Tezuka In English Discussion Forums

So.......anyone here who has even a smidgen of knowledge about Japanese pop culture is familiar with Doraemon. This adorable little blue robot cat has been a national treasure of Japan for over 30 years, and he shows no signs of disappearing any time soon.

Doraemon's origin comes from a duo of Japanese cartoonists, Fujimoto Hiroshi and Motoo Abiko, who collectivly went under the pen name Fujiko Fujio. When they split up in the late 80s, they split up the name. Fujimoto became Fujiko F. Fujio, and Akibo became Fujiko Fujio (A). Now, Doraemon was mostly the creation of Fujiko F. Fujio, but Fujiko Fujio (A) also had a hand in it's creation and did other art duties, so they both collectively worked on Doraemon material for over fifteen years, amongst several other projects (they were both quite prolific during their lifetime, and virtually ruled the area of children's comics for almost 30 years). When they split up, Fujiko F. Fujio spent the rest of his life creating (or helping to create) several Doraemon comics and films, so the vast majority of Doraemon material these days is credited to him.

Doraemon himself is very much like the Bugs Bunny or Mickey Mouse of Japan. His image is plastered on tons upon tons of merchandise. Other than the popular comics and films there is Doraemon candy, assorted sweets and pastries, t-shirts, hats, toys, video games, radio dramas, record albums and CDs, story books, and a heluva lot more. His popularity in Japan is the kind that Walt Disney could only DREAM about.

Now considering his increcible popularity, in my view it's only a matter of time before Doraemon starts making his way over here. He's far too popular in Japan to not eventually show up here. Sure, it may begin as a bastardized version from 4Kids!, but eventually I think even the manga will find it's way over here. 'Course, I could be wrong.

Angelcake - you always seem to show up and post in the off-topic forum about yet another manga I have some knowledge about/interested in. Doraemon is a rather simple children's manga - but lord knows I've wished I had a robot cat with a magic pocket a few times myself!

I know there's a bi-lingual edition of Doraemon out there, so bringing it over to North America wouldn't be that hard. I wonder if it would translate culturally though. There's a few things in there that I wonder if North American kids would "get".

Still... interesting.

I really like Doraemon. Although, as Strobe said, it is pretty simple and aimed at children, it has a certain charm that makes it a great read for me. I wish it would be licensed, especially since bilingual editions are pretty hard to come by. If I ever have the opportunity, I'll try to get some of it in French.

However, I'm not sure how successful the franchise would be over here. From what I've seen, Doraemon isn't very well known here, and I doubt that it will really appeal to new readers due to its age, which is a shame.

I have all 193 eps of Astroboy 1963 series, & was stumped only once or twice as to what was going on. In Manga, Manga, Schodt tells of a man who, although he knew no Japanese, 'read' an entire manga book just by looking at the pictures, & who marvelled at the fact. I wonder if this is a trend in manga?