Doraemon

Doraemon is an animated TV series, produced by TV Asahi and Shin-ei Animation since 1979.

Plot
Every episode usually revolves around the titular Doraemon character himself, a robotic cat sent back from the year 2112 to the present day in order to aid the troubled young boy, Nobita Nobi (also known as "Noby" in some adaptations). Nobita virtually always fails his tests, arrives at school late, ends up standing in the hall, being beaten up by neighbourhood bully Gian/Big G, having his jealousy provoked by "rich kid" Suneo/Sneech's bragging, and encounters mishaps when trying to impress his friend, Shizuka/Sue.

Nobita often asks Doraemon to pull gadgets out of his "4th-dimensional Pocket" in an attempt to rectify these solutions. Nobita, however, often fails to understand the power that these gadgets hold, and ends up letting the effects of such a gadget loose upon other people. On the other hand, Nobita does occasionally exploit these gadgets with somewhat unexpected, albeit neutral or positive, results.

History
Doraemon 's origins as a franchise trace back to 1969, as a series of manga strips that appeared in the CoroCoro children's comic magazine. Manga artists Hiroshi Fujimoto and Motoo Abiko, operating under the pen name "Fujiko Fujio", published a number of stories starring these characters.

In 1973, Nippon Television Network Corporation attempted to make an animated adaptation of the series. The anime failed spectacularly, with low viewership, budgetary issues that prevented the show's run from being extended, a backlog of only 26 episodes, and a fire that destroyed all archived footage of the cancelled series (except for the show's opening) years after the cancellation.

An attempt at restarting the failed anime series came in 1979, when TV Asahi and Shin-ei Animation started another Doraemon series, that would become the de facto standard of all future episodes. This version was a massive success, and even broke outside of Japan, with Europe, South-east Asia and India being the most notable export markets. The show ended on March 18, 2005, with TV Asahi having aired 1,787 episodes prior to that date. This only proved to be a mere short-term hiatus, as the show would return to the air a month later (April 15, 2005) after redesigns of the characters and a new animation style were introduced. This is often referred to as being totally separate from the 1979 series, despite their close proximity to each other with respect to their cancellation/premiere times respectively. The 2005 series continues to this day, and has spawned even more spin-off media and merchandise.

Asia
The Doraemon series found many fans in south-east Asia and India, where adaptations of the show ran on Hungama, RCTI, GMA, and many other networks. Official merchandise does not seem to be a point of focus, with virtually all Doraemon output coming from the anime series alone.

Europe
Doraemon somehow became a smash-hit success story on the Iberian peninsula, where LUK Internacional licensed and distributed the show in Spain, Portugal, and their outlying territories. LUK also produced a spin-off game show known as "Doraemon Land".

Other European licensors have expanded the series' outreach to France, Poland, Italy, and the United Kingdom.

North America
Many licensors and networks have attempted to air the Doraemon anime series in the lucrative United States market:
 * "Cable superstation" WTBS picked up the rights to the series in 1985, but never aired a single episode. Some people later put the blame on:
 * Potential controversies surrounding its content, due to differences on what is deemed suitable for American and Japanese children respectively,
 * The cost of producing a new localised adaptation, similar to those that would later run in other countries, and
 * Some people dismissing it as simply being "too Japanese" to garner any interest from American children.
 * TV Japan aired the original Japanese version of Doraemon until January 2014, with no reason being given for its cancellation.
 * TV Asahi entered an agreement with Bang Zoom Entertainment and Disney-ABC Television Distribution to create an "international standard" Doraemon dub that would air on the Disney XD cable network in the US. This marks the first time that the series has ever aired on North American television. An accompanying translation of the original manga was released as a series of Amazon Kindle e-books, and later sold as physical printed versions.

Worldwide
The Aso Broadcasting System (partially owned by Nippon TV and TV Asahi) has aired the original Japanese series internationally as of 1997. ABS airs all episodes on a weekly basis, with English subtitles. According to TV Asahi, "there's just a two-week delay between us airing an episode in Japanese, and them [ABS] airing the same episode, albeit translated, internationally".

Much like LUK Internacional, ABS has also produced a live-action spin-off of the series, this time under the title "Doraemon: A Visit to the 22nd Century". This show has no relation to the Doraemon Land show that aired in Spain.

Merchandising
Merchandise is widespread and encompasses many different categories. Numerous video games starring the characters have been released, and virtually any type of product that appeals to children has at least one Doraemon-themed variant; from specially-packaged foodstuffs, to special television remote controls, to plush figures of the main characters.

Doraemon DVDs are produced so frequently that some Kabushiki Gaisha ABS insiders have claimed that "it's impossible to keep track of how many of the blasted things they [TV Asahi] have released".

Kabushiki Gaisha ABS has, as of 2005, started creating and distributing merchandise created for the international market. Officially licensed and produced DVDs have been distributed by ABS ever since the 2005 reboot, but not on a scale comparable to the Japanese releases until 2013, when they started releasing more and more Doraemon DVD titles into their worldwide online store. The main DVD section of ABS' online shop actually had to exclude all Doraemon titles from its listings and place them on a separate page "simply because there's too many of them".