Anime / Doraemon: Nobita's Treasure Island

Shiver me timbers, it's Doraemon...again?

"There is always something far more important than treasures."

Doraemon: Nobita's Treasure Island is a 2018 anime film from the Doraemon Film Series, and the long-running movie series' second attempt at the pirate genre.

Nobita, after hearing the story of Treasure Island, daydreams about becoming a pirate captain himself, just as news report of a mysterious island spotted in Tokyo Bay prompts Nobita to convince Doraemon to set off on a pirate-style adventure. As always, Nobita's friends Shizuka, Gian and Suneo inevitably gets tangled into the journey, but soon they encounter actual pirates who managed to kidnap Shizuka.

On the trail of the pirates, the gang encounters Flock, a young pirate boy who decide to help the gang for his own reasons, leading Doraemon and friends to the pirate's hideout, the mysterious titular Treasure Island where Shizuka is being taken to. And on said island, Shizuka discovers it to be the home to a mini-community of pirates, including a young girl looking exactly like her. Also, there are dark secrets on the seemingly glamorous Treasure Island which can spell the end of the world...

The movie is incidentally released on the 20th Anniversary of Doraemon: Nobita's Great Adventure in the South Seas, another pirate-themed adventure. Both movies contain parallels to each other, while managing to retain their own identities as standalone stories.

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Doraemon: Nobita's Treasure Island contain examples of:

