doraemons manga are also this and also Denser and Wackier compared to the earlier ones, focusing more on wacky future school hijinks instead of battles against sinister villains.
  • List Song: The song "The ABC’s of Class-F" includes a list of Fujiko Fujio characters and their abilities:
    He's here! He's here! From the sky comes Perman!
    No way, telekinesis?! Esper Mami!
    Inventing smiles, It's Kiteretsu and Korosuke!
  • Literal Genie:
    • In one of the chapters of the manga, Doraemon introduces a robot that tests the purity of the heart of a person and grants the person 3 wishes if they're worthy. Gian and Suneo find out when the robot grants Shizuka three wishes and arranges to trick the robot into thinking them worthy. Greed then overcomes the boys and both use their final wishes to turn each other into anthropomorphic pigs during a heated argument.
    • The Anywhere Door can be a bit of this when requesting locations (for example, "I want to go camping somewhere high" will result in you stepping out into the air).
    • Several other tools are similar, including one that "makes the listener believe anything".
  • Living Toys: A lot of Doraemon's gadgets can bring toys to life, in various ways. The most famous one is probably the wind-up key that serves as the focus for one movie, that permanently gives life to any object shaped like a living creature that has the key placed on its back and turned. The heroes use it to populate a planet with various adorable living dolls, but one monkey doll steals it and brings to life a biology lab skeleton, a "peeing boy" fountain, and a panda mascot. All three of them use their unique skills/appearances to help defeat the villains in the climax.
  • The Lonely Door: The "Anywhere Door" is a pink free-standing door, which can bring you to any location you tell it, as long as you made sure you worded your request carefully.
  • Loud of War: Gian's singing is so bad, everyone's scared of it. Suneo even posits that his singing can be weaponized. This is particularly how Gian wards off sirens and makes the Sea Monster faint in the original Doraemon: Nobita's Great Adventure into the Underworld manga and movie.

    M-P 
  • Magic from Technology: The Anywhere door, the What-if? Box, etc.
  • Magic Skirt: Shizuka in the 2000s remake series to tone down the fanservice.
  • Makesome Noise: In one chapter, the device of the day is a potion that "solidifies" one's voice. When Nobita shouts "Aaah", the letters AAA (in Japanese) flies out of his mouth. He has used it to shout at Giant and Suneo, knocking them out, as well as shouting towards walls to make the solid voice bounce off towards himself, giving him the ability to fly.
  • Male Frontal Nudity: All three lead boys. It's natural for boys of their age though, and not sexualized in any way. In the 2005 remake, this is mostly averted, as any frontal nudity is always covered, either by a Scenery Censor or them covering up with anything they can find
  • Marilyn Maneuver: Several times to Shizuka with natural wind or often caused by Doraemon's gadget.
  • Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: There is a gadget called "Boygirl" that cause this effect. It is a spray which has the ability to make boys girlish and girls boyish.
  • Massive Multiplayer Crossover:
    • This commercial for Fujiko Fujio Land has characters from many Fujiko series, including Doraemon.
    • Characters from numerous Fujiko Fujio works appear together in the Doraemon song "The ABC’s of Class-F".
  • Meaningful Name:
    • Nobita's name means "to grow up and be strong". His Chinese name uses the kanji for "big hero"
    • Shizuka's name means "quiet, silent". Her parents want to grow up and be a kind and caring girl.
    • Gian's name comes from "Giant", he's the largest of the main cast. His real name "Takeshi" means "warrior".
    • Suneo's name contains the kanji of "lord". His Chinese name uses the kanji for "little lord".
    • Dekisugi's name means "overachiever". His English name is Ace Goody.
    • Wangdora's name contains the kanji for "king". He's The Ace of Doraemons.
  • Mind-Control Device: Several gadgets of Doraemon have this power, each one operating differently.
  • Missing Mom: In the 1973 anime. Gian's mom is dead even though in the manga and the later anime series, his mom is still alive.
  • "Mission: Impossible" Cable Drop: In "Noby, the Great Illusionist", to retrieve his Beast Mask comic from Big G, Noby has Doraemon hold him by his cape when they use the Pass Loop on the roof of Big G's house so that he can dodge some bells attached to strings set up by Big G.
  • Mistaken for Apocalypse: Happen in a rather long story. In short, Nobita found that in the near future there is no one in the neighborhood and several ant-like aliens roam it. Thriller adventure ensued, but after everything is done (by sheer dumb luck!), it turns out that everyone is just watching a movie shooting session featuring a famous actress somewhere else.
  • Modesty Towel: Shizuka sometimes after her usual bath. One occasion also has the towel fall down while she is on the phone with Nobita and Doraemon (that has added a video option to phone).
  • Monster Roommate: Doraemon sleeps in Nobita's closet.
  • Multi-Part Episode: Several episodes are this.
  • Mundane Made Awesome: Some gadgets, like the Dramatic Gas, Exaggerating Sweater, Pretend Space Adventure Helmet, Rocket Pilot Training Machine, and Captain Hat, make the user view everyday settings and events as part of a dramatic adventure.
  • Naked People Are Funny: All nudity of the boys and Shizuka's constant bath scenes... technically not Fanservice (most of the time), instead they're Played for Laughs.
  • Name and Name:
    • Used for the dub Albert and Sydney.
    • Used for 21 Emon & Doraemon: Welcome to Hotel Tsunesha.
  • Negative Continuity: The comics rarely bother to keep track of what sort of gadgets Doraemon has pulled out of his Fourth Dimensional Pocket (except for the most popular recurring ones), just how good friends Nobita is with everyone, or how good Nobita's grades are (they're pretty much almost always abysmal, bar the once-in-a-blue-moon anomaly).
