What a Robotic Cat Taught Me About Humanity

I had the same Sunday morning routine as a lot of other Indonesian kids growing up in the early 2000s: I would wake up early to sit in front of the TV for hours. The Sunday morning programs on TV was a heaven full of Japanese animation series. Across several channels, P-Man, Chibi-Maruko Chan, Hamtaro, and others would take turns to entertain half-asleep, snotty kids like me. But still, at 8 on the dot, Doraemon would appear on the screen. I just knew Nobita and his robotic cat companion Doraemon would make my whole Sunday great.

The manga Doraemon was originally published in six different magazines in 1969 in Japan. In 1979, Shin-Ei Animation chose to produce the anime series for Doraemon that became popular until it ended in 2005. Since then, Doraemon is known worldwide as the Japan's household icon. The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs even selected Doraemon as the country's first anime cultural ambassador in 2008. Here are some reasons why Doraemon is one of the best cartoons of all time: its aphoristic humor; portrayals of middle-class Asian families; and the concept of having a cute cat robot that came from the future to guide you through adolescent adventures and still produce a thousand modern, state-of-the-art gadgets. But more importantly, I realized that Doraemon has always taught viewers about the human condition, and some of the issues they tackle in their series and movies are the same ones we still see on the news today.

Maybe some of the characters are not exactly human beings, but they do emulate the model of human bodies. In the full-length movie Doraemon: Nobita in the Robot Kingdom (2002), Nobita wants a new robot despite having Doraemon. Nobita then tries to buy a new robot using Doraemon's secret backup gadget pocket and things suddenly go wrong because he presses the wrong buttons and a lot of robots blow up in his face, including this boy robot. Then Nobita is mistakenly sent to the parallel world—meaning Earth—where he's separated from his mother. This new world is a place where humans and robots live together peacefully, but it's ruled by an empress whose new mission is to make all robots emotionless. What did I learn from this? That human beings are afraid of the very technology they develop, of course.

Doraemon even talks about ethnic cleansing in Doraemon: Nobita and the Birth of Japan (1989). Dark, right? It begins with a boy who lives in the prehistoric times. When he returns home from fishing all day, he finds his village destroyed. Meanwhile in the future, Nobita is planning to run away because he's flunking tests at school. He then finds out that his friends, Shizuka, Giant, Suneo, and Doraemon want to come with him. They decide to go back 70,000 years back in time where they plan build their own nation and government. Where is the aspect of the ethnic cleansing, you ask? The villain in this one is a time criminal from the 22nd century intending to create a new world by time traveling to prehistoric Japan, destroying the natives' villages, and forcing them to migrate.

Slavery is also featured vividly in Doraemon: Nobita's Dorabian Nights (1991). In the story, Shizuka is trapped in the story book Arabian Nights. Nobita then has to rescue Shizuka, who's about to be sold as a slave and shipped off somewhere far away. Yikes. In another episode, Doraemon takes a jab at out of body experiences in Doraemon: Nobita's Three Visionary Swordsmen (1994). That's right. Sorry, Christopher Nolan, but Doraemon did this way before Inception. Though it's marketed for children, the creators of Doraemon always put those characters in historical contexts, with human kind's greed as a central theme. Still, there's something magical about the way that Doraemon stories mutate into something that entertaining and connected to other folklore tales.

Doraemon also highlights environmental issues several times, but the one episode that truly struck a chord with me and had me peering into the bleakness of the world before finding the light is Doraemon: Nobita and the Animal Planet (1990). This film tells of a new society of animals—who are all anthropomorphic—that respect nature. The conflict starts where a tribe called the Nimuges—who wasted their planet's resources—invade other planets, including the Animal Planet, for their resources. It shows that Doraemon can seamlessly wrap a story about the environment and shades of colonialism into a single children's tale. Doraemon did that.

When I was young, before I went to bed I would actually pray that in the morning, a cute cat robot would come out of my desk—the way Doraemon comes out of Nobita's—and become my companion to navigate my daily life. Re-watching and remembering the lessons of Doraemon today is how I honor my childlike side. It's also how I go through the difficult and scary realities of adulthood. The fact that Doraemon was sent back in time by Nobita's descendants in the future in order to protect and guide young Nobita makes me feel like the creators of the cartoon, in a way, sent him for the rest of us too.