• All Part of the Show: When Captain Silver's crew start attacking their ship, Doraemon assures everyone it's part of a scripted, faked adventure created by the Captain Hat. Seeing everyone freaking out, Doraemon tries proving his theory by removing the hat... and the pirates are still there. Cue Doraemon making an Oh, Crap! face when he finds out he's being attacked for real.
• Animal Jingoism: While Quiz (a robot parrot) is already The Gadfly towards the main cast, it's Doraemon (a robot cat) whom he especially messes with.
• Bad Future: What ultimately drives Captain Silver into villainy - through his time-machine, Captain Silver witnessed the destruction of humanity from some unspecified future, making him decide the best course of action being to launch his pirate ship - loot and all - into space to colonize a new planet.
• Batman Gambit: Gian and Suneo try to jump over Vivi and Gaga using their jet-ski, only for Vivi to slice the jet-ski in half. This was exactly what Gian and Suneo had been counting on, because it gives Gian a chance to land on the pirates' boat and use the Captain Hat on them.
• Big Damn Heroes: Gian, Suneo, and the Mini-Doras fly Doraemon's ship up just in time to save Nobita, Shizuka, and an unconscious Doraemon, who have fallen out of Silver's ship.
• Bioluminescence Is Cool: One of Doraemon's new gadgets for this adventure, the Illumination Jellyfish Seeds which creates a trail of multi-coloured, glowing jellyfishes for showing their way. Despite being artificially-created lifeforms, these colourful jellyfishes do seem to have some degree of sentience, one of them even useful for Shizuka to help the boys locate her after her capture.
• The Cavalry: Maria and the other restaurant staff show up to aid the heroes against Silver's Mecha-Mooks.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Doraemon accidentally throws the Captain Hat onto a shark-shaped jet-ski during his panic that they really are being attacked by a pirate crew. Gian and Suneo would pilot that jet-ski as the gang head to Silver's base, and they discover the Captain Hat right when they are at Vivi and Gaga's mercy.
  • In one of his moments of Rummage Fail, Doraemon throws aside what appear to be a large number of squids and octopuses. When Silver has the main characters sucked into a whirlpool, it is revealed that some of those squids were actually squid-shaped life rafts.
• City on the Water: The titular island where the adventure takes place upon is actually parts from Captain Silver's ship, constructed with 22nd-Century tech, housing hundreds and hundreds of pirates and employees.
• Cue the Falling Object: Before the opening credits, Nobita made a bold claim to his friends that he'll find a real treasure island containing actual treasure (in the modern day?). Cue a few seconds of total silence until Dekisugi drops his book.
• Damsel in Distress: Shizuka spent the majority of the movie held captive in the titular treasure island, which prompts Nobita and friends to rescue her. That said, she manage to befriend Sarah and make a living there in the meanwhile.
• Distressed Dude: Doraemon near the end of the film - unable to stop Captain Silver's beacon from firing into the planet's core, knocked out and getting trapped in an electrical field. Nobita managed to reach him in time and, with Shizuka's assistance, pulls him out.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Gian and Suneo initially didn't trust Flock due to thinking he was part of the pirate crew who kidnapped Shizuka. They befriend him when the ship enters a storm and everyone is forced to work together keep the ship from falling apart.
• Frying Pan of Doom: While the heroes try making their way to Captain Silver's quarters and pursued by Silver's robots, Maria comes to the rescue... wielding a frying pan in one hand. Subverted when the pan easily gets a hole blasted through it by a stray laser blast, but that doesn't stop Maria from using it to beat up the robots.
  Maria: This is what you get for shooting at my restaurant! [whacks a mook and send it flying off-screen]
• Furry Reminder: When Doraemon angrily chases after Quiz for calling him a tanuki, he briefly moves like a cat trying to catch a bird.
• Grenade Hot Potato: In order to distract the pirates boarding their ship, Doraemon tosses one of his gadgets - the Danger Bomb - to Vivi. Who looks at the bomb for a few seconds, realize it's explosive, and pass it to Gaga instead. BOOM.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: Used by Vivi, Gaga, and their crew of futuristic pirates to board Doraemon's ship.
• Group Hug: Between Captain Silver, Flock and Sarah - once Silver realize his ambition had nearly destroyed whatever little family he had.
• Hard-Work Montage: The gang and Flock, having crashed on a deserted island, working hard together in order to repair the destroyed ship, while bonding through the process of fixing the vessel.
• Hold the Line: En route to Silver's base, the heroes have to cross a moat where they're attacked by Silver's Co-Dragons, Vivi and Gaga, and a number of mooks on jet-skis. Gian and Suneo, on jet-skis of their own and armed with Doraemon's gadgets, take on the minions, allowing Nobita, Doraemon, Flock and Sarah to proceed. Suneo and Gian manage to defeat all their opponents (including Vivi and Gaga) but are unable to reach Silver's quarters in time to assist their friends.
