Doraemon movies work because they let you watch Nobita fail upward with gadgets that shouldn't exist. This one trades the familiar Tokyo suburbs for Antarctica, which means the show gets to be genuinely weird about ice and ancient ruins instead of recycling the same five neighborhoods. The time-travel setup lets it play both directions at once, pulling you toward answers while spinning out new problems faster than Nobita can solve them.

Nobita and his friends come across an odd ring encased in ice, and it points them toward Antarctica in search of whoever owns it. Once there, they discover ancient ruins, and their search becomes an adventure shadowed by a grave threat: the whole Earth could end up frozen solid. The story draws on the idea of snowball Earth, a time roughly 700 million years ago when ice is said to have covered the planet for millions of years. Doraemon and the gang head off on a chilly journey in this comedy film.