Doraemon

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Doraemon is a Japanese manga and anime series about a blue robot cat sent back from the 22nd century to help a hapless schoolboy named Nobita. Created by Fujiko F. Fujio in 1969, the character became a fixture of Indian meme edits decades later.

Overview

Doraemon is a Japanese manga about a blue robot cat from the 22nd century who lives with a well-meaning but lazy schoolboy named Nobita Nobi2. The character is instantly recognizable by his round blue body, bell collar, and the four-dimensional pocket on his belly where he stores futuristic gadgets called dougu, literally meaning tool2. Plots follow a repeating loop: Nobita gets into trouble, begs Doraemon for a gadget, misuses it, and makes the situation worse2.

The character's name is a mashup of dorayaki, the red bean pancake dessert he loves, and mon, taken from the Japanese word for monster1. Doraemon is huge across East Asia and holds particular fame in India, where the cat and Nobita show up constantly in local meme edits2.

How It Spread

Doraemon jumped to television in 1973 with an anime produced by TMS Entertainment, but it was pulled after six months over weak ratings and fan complaints about how far it strayed from the source2. Most of that first series is now lost because the original master tapes were destroyed in a fire2.

TV Asahi and Shin-Ei Animation launched a much more faithful adaptation on April 2, 1979, and it aired 1,787 episodes before wrapping in 20052. Shin-Ei then debuted a third anime the same year on TV Asahi, this time with character designs pulled closer to Fujimoto's original manga art2. Bang Zoom! Entertainment produced an English dub that landed on Disney XD in July 2014, bringing the franchise into US kids TV rotation2.

How to Use This Meme

Doraemon and Nobita are typically used as recognizable characters in Indian meme edits, often reaction-style clips lifted from the Hindi-dub of the 1979 or 2005 anime, with new captions layered over familiar screenshots of the pair reacting to a school problem or a failed gadget2.

Frequently Asked Questions