You're watching the origin story of the robot cat everyone grew up with, except it hits different when you realize Doraemon wasn't always the perfect helper, he was broken, desperate, and chose to go back in time for a kid nobody else believed in. The movie strips away the comedy-of-the-week formula and shows you why this bond matters: two broken things finding each other. By the end, you understand that every ridiculous gadget, every scolding, every time he stuck around anyway, it all meant something from the start.
On September 3, 2112, a robot cat named Doraemon is built at the Matsushiba Robot Factory, starting out yellow, with ears and a much higher voice. Two terrorists fleeing the police through a time warp short out the factory's power, and a jolt of electricity knocks Doraemon off the line into the industrial garbage. A female robot cat, Noramyaako, pulls him away from the blast furnace, and he falls for her at once. In training he keeps failing his tests, apparently because of the accident, but his kind-hearted maker places him in a class of unusual robots, where he runs into Noramyaako again. This comic fantasy film serves as a prequel to the whole series, showing how Doraemon was made, how he came to lose his ears, and how he met the Nobi family before heading back to the past to help Nobita.