    • That being said, this trope has been averted on multiple occasions, especially during the long stories. Doraemon: Nobita's Dinosaur is the most notable example of this, as it's a direct sequel to one of the old manga short stories (specifically Chapter 186 Nobita's Dinosaur). Doraemon: Nobita and the Kingdom of Clouds's ending is a giant Call-Back to the good deeds that the gang has done, as it features several returning one-shot characters, including Kibo the tree man, the Lilliputian village and two extinct birds that Doraemon resurrected. There are often Call-backs within the short stories themselves as well, such as the Invisibility Eye Drops being used in its debut story and later becoming a major plot point in Invisible Eye Dropsnote , or the character Sumire Hoshino still remembering Nobita from their first encounter in The Almighty Pass when they meet again during What a Scoop! Nobita and the Secret Date. Even the once-in-a-blue-moon grade anomaly mentioned above (which happens in chapter 460, volume 25 of the Manga) actually gets a Call-Back in a later story (chapter 487, Volume 26) where Future Nobita has to use it to lie to his son that he was a good student at his age.
  • Never Say "Die": The U.S. English dub of the "Tanabata Shooting Star" episode (aka "Doraemon and the Space Shooters") wallpapers over the fact that Nobita believes Doraemon is dead after the episode's climactic space battle. His line in the dub, "Help me find Doraemon," would suggest that he believes Doraemon is still alive out there somewhere and waiting to be rescued.
  • Nice Guy: Dekisugi, undoubtedly. Shizuka and Dorami are female examples. Doraemon himself is a more flawed and realistic example: he's generally nice and righteous but has plenty of Not So Above It All and Jerkass Ball moments.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The show have a lot of examples throughout the run.
  • Nipple and Dimed: A couple of episodes in the 80's series show Shizuka taking a bath naked with no use of Barbie Doll Anatomy. There's absolutely nothing else sexual about the scenes (starting with the fact that Shizuka is an elementary schooler), but regardless, the remake series added in Censor Steam.
  • No Hugging, No Kissing: Averted, even if you cut out the comedic one there are still Theo kissing Kuku in Legend of Sun King and Nobita (as Antonius) kissing Cleopatra.
  • No Mouth: One of the story features little build-it-yourself robots that take on the personality of whoever you mean to make them look like. Their heads do not have mouths, which causes problems for the mini-Doraemon when he tries to eat a dorayaki/yummy bun.
  • No New Fashions in the Future: Averted. Early on future fashions apparently looking like mimes or clowns, but later on as it become standard in Nobita's adult era well to the Doraemon's era, it resembles Federation crew uniform from either Star Trek or Mobile Suit Gundam.
  • No Plot? No Problem!: The Janken video game doesn't really have a plot. It's just a game where you play Rock–Paper–Scissors with Doraemon.
  • Nostalgia Filter: Considering Nobita has a time machine in his desk, this gets occasionally brought up. Once, he reminisced on how much he missed the fun childhood playtimes with his now-deceased grandmother, and travelled back in time to see her again. Turns out he was quite a brat as a kid and frequently threw tantrums at the poor lady.
  • Not Allowed to Grow Up: All the main cast (despite some episodes show them grown-up in the future).
  • Not His Sled: Happens very often if older stories were remade. For example the manga and an early adaptation of a story involving Nobita inadvertently creating a rogue psychic kid ended with the time rewound by Doraemon. Later adaptation has the psychic kid stopped Doraemon from rewinding time, and instead ends with Nobita and Doraemon making amends with the psychic kid, who went on a journey to find people with his kind of powers.
  • Oblivious Adoption: Inverted. In "Noby's Birthday", Noby thinks he's adopted and that Tammy and Toby just found him. It's obvious that Tammy and Toby are his true parents, but Noby doesn't believe this due to how his parents treat him. In the end, he realizes that Tammy and Toby are his true parents.
  • Ocular Gushers: Nobita's kind of a crybaby, so when he sheds tears, they result in this trope.
  • Only Six Faces: The kids and the adults can be seen as if they share a similar size, form of heads, and even eyes. This is most noticeable when you look up at crossover pics from Fujiko F. Fujio's works, and then you look at the girls.
  • Opening Narration: The Disney XD opening has Doraemon explain that he helps Noby with his gadgets, but something always goes wrong.
  • Our Demons Are Different: Even demons are real in one of the Alternate Universe, they are in fact aliens living in a nightmarish planet surrounded by black flame attempting to invade Earth hundreds of years ago. Bizarre Alien Biology is in full effect that their leader is much larger in size and has his heart detached from his body.
  • Our Dragons Are Different: Dragon from Doraemon: Nobita's Three Visionary Swordsmen is generally True Neutral, he only turns people into stones for self-defence, as it is implied that everyone wants to kill him and bath in his blood for immortality. Luckily for the heroes, while not as powerful, his sweat can still grant someone an extra life. The dragon apparently can also release his sweat at will and falls asleep when his barbel is cut.
  • Papa Wolf:
    • Gian is very protective of his little sister. If you even think about messing up with Jaiko, you're dead!
    • Doraemon is shown to be this to Nobita in early stories. However, as time went on, the robot got increasingly more annoyed with Nobita's tendency to depend too much on his tools. This results in him becoming more apathetic to Nobita and only helping him when it is really necessary.
    • Nobita can act like this towards the young creatures he "adopts."
  • Paper-Thin Disguise: One of Doraemon's gadget takes this to the extreme. It's literally just a board that you write someone's name on. Then you hang the board around your neck and anyone who sees it thinks you're the name you wrote. You can even write something generic like "servant" and have it work.