• Holding Back the Phlebotinum: Doraemon could have easily ended the first fight against the pirates by using the Captain Hat, but he throws it away in a panic when he realizes that the attack is not just an illusion. In the end, Gian and Suneo find the hat had landed in their jetski, and use it to subdue Vivi and Gaga.
• Huge Holographic Head: When Doraemon and gang, on their ship, arrives at the edge of Treasure Island, Captain Silver warns them to stay out by projecting a mountain-sized hologram of himself. Flock, who's with the heroes, points out that the man behind the giant hologram is his father.
• Identical Stranger: Sarah and Shizuka are doppelgangers to each other, save for Sarah having blonde hair, to the point where Vivi, Gaga and their mooks mistake Shizuka for an escaped Sarah and captures her.
• Imagine Spot: The film opens with Nobita's daydreams as a badass pirate captain saving his friends from a group of hostile buccaneers, finding a cave filled with treasures, and fighting a gigantic monster... before revealing he had dozed off while listening to Dekisugi narrating Treasure Island. And that he's hugging Gian instead of Shizuka.
• Implacable Man: Even an Air Cannon blast at maximum power doesn't keep Silver's Mecha-Mooks down, and neither does Nobita shooting every one of them in quick succession with a Shock Gun. The heroes only get a break from being pursued by the robots when Maria and the other restaurant staff come to their rescue.
• The Kindnapper: The pirates led by Vivi and Gaga attacks Doraemon's ship and before being beaten off, abducts Shizuka... because they mistook Shizuka for Sarah, daughter of their boss Silver. Once they captured Shizuka to their base, they gave her a luxurious, unguarded bedroom with all the necessary supplies and kept her well-fed without hurting her. They even allow her to wander around the place instead of keeping her confined to a single room.
• Let's Get Dangerous!:
  • Even taken by surprise, Doraemon produces a huge range of gadgets for the gang to fight the pirates with. Although Nobita, Doraemon, Gian, and Suneo are eventually cornered, they probably could have fended off any opponent who didn't have experience in fighting against future weaponry.
  • Towards the film's climax, upon realizing Doraemon had fallen down a deep shaft, and seeing a can of Doraemon's Anti-Gravity Paint gadget just nearby, Nobita doesn't even hesitate to grab the paint, spill it down the shaft, and run alongside it's walls all the way to the bottom to reach Doraemon.
  • Similarly during the film's climax, Suneo initially hesitant when Gian proposed to hold off Vivi and Gaga alongside their minions together, but quickly change his mind and willing to fight regardless.
• Load-Bearing Hero: Doraemon tries to use Super Gloves to push the energy sphere Silver had collected away from the ship's engine. He slows it down, but it's not enough to stop it, and the gloves end up getting burned off. He even holds off the energy sphere for a few moments with his bare hands before he gets absorbed inside and electrocuted into unconsciousness.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": Two in a row, in the same scene.
  • The citizens of Treasure Island reacting in panic when they realize said island is moving, caused by Captain Silver activating the beacon stabbing earth through it's core,
  • Doraemon, Nobita, Suneo and Gian all lose it when Captain Silver projects a threatening monster-sized hologram of himself warning them to stay out.
• Mini-Me: Besides the main gang, the Pirate ship is also crewed by a bunch of Mini-Doras, led by three special ones with green, yellow and red colours.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Like the previous pirate-themed adventure, once more Doraemon and friends are unexpectedly dragged through a time warp by future pirates. Doraemon gets to don a similar red pirate outfit as he did in the earlier film.
  • Nobita telling Suneo and Gian if he fails to find an actual treasure island, he'd eat carbonara through his nose.
  • The villains are time-travelers from the future. It's not like we haven't heard it before.
• Non-Indicative Name: The titular island doesn't belong to Nobita. It belongs to Captain Silver. Though it is much shorter than the more appropriate Doraemon: Nobita's trip to Treasure Island
• Oddball in the Series: So very, very odd. This movie sticks out like a sore thumb in the post-2005 Doraemon films.
  • It's the first Doraemon film that doesn't feature Yume Wo Kanaete Doraemon in it's opening credits, for starters (ever since said song was used in Doraemon: Nobita and the Green Giant Legend). In fact it doesn't have a musical opening, after the title card the movie continues straightaway.
  • It's also the first Doraemon movie that isn't based on an installment of Doraemon's Long Tales, a remake of the OG movies, or an Adaptation Expansion of an existing manga short, following an all-new story. (It does recycle the time-warp idea from Doraemon: Nobita's Great Adventure in the South Seas, but otherwise everything's new to the franchise).
  • While Nobita and Doraemon are still the main characters, a big chunk of the storyline is focused on Shizuka after she meets Sarah, with lengthy scenes of Shizuka bonding with the supporting characters without Nobita or Doraemon around, effectively making her the Deuteragonist in this movie, something that rarely happens in the series (the previous being the remake of Doraemon: Nobita and the Steel Troops seven years ago).
