Okay, so it’s a slice of life episode: Sure there’s a giant Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP) that suddenly flew in, crashed into an airliner killing all aboard, but the US Air Force instantly deciding to launch a nuke at it seems to have done more damage, and caused people to die.

Other than that, life seems to have moved on for the residents of Tokyo Bay in the 3 years since.

We also meet Kadode’s father, the manga editor, whom we met in episode 0 3 years in the future.

I liked the characterization of the girls as independent minded.

The girls’ world view is also interesting: They’re clearly aware of their slim prospects for a successful life, which resembles an attitude found in many online communities due to despair over climate change, lack of economic and social mobility due to income inequality, etc.

On another note, the “Isobeyan” that’s obviously a not-Doraemon analogue, but I don’t really understand the name:

“Isobe” means seashore, and isobe yaki is a crispy fried rice or potato cake that’s drizzled in soy sauce and wrapped in nori that sounds absolutely yummy

What does that have to do with an anthropomorphic mushroom who pulls stuff out of a 4th dimensional satchel?

The creation of the name “Doraemon” is well known, according to Wikipedia:

The name “Doraemon” can be roughly translated to “stray”. Unusually, the name “Doraemon” (ドラえもん) is written in a mixture of two Japanese scripts: Katakana (ドラ) and Hiragana (えもん). “Dora” derives from “dora neko” (どら猫, stray cat), and is a corruption of nora (stray),[9] while “-emon” (in kanji 右衛門) is an old-fashioned suffix for male names (for example, as in Ishikawa Goemon).

But like many Japanese words, it has multiple meanings based on puns on the sounds: “dora” can also mean lazy, which Doraemon certainly is, frequently pulling out gadgets to stop Nobita from bugging him, and the ending “-mon” is short for monster, which Doraemon, a kid sized anthropomorphic robot cat, arguably is.

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