  • Parental Bonus: Let's just say that 40 years later, a lot of Japanese authors and artists have thought up more risqué uses for the tools in Doraemon or other similar gadgets. In fact, the Magical Girlfriend subgenre could have taken its roots from the idea of Doraemon, a non-human being with special powers suddenly showing up and shaking up some loser kid's life, and spinning it in a different light.
  • Periphery Demographic: In "Defender of Justice: Masked Me!", Noby is a fan of the superhero Masked Me, despite being too old for it. invoked
  • Phlebotinum Breakdown: Doraemon's gadgets always have some sort of weakness that causes them to never work as planned.
  • Planimal: The Skyhorse from the episode "The Skyhorse" is a cross between a horse and a bamboo plant.
  • Playboy Bunny:
  • Playing God: A lot of chapters involve Doraemon giving life to inanimate objects, usually with the intention of it just being temporary. The moral quandary of whether or not it's okay to give and take away life at a whim is never really explored. This can be a bit jarring, especially when it involves robots, which Doraemon is himself. This also extends to Doraemon creating entirely new universes with the What-If Box, but at least Doraemon says that the new universes continue to live on so at least they're not killing billions of people when it's time to go home.
  • Pom-Pom Girl: Thanks to the Cheerleader Gloves, a gadget based on the general cheerleader's "pom-poms". It is used for force a person to cheering on an another person. Often used with Shizuka.
  • Potty Emergency: This happens a lot to Nobita in the show.
    • The episode "Malicious of the Demon" has this trope as a major plot point.
    • In "Amaze-ing Maze" note , Nobita has one. It is implied that he wet himself.
    • In "The Flag of Prohibition", the titular flag is placed in the bathroom just as Nobita needs to pee.
    • Suneo has to go in “The Forgetting Flower”. While rushing to get home, he trips and falls on the flower, resulting in him forgetting about his need, at least until he’s spooked by an angry Gian and Shizuka arriving… See below for what happens then.
  • Potty Failure: Like the above trope, this often happens on the show to Nobita.
    • Gian wets himself after hearing about his friend's secret in "The Insect of Ignorance".
    • In the episode "The Grass Of Forgetfulness", Suneo wets himself at the park, after an accidental sniff of the titular gadget made him forget he had to go. Gian and Shizuka arriving there, angry at the stunts he pulled earlier via the flower, probably didn’t help.
    • The Disney XD dub, rather than excising scenes of such, altered the context. The puddle that resulted from Nobita wetting himself in one episode was rewritten as him spilling a cup of tea, and in the "voodoo doll" episode when Suneo and Gian are beset with "continuous potty failure" as a result of Nobita holding their voodoo dolls under a running faucet, the scene was altered to make it appear as though the boys were being soaked from above.
  • Power Perversion Potential: There are several gadgets (dogu) with this potential (from stop time to turn invisible). The major example has a Running Gag involving an "Anywhere Door", which lets a person travel anywhere. There are many times Nobita, Doraemon, Gian or Suneo uses it to get to a random place, only to land themselves in Shizuka's bathroom.
    • Some chapters have Doramen too negative-minded about Nobita using his gadget for perverted things like peek under Shizuka's skirt or while she bath. However, Nobita has NO intention of doing it.
    • One episode and chapter had the "XYZ Camera", an X-Ray camera. Guess what happens when a person's picture is taken with that camera?
    • The movie "Nobita's Great Adventure into the Underworld" (both the original version and the remake) has a Running Gag with Nobita using magic power to lift something. But he ended up lifting Shizuka's skirt every times.
  • Prince and Pauper: More like prince and commoner with Theo and Nobita.
  • Product Placement: Some episodes include product placement for CoroCoro Comic, the magazine that serializes the Doraemon comic.
  • Prophecy Twist: In the first chapter, Doraemon proves he's from the future by predicting that Nobita will hang himself in 30 minutes and then be burned alive ten minutes later. Nobita scoffs, but then thirty minutes later, he slips while getting a shuttlecock off the roof and his shirt collar gets caught on a tree branch, making another character joke that he hung himself. Ten minutes later, he falls into a full bathtub and dries himself out in front of a space heater. The phrase "to burn alive" in Japanese is similar to "to warm in front of a fire."
  • Professional Butt-Kisser: Suneo, mostly in relationship with Gian. Backfired when Gian manage to obtain "Mind-reading Helmet" from Nobita.
  • Pun-Based Title: "Fossil Fools" is a pun on "fossil fuels". It's about Doraemon and Noby fooling people with fake fossils.
    • Applies with some of Doraemon's gadgets in the English dub, including the U.F. Yo!, which summons space aliens.
  • Put on a Bus: Dorami counts in the US English dub, as despite being Doraemon's sister and a major supporting character in the franchise, she appeared in exactly one episode of the dub.

    R-V 
  • Randomized Transformation: The "Wordplay Transformation Capsules" allows users to turn into the first object they see, and into assorted stuff via wordplay in which the first letter of the new object must start with the last letter of the previous one. Nobita tries using this gadget to impress Shizuka, but being The Ditz Nobita accidentally turns himself into assorted random stuff including turnips, a katana, an onion, a piece of dried squid, a handbag, a pegasus and finally a T-Rex in the final page.
    Nobita: Help, I'm stuck, I can't turn back to myself!
  • Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: In the episode "Escape from Score Zero", to teach Noby a lesson after he tries to time-travel to the future to take a sneak peek at his friends' finished school tests so that he'll know all the questions and answers, future Noby brings out the Fists of Force boxing gloves and delivers a rapid succession of punches to his present-day self.
