Writer: Thomas Ng Jun Tong

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Watch this if you liked: "Doraemon" TV series

For all Doraemon lovers who have been watching him on TV all these years, the mechanical earless cat Nobita and gang have come back with a whole new story. The last one was "Doraemon: Nobita And The Giant Legend Of Green Planet" in 2009.

In this instalment, the story follows how Doraemon transforms Tokyo City into an underwater realm to fulfil Nobita's will and he accidentally discovers the mermaid kingdom. However, there are unknown villains who travel from space to destroy the mermaid kingdom.
Director Kozo Kusuba continues the style of the director of previous film, Ayumu Watanabe. In this film, some of the original cast in the previous film have been included but also adds some new blood like Chiaki Kuriyama, Mayumi Iizuka and Rie Tanaka.

Doraemon's stories are always simple, straightforward and entertaining. You will find no fault in the special effects here either. It's a good movie, especially for kids. Nobita's trusty friends Giant and Suneo remain with the same attitude and bully Nobita. However, they will always help him when he's in trouble. Their friendship is a good example of moral values for kids to know what real friends are.

A negative here would be that the interaction between Nobita and Sizuka has become lesser and lesser over the years. As we know from the TV series, Sizuka will marry with Nobita in the future. Besides that, some fans would still prefer to watch it in the original Japanese language with subtitles, as the Mandarin dub can sometimes upset the flavour.

We can see a lot of fish in the underwater world in this film! Let's hope that Doraemon will have more adventures to come.

Cinema Online, 27 May 2011