Classic manga at its best.

도라에몽 1
FUJIKO FUJIO / 대원씨아이(만화) / 1995년 1월

As a 'gag' manga for children, the series has no real progression; our hero is always a fourth-grader, and rarely do changes carry over from story to story. As a glimpse into Japanese family life, though, DORAEMON is priceless. We see Nobita's parents as very typical for Japan of the 1970s, with the father a stocky and mellow salaryman, and the mother a hardworking housewife whose job it is to make sure Nobita studies hard and does his chores. Although ferocious when angry, she is also caring and smart; at heart she just wants her son to grow up to become a decent, hardworking adult with a bright future.

Nobita's friends include the class bully nicknamed Gian (presumably based on the word 'giant'), the class rich kid Suneo who usually acts as Gian's lieutenant, the gentle and smart girl Shizuka and the occasionally appearing super-brilliant Dekisugi (which can be read as 'over done' or 'overly perfect'). There's also their schoolteacher, a stern man who has no compunction against sending Nobita off to stand in the hallway for being late. In all this, Doraemon acts as the childhood friend or older sibling we all wish we could've had: caring, smarter than us, with a sense of justice, imperfect and fallible enough to not be irritating, and with a magic pocket that can produce the solution to any problem.

A typical DORAEMON story starts with Nobita suffering from the abuses of Gian and Suneo, or doing badly in school, coming home crying, and being comforted by a tried but true Doraemon. Doraemon patiently (or resignedly) digs into his four-dimensional pocket and produces a new gadget that (it seems) might offer the perfect cure for the problem...until Nobita or his friends get too greedy (and even Doraemon's been known to screw things up from time to time).