  • Reaching Between the Lines: One of devices Doraemon pulls out is a tool that allows you to reach out over the phone. It leads to disastrous results, as you'd expect with Nobita accidentally ripping Shizuka's skirt from her. Twice!.
  • Reality Warper: Doraemon, with his gadgets, can warp reality to its full extent. Check out the "What If" phone booth. It's able to create a whole new world based on the wish.
  • Recursive Canon: In the museum, Doraemon reads his own book.
  • Red Ones Go Faster: Doraemon has a gadget called "Feeling Cologne" that consists of two colognes, one that makes you go faster when you spray it on you and one that makes you go slower. The fast one has a red label, while the slow one has a blue label.
  • Reflective Eyes: In episode 2a of the 2005 series, Doraemon calls out Nobita for not doing his homework and gets a close-up where Nobita is reflected on both his eyes.
  • The Remake: For newer audiences and to keep the series alive - with Art Evolution (and, unfortunately, more censorship). It's gotten to the point where there have been remakes of remakes, with some stories having been remade at least once for both the 1979 anime series and the 2005 series. A few in either series have even been remade more than once. The result is that some manga chapters have no fewer than four anime adaptations, and that's not counting the 1973 series or any specials and movies they might have inspired.
  • Reptilian Conspiracy: One of the movies deal with Lizard Folk whose civilization thrives Beneath the Earth and erase the memories of those who discover them, and are planning to alter history so it's them and not the humans who flourish above ground. The finale of the movie has them agree to stay under the earth because Doraemon's future gadgets saved their ancestors from extinction.
  • Retcon: How the Fujiko duo made Doraemon come back in volume 7 of the manga: They revealed, via flashback, Doraemon giving Nobita a "desperation box" that will produce one and only one gadget that he will need at that time before he left. Nobita naturally gets a device that he would inevitably use to bring Doraemon back (albeit by mistake) at the end of the story.
  • Ridiculous Future Inflation:
    • One of Doraemon's Gadgets of the Week is a machine that allows the user to buy things from different time periods (with that period's respective price), by choosing a date and object and inserting the corresponding amount of cash in the machine. Nobita manages to make a profit by buying things cheaply from the past and selling them in the present at an increased price. Unfortunately, he decides to celebrate by ordering a bag of candy from the future...
    • Another time he used time travel to invest his parent's "secret" money stash, collecting a fantastic amount of interest in the far future... except the stack of bills he gets is in the future currency, so Doraemon has to find a collector to exchange it for modern bills. The result is that he only gets a modest increase (but enough for Nobita to get a bump in his allowance).
  • Ridiculously Cute Critter: Doraemon himself, of course.
  • Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Averted. Everyone, not just Nobita and Doraemon who has any relation to the Time Travel will remember the events, although this rarely happened or even mentioned. The most notable and recurring example is Nobita's grandmother who remembered everything about Nobita's multiple visits to the past.
  • Robot Buddy: The Japanese Trope Codifier.
  • Robo Romance: A few instances, such as Dorami and Dora The Kid.
  • Rock–Paper–Scissors: One song is about rock–paper–scissors and the various moves that can be made.
  • Rod-and-Reel Repurposed: One episode has a random schoolboy admit he once used one to lift Shizuka's skirt.
  • Running Gag: Lots due to the series' long-running status. The most well known is Shizuka's inability to have any privacy in the tub, but there are others.
    • In the manga, Nobita used the Anywhere Door to go to Shizuka's house and once again found her in the tub. Instead of Shizuka getting outraged, as usual, Nobita got annoyed and lampshaded why Shizuka always has to take a bath all the time.
    • Nobita constantly trying to hide the school reports from his mom, with predictable results.
    • Gian getting beaten up by his mother.
    • Suneo being extremely sensitive about his height.
  • San Dimas Time: while never explicitly mentioned, some of the episodes with Time Travelling tend to use this which often leads to some Fridge Logic moments.
  • Sarcasm-Blind: Nobita. One episode has Suneo sarcastically suggesting Nobita to swallow some of the dirt under Dekisugi's fingernails to get smarter, as Nobita once again gets another zero. Nobita actually asks Dekisugi for his fingernail dirt afterwards. Though it may be instead of being Sarcasm-Blind, Nobita feels there's hardly any way he can get smarter, he tries desperately with even the most improbable way, which ironically makes him look even stupider.
  • Scene Cover: Some chapters/volumes have covers taken from panels in the comics.
  • Scenery Censor: In "Transformade", Noby transforms out of his alligator form after he realizes he may be taking his animal transformations a bit far. He then remembers his clothes came off when he transformed, and his body is covered by various nearby objects, such as the grass and a police car.
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Suneo's father has high-powered connections that allow his son to meet celebrities, get early unpublished comic books, etc. He always brags about it.
    • Averted when Gian asked Suneo to use his said connections to let him perform on TV.
  • Series Fauxnale: The end of Book 6 has a story where Doraemon have to go home. To prove that Nobita can stand by himself, he decided, no matter how bad it is, to fight Gian. He succeeded to make Gian running away in shame, while Nobita had to be carried home. The story ends rather tearjerkingly as the drawer Time Machine turns into a regular drawer... But then, the next volume has it that Doraemon left a box-shaped like himself, containing a drink called "Lies 800" in which anything spoken is a lie. After getting lied to badly by Gian and Suneo, Nobita exacts his revenge to Gian and Suneo, and after that, Nobita spoke that Doraemon did not exist. Thanks to the effect of "Lies 800", Doraemon actually returned, and Nobita tearfully hugs Doraemon while proclaiming "I am so unhappy that you won't be at my side forever!" The whole story was made because, during the magazine era, Doraemon's popularity was thought to have waned that until positive feedback shows that the readers really missed Doraemon. This story was adapted into the "Stand By Me" CGI movie as the last segment.