  • The film's Big Bad is a Tragic Villain with a sad backstory, which drives him into a life of crime. He's also the first major villain since Jeanne from Doraemon: Nobita and the Robot Kingdom and Shirah from Doraemon: Nobita and the Green Giant Legend to undergo a Heel Realization and deliberately cancel his plans for good.
• One-Wheeled Wonder: Captain Silver's Mecha-Mooks are round, Cyber Cyclopses who travels around on one wheel.
• Pirate Booty: Captain Silver had an entire vault of looted treasure, after his years as a buccaneer. Which he intends to send to space with the rest of his island.
• Pirate Parrot: Fitting the theme of steampunk futuristic pirates, there's Quiz, the robotic pirate sidekick of Flock. Some real, flesh-and-blood parrots do show up during flashback scenes however, notably during Nobita's daydream battle.
• Planetary Core Manipulation: In order to obtain enough energy to send his ship into space, Captain Silver needs to drain energy from earth's core using his ship's mining beacon, stabbing it right into the mantle and inner core. Doraemon attempts warning Silver that his actions could lead to an Earth-Shattering Kaboom, but Silver is beyond reasoning at that point leading to the heroes frantically trying to stop him in the final act.
• Planet Spaceship: What Captain Silver's ship is supposed to be - on the surface it's a futuristic mechanical in the form of a floating city, but it's actually capable of travelling through space, and to achieve that Silver needs to use the ship's mining beacon to extract energy from earth's core, giving his vessel enough power to float through the galaxy while the rest of the world goes kaboom.
• Please Wake Up: Shortly after Nobita and Shizuka managed to grab the unconscious Doraemon (having being knocked out by the electrical charges by Silver's beacon) and beat a hasty escape, the moment they made it to the safety of Doraemon's ship (now crewed by Gian, Suneo and the Mini-Doras) Nobita quickly begs Doraemon to wake up. Thankfully it works.
• Sinking Ship Scenario: Doraemon and co., with their new friends Flock and Quiz (sans Shizuka who's still kidnapped and at Sarah's place) runs into this scenario after a nasty storm and a hole breaking in their ship's hull. Thankfully Doraemon had his Water Gloves gadget ready, for everyone to wear and use to literally grab chunks of water on the deck and hurl them overboard.
• Skeletons in the Coat Closet: It's probably a gadget prop instead of real bones, but in this adventure everyone gets a new outfit, with Gian's being a cap made of cattle skull.
• Stupidity-Inducing Attack: Doraemon's Timed Stupidity Bomb, which can confuse anyone caught by it's explosion and act like a lunatic for a few seconds. Suneo uses it against Captain Silver's crew.
• Throw a Barrel at It: While fighting the pirates, Gian - wearing Doraemon's Super Gloves - took down two pirates in a row by throwing a barrel larger than himself on his targets.
• Two Lines, No Waiting: The story branch gets split in two after Shizuka's abduction - the main gang meets Flock, who knows where Shizuka's being taken, and works together to reach Treasure Island whilst Shizuka gets to know Flock's sister Sarah, who's waiting for her brother to return. Both storyline converges in the third act when everyone works together to stop Captain Silver.
• Use Your Head: After Doraemon, Nobita, and Shizuka fall out of Silver's base, the gang makes one last effort to get inside. In the end, Doraemon accidentally knocks his head against its outer shell. He is dazed for a few moments, but the bottom half of the ship cracks and falls apart. Earlier it had been shown that Silver's ship was made out of such advanced material that not even Doraemon's Pass Loop could penetrate it, yet his head was able to break it.
• Weapon Wields You: The sword of Denkomaru is used again in this episode, this time by Nobita to counter the initial pirate takeover of their ship. And Nobita easily defeats those mooks as usual (or rather, the sword moves Nobita into running across the ship and into the mooks). However, the tide of the battle turns when the sword runs out of battery.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The end credits are accompanied by a few images showing what some of the supporting characters are up to after the events of the movie.
• Worf Had the Flu: During the first skirmish against the pirates, Doraemon takes too long to to realize that they are actually under attack and that it's not just an illusion created by the Captain's Hat. The gang is also surprised that the pirates (being time travelers themselves) have their own skills and devices they can use to counter Doraemon's gadgets with. This results in Nobita, Doraemon, Gian, and Suneo being cornered and Shizuka being kidnapped, but they still put up a pretty good fight regardless.
• You're Not My Father: Said by Flock after Silver's warning to the gang to stay out of his way as the ship prepares to leave for the stars, further convincing the boy that his father hates him. It's at this point Nobita decides to convince him to make amends with Silver.

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