  • Series Goal: The entire goal of the series is to get Noby to grow up to live a happy life.
  • Series Mascot: Aside from an original dragon creature, Doraemon serves as the mascot for CoroCoro Comic.
  • Serious Business: Parodied in a chapter when Nobita changed reality so that string figures became the Serious Business of the world. There are even worldwide tournaments on who can make the best string figures, which is more popular than any sport. Of course, since Doraemon has no fingers, he doesn't enjoy it.
  • Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Doraemon's purpose for coming to the present time is to change Nobita's attitude, which will lead to the Bad Future mentioned above.
  • Shining City: Doraemon portrays Tokyo and another metropolis in the world being this way in the future. Calculating from the age of the daddy Nobita, it should have been within the 2000s...
  • Shipshape Shipwreck: In the very first episode of the 2005 series, "The Fishing Pond in My Studying Room", Doraemon and Nobita try to escape from a shark in the ocean and find a sunken ship to hide in. The wrecked ship is noticeably battered but is sitting perfectly upright.
  • Short Film: Several have been made. Some are crossovers.
  • Shout-Out: Lots, to its contemporaries and classics alike, and some even to Western pop culture.
  • Shower Scene: As a running gag, poor Shizuka never gets to finish a bath or shower, and takes them all the time. Literally so, as she's tried in other time periods, just to be interrupted by Nobita, Doraemon, Gian and Suneo.
  • Shrink Ray: One of the recurring gadgets in Doraemon is the "Small Light". A flashlight-like shrink ray which shrinks any object and person down. It does wear out eventually as seen in one movie, however. It also can be used to enlarging things back before the "Big Light" gadget, which does the opposite, appear in the series.
  • Silence Is Golden: Some of the video games lack dialogue or even music.
  • Similar to the Show: Some airings of the show include commercials where the characters advertise products. An example would be this commercial for Pizza Hut and Pepsi Boom.
  • Small Name, Big Ego:
    • Gian firms believes himself to be talented in singing and cooking. He's good at neither.
    • Suneo fancies himself the most good-looking, intelligent and talented of the gang. Well, at least he's kind of right about the last two things, with only Shizuka who may be better (and who obviously looks better)...
  • Smart Ball: In 'The Wild Pet House', Nobita has to spend some time away from his pet elephant Trunks because he has to do his homework. Noby usually struggles on his homework, but in this chapter, he does his homework at an uncharacteristically fast rate so he can get back to playing with Trunks. He even says that it's a miracle how quickly he finished.
  • Smug Snake: Suneo, mostly played for laughs.
  • Snap Back: Whatever misfortune befalls Nobita using Doraemon's devices, regardless of its severity, as well as any bad situations Nobita drags anyone else into in the process (up to and including their deaths), is gone by the next story, and everyone's back to normal. In one particular story, Nobita is trapped on an island for ten years and grows up on it. Though he's turned back into a child by the end, the ramification of Nobita now having the mind of an adult is not acknowledged in any future stories.
  • Snot Bubble: Common occurrence with Nobita.
  • Sobriquet Sex Switch: An episode has Nobita wish himself into a reality where he was a girl and everyone calls him "Nobiko".
  • Solid Clouds: The gadget "Compaction Cloud Gas" that transforms ordinary clouds into this.
  • Sorcerer's Apprentice Plot: Nearly every episode of the show involves Nobita (or occasionally one of the other main characters) doing this. It's usually averted in the movies.
  • Spin-Off: Dorabase, The Doraemons, and some Dorami movies.
  • Split-Screen Phone Call: In the episode "Earth Elevator", when Suneo calls Nobita about his trip to Brazil, both characters are shown in a split-screen.
  • Stable Time Loop: Doraemon is fond of this. Many times the titular character and Nobita time-travel to fix an event in the past, only to end up being responsible for whatever they are trying to fix in the first place.
  • Stock Femur Bone: Nobita uses this kind of bone in "The Human Piggy Bank" in an attempt to get the Guard Dog Bank to give him his money. It doesn't work.
  • Stout Strength:
    • Played straight with Gian. Being fat also makes him the strongest.
    • Deconstructed in one episode when a gadget makes Nobita even fatter than Gian and he believes to be now strong enough to defeat him. Suneo thought so too and this made him quickly switch to Nobita's side and encourage him to beat up Gian. Except that in his case it didn't work. Despite his weight, he was still the same weak Nobita and got his ass kicked.
  • Straw Loser: There's an episode when Nobita has a new classmate who is even more inept and hopeless than him (worse at both academics and sports). Nobita, usually the worst at everything, starts hanging out with him just to make himself look better in comparison. Until Doraemon guilt tripped Nobita by showing a television and switching the model of Nobita and the inept classmate to Suneo and Nobita respectively.
  • Strictly Formula: 90% of the TV episodes involve Nobita suffering a predicament, begging Doraemon for a gadget, Nobita abusing said gadget/getting the gadget stolen by Gian and Suneo, then suffering the consequences. The fun is in seeing what the gadget is.
  • Stripperific: In a story, Suneo designs a costume for Shizuka and comes up with this. Shizuka doesn't take it well.
  • Stupidity-Inducing Attack: The Time-Dumb, a timed explosive gadget that when detonated, creates a pink gas that causes any victims to act like utter fools for a couple seconds.
  • Sufficiently Advanced Alien: Nobita became one in Nobita's Genesis Diary when he decides to create his own world.
  • Super Drowning Skills: Nobita can drown in puddles.
  • Suspiciously Specific Denial: Doraemon to Suneo/Sneech in the episode "Time Cloth" ("Time Kerchief"). The English dub features this exchange:
    Sneech: [after handing Doraemon a box of junk] So whatcha want it for, huh?
    Doraemon: Can't say. It's a secret. So I'm not gonna tell you that we're using one of my gadgets to make all this old stuff new again, nope, won't get it out of me.
    Sneech: [snickering] Sure, the secret is so safe with you!
  • Tagline: Promos for the American English version would frequently use the phrase "The future is meow", a pun on the phrase "the future is now" and how Doraemon is a robotic cat.
  • Taken from a Dream: A one-shot gadget called the "Dream Hoop" allows dreamers to throw whatever stuff they see in their dreams and have it appear in the real world. When Doraemon started having sweet dreams about enjoying a massive dorayaki feast, he remembered to activate the gadget and teleports around twenty dorayakis from the dream-verse to reality, for him to continue eating after waking up.
  • Tastes Like Friendship: The Momotaro Dango (a reference to Japanese folklore), which can instantly befriend any creature it is fed to.
  • Tempting Fate: When Doraemon and Noby go back to the day of his birth via Time Travel, they overhear Noby's parents discussing what they hope Noby to be, while Doraemon points out that Noby is, thus far, the opposite of what they hope for, much to Noby's embarrassment.
    Toby: (to Tammy) If he takes after you, his grade will be in the first place!
    Tammy: (to Toby) If he takes after you, he will definitely be a great athlete.
    Doraemon: (to Noby) You inherited all of their shortcomings.
  • Theme Tune Extended: The various theme songs have gotten extended versions on CDs with additional verses.
  • Thinly-Veiled Dub Country Change:
    • Being a kids' series, many foreign dubs of Doraemon attempt to relocate the series to the dub's country of origin, despite none of the very Japanese background imagery being changed.
    • Variation: a common thing that happens with European Portuguese dubs of anime is changing the currency used to a local currency, while still keeping it set in Japan. So people will refer to cents instead of yen, despite the coins and bills appearing clearly being yen coins and bills. Doraemon is one of the earliest examples.
    • The English dub changes the setting to America, changing yen notes to dollar bills such as the above example, although they don't change things like kneeling on the floor to eat, as it is set in a Little Tokyo of an unnamed American city.
  • Those Two Guys: Suneo and Gian.
  • This Means War!: In the American English dub's "The Mecha-Maker", Doraemon exclaims this to Suneo when he discovers that he cheated him out of the yummy buns that he promised to exchange for Doraemon's Mecha-Maker.
  • Three Wishes: The Hermit Bot in the episode "A Good Deed in a Weary World" gives three wishes to anyone who is kind to it and takes care of it.
  • Time Capsule: The American English-dubbed episode "Doraemon's Time Capsule" is about Noby borrowing the eponymous futuristic time capsule and accidentally sending the contents within 100 years into the past. Then he sends it to the future on the day Doraemon was born and has to go find it again before it causes a change in the timeline from just-born Doraemon seeing the items it contains.
  • Time Is Dangerous: Time Travel is achieved by going through a tunnel-like space on your Time Machine. Should one get knocked out of the machine and into the tunnel, one will be stranded in time. The problem is, Doraemon's time machine is basically just some futuristic devices bolted to a tatami, so the risk of being thrown overboard is always there. Dorami's is safe because it's a flower-shaped capsule. Have we mentioned that some bad guys have their own time machine, so you can have a chase in time while you chase in time?
  • Time Machine: Doraemon has one that is located inside of Nobita's desk.
  • Time Paradox: Again, with the casual use of time travel, there are quite a lot of episodes dealing with time paradoxes.
  • Time Police: The Time Patrol, the setting's Time Police, often act as The Cavalry. With the cast's casual use of time travel, it wouldn't be surprising if The Time Patrol actually put the cast on close watch.
  • Time Travel: Happened quite a lot throughout the series.
  • Timey-Wimey Ball: The way time travel works in this series is either Stable Time Loop or that time is mutable, depending on the story. Quite a number of stories have Nobita trying to avert something in the past or present, only to result in that event to happen in the first place. Other stories include time criminals who are trying to meddle with history to install himself as overlord of the world, or how an impending Robot War is averted by having a chat with the original creator, resulting in one robot character getting Ret Goned
  • Title Theme Tune: An an an, tottemo daisuki, Doraemon! ("Ah, ah, ah, I love you very much, Doraemon!")
  • Toy-Based Characterization:
    • Most of Nobita's toys are BB Guns and he's known for being The Gunslinger in their adventures, complete with Improbable Aiming Skills.
    • Gian is The Big Guy among the cast (and in the manga, The Bully) who's a fan of baseball. He's frequently seen carrying a baseball bat around - and in occasions where he's in a bullying mood, using it to beat up Nobita, Suneo and the other neighborhood boys.
    • Suneo, who's an expert builder of models and an artist, usually owns various remote-controlled toys and model kits to highlight his creativity.
    • Shizuka, the Girly Girl, likes her dolls and plushies, and her bedroom is filled with stuffed toys.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Doraemon's favorite food is dorayaki, while Dorami's favorite is melon pan.
  • Travel to Projectile: One of the Gadget-of-the-week is the Moving Bow and Arrow, an arrow with a cord attached to the shooter and a circular target, where upon being fired the arrow (which appears to have anti-gravity functions) will carry the shooter automatically to where the target is located, regardless of size. Doraemon and Nobita had quite some fun zipping around the neighborhood and trolling their neighbors with it, until a stray dog mistakes the target for a frisbee and drops it into a dirty river after playing with it - cue Nobita and Doraemon comically splashing into garbage-filled waters.
  • Truncated Theme Tune: The Brazilian Portuguese dub cuts the theme song down to 4 seconds.
  • Twinkle Smile: In "Experimental Dream Schemes", at the beginning of Noby's "Chase the Sun" dream, when Sue, Big G, and Sneech find Noby, he smiles and his teeth twinkle, complete with an Audible Gleam.
  • Tsundere:
    • Amusingly enough, Shizuka is actually of type B as she is seen jealous of Nobita with other girls from time to time.
    • Dorami is also type B whose Tsun side is only shown to her boyfriend, Dora the Kid.
  • A Twinkle in the Sky: In "Machine Copy Machine", when Big G turns Doraemon into an aeroplane, the latter flies away and disappears with a twinkle. Later in the same episode, when Noby uses the Machine Copy Machine to turn into a rocket, he also disappears with a twinkle.
  • Two Shorts: Each episode of the American English dub comprises two 11-minute segments.
  • Ugly Guy, Hot Wife:
    • This trope is played straight in the original manga with Nobita being plain while Shizuka is highly attractive but gradually downplayed when Art Evolution of the animes, movies and even the manga itself as Nobita is later drawn less plain and more adorable as a boy at his age can be. Recent anime episodes and movies also have Nobita's eyes become like Shizuka(minus eyelash of course) whenever he isn't wearing glasses. He aged just fine too as an adult.
    • Nobita's parents are also downplayed version with Tamako is actually very beautiful when she doesn't wear her glass but Nobisuke isn't a gonk either.
    • Doraemon himself and his former girlfriend Noramyako (after her Art Evolution). Sure Doraemon's not unappealing, but he's still your standard stout and chubby robot cat model compared to the tall, curvacious female bot.
  • Umbrella of Togetherness: Nobita and Shizuka share an umbrella once. There is also a gadget that invokes this trope; when a guest enters under the umbrella he becomes very affectionate to the user.
  • Untranslated Title: Doraemon: Noby vs. the Mecha Army is titled Doraemon: Nobita Tetsujinheiden in the Speedy Video dub, which is roughly its title in Japanese.
  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight:
    • That blue tanuki with no ears is practically a human in Doraemonverse modern day Japan. The ones that pointed out that it's a tanuki are usually doing so for insult or in a very foreign land unfamiliar with modern day Japan.
    • In the episode "Battle! Gian vs. Army of Monsters", Gian finds Nobita's gang's clubhouse and decides to take over it. Doraemon gives the others leis that transform them into monsters to scare Gian, but Gian isn't fazed in the slightest and just asks the monsters to help him with mundane tasks.
  • Useless Superpowers: Not really useless, but not really useful in the setting. Even though he's bad at almost everything, Nobita is really talented at shooting and playing string figures. He sometimes says that he's supposed to be born in the old west. There is even an episode where he was stuck in the Old West and became a sheriff's deputy. The talent is obviously more useful in the movies.
  • Ventriloquism: Inverted with the "Ventriloquism Doll" gadget. It will talk like the user and trick the listener(s)'s into believing what the doll said. However, should the gadget be stopped, the listener will immediately come back to sense.
  • The 'Verse: Surprisingly, a lot of Fujiko F. Fujio's works seem to share the same universe.
    • Doraemon and Nobita once saved a hotel from bankruptcy. The hotel owners are clearly the ancestors of the main character from 21 Emon.
    • Sumire Hoshino, an artist that often appears in the series, is the grown-up version of Perman 3, one of Perman's protagonists. There's even an episode dealing with Sumire telling Doraemon and Nobita about her faraway lover. Sumire never tells the name of his lover, but there is a picture of Mitsuo Suwa, the original Perman and its main protagonist, on her pendant. Mitsuo was sent to Birdman's headquarter to be a full-fledged member of the galactic peacekeeping organization at the end of Perman.
  • Versus Title: The 2020 episode "Battle! Gian vs. Army of Monsters".
  • Video Phone: One episode features one of these using the house's television. The video feed was also (obviously) one-way.
  • The Virus: The space alien in Nobita's Galactic Express wants to take over a human body.
  • Visible Invisibility: In "Noby, the Great Illusionist", Noby uses his illusionist cape to make himself invisible so that he can sneak into Big G's room and retrieve his comic. While he is using the cape, he is still visible, but he is transparent.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: Much as Gian and Suneo like being jerks to Nobita, they are still his best friends.
  • Vocal Evolution: In the sound department, the dubbing quality has improved a lot in the Malaysian version. Early dubs mute the background effects and music completely when the characters talk, presumably because they were unable to secure a minus-one version of the audio track to work with and didn't want to go the Voiceover Translation route back then. More recent dubs and redubs have the VAs record over a minus-one of the audio track and thus the BGM and sound effects doesn't fade out when the characters talk anymore.
  • Voices Are Mental: In the anime, people who swap bodies with the Substitution Rope usually also swap voices. This is probably more for the sake of audience perception, because none of the characters In-Universe notice it. The first use of the Substitution Rope in the 1979 anime series averted this, however, and had the characters speak in voices tied to their physical bodies (albeit taking on some vocal qualities from the person they'd swapped with).

    W-Z 
  • Water Is Air: Inverted in an episode where the gadget-of-the-week permitted the protagonists to treat air as water, for recreational purposes.
  • Waterfall Shower: Shizuka takes a shower under a little waterfall in an episode where Nobita and his friends go on a desert island.
  • The Watson: In The Doraemons Special series, Nobita's personality can almost be entirely summed up to be this.
  • Wealthy Yacht Owner: In one episode, Suneo's father has a yacht that he ordered from France. It later ends up sinking.
  • Weapon Wields You: The Denkoumaru, a katana which beats opponents automatically by taking control of the wielder's arms. Obviously very useful in the Big Damn Movies. Unlike most other examples, this gadget still just beats those who are deemed as enemies by its wielder, instead of choosing its own enemies, for it doesn't have a will but an AI for calculating the most effective moves. It can still cause the wielder to fight unwillingly against those who threaten his/her life, though.
  • What If?: Used with the gadget, the "What if? Box". It's a telephone booth which user can say a "what if" scenario and it will change the world to matches their description. (Do the Doctor and Bill & Ted know about this?)
    • Also used with "The Fringe Theory Badge Club". But instead of changing the world as the user desire. It applied existing theories (that aren't turn out to be true) to the real world. And only the people who equipped the badge can see the effect.
  • White Void Room: Before some episodes begin, Doraemon runs around in a white room and says, "Doraemon will start!"
  • Whole-Plot Reference: Attic Star Wars is, as the name implies, a whole-plot reference to Star Wars, complete with an Expy of R2D2 asking Doraemon and Nobita for help via showing a hologram of an Expy of Leia. The two heroes even receive a medal from "Leia" at the end of the story just like Luke and Han.
  • Wingding Eyes: Frequently used. For example, in the "Secret Gadget Quiz" segment at the beginning of Season 3 episode 7, Doraemon's eyes become hearts when he mentions that his crush Mii-chan gave him the dorayaki that Nobita ate.
  • Worthless Treasure Twist: At the last volume of Doraemon manga, a chapter was about Nobita, Doraemon, Giant and Suneo competed in finding real treasures as 2 pirate teams. The treasures were there before they decided to make it as a pirate game. However, the very pirate game (which consisted of them sailing at sea and shooting cannonballs at each other) delayed their treasure hunting, resulting in someone had already dug the treasures ahead of them.
  • Writers Cannot Do Math: In an episode, Doraemon gives Nobita a special plate of cookies that double every 5 minutes (so if he starts with one, after 15 minutes he will have 8 cookies), warning him that he must eat every single one of them quickly. In the end, he throws away one and returns after a while to find a big pile of cookies. Unable to eat them all, they choose to throw them to space, and later Doraemon tells Nobita that a whole galaxy made of cookies has formed. In reality, if they doubled every five minutes, in less than 15 hours the mass of the cookies would be many orders of magnitude larger than that of the whole universe. Oops.
  • Written Sound Effect: There's a drink that makes your sound solid, turned it into letters. The size is according to how loud you speak it.
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?:
    • Doraemon, despite being a robotic cat, is scared to death of mice ever since a robotic mouse bit his ears off (by mistake) and caused him to turn blue prior to the series.
    • Dorami, Doraemon's little sister, is afraid of cockroaches.
  • X-Ray Sparks: In "Action Quiz", the Action Quizzer electrocutes Noby and Big G each time they get one of its questions wrong. There are two instances where Noby and Big G's skeletons are visible as they are being electrocuted.
  • X-Ray Vision: Some of Doraemon's gadget has this functionality. For example, the "Xyz Light Camera" can be used to see the contents of objects, similarly to an x-ray.
  • Yamato Nadeshiko: Shizuka Minamoto is the prime example for Japanese's anime & manga society. She's a soft-spoken, nature-loving, and caring girly girl who addresses Nobita using honorifics. She's shown to be pretty good at almost everything except violin.
  • Yank the Dog's Chain: Suneo frequently calls Nobita (along with Shizuka and Gian) over to announce something fun (e.g. one of his family vacations), only to tell Nobita that he's not invited.
  • You Are Grounded!: This happens to Nobita all the time in the American adaptation. He always gets grounded, unlike in the Japanese version where he gets sent out of the house by his mom (a typical Japanese household punishment used by parents). Doraemon is occasionally grounded along with him.
  • You Can't Fight Fate: There is an extremely depressing explanation about why Nobita is so afraid of Gian and Suneo. An episode traces this back to kindergarten times when Nobita was first bullied by Gian and Suneo. His fearfulness was born and stuck at that moment because he failed to fight them. In order to eliminate this mentality, Nobita returned to the past and managed to bully them back. However, while he bullied them, he was watched by little Shizuka, the girl he liked since he was a kid and his future bride, and as a result, he earned her hatred. In the end, Nobita has to choose: be immune from Gian and Suneo's bullying, or earn Shizuka's forgiveness? He eventually chooses the latter, and that restores his fearfulness of Gian and Suneo for the rest of his childhood.
  • Young Gun: Nobita whenever the cast travel to a Western-y age/planet/dimension/whatever. The boy might be a total loser in other aspects of life, but when the plot requires that someone is shot, he does the shooting competently.


"as long as you're here, you bring us happiness!"
— Ending line of the Japanese theme song of the 2005 anime.

 
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The Hellbox Gadget

In the June 25, 2022 episode of Doraemon anime, Nobita get sucked into Doraemon's Hellbox Gadget, where he get his tongue plunged, judged by King Enma, and get chased by demons, because he lied to his mom about his school test.

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4.71 (7 votes)

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Main / Hell

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