Nobita suddenly finds himself walking through some kind of pink fog. Soon, he finds himself in some kind of forest during the night and thinks he's dreaming but fails to wake himself up despite hitting himself. When he hears some voices he finds some talking animals in humanoid form, out to test their bravery in the dark. After a policeman dog discovers and tells them off, Nobita finds the glowing flower they dropped behind. When the pink fog re-appears he finds himself outside his room with Doraemon standing over him. Of course, Doraemon doesn't believe he somehow visited a world full of talking animals like something out of a children's picture book.

The next night, the pink fog appears again close to Nobita's room. He decides to explore the world alone but gets caught in an intense typhoon. Thankfully Doraemon had heard him crying for help and ends up rescueing him. Along the way they also catch sight of a dog humanoid Chippo stranded on the raging river currents and ends up rescuing him.

As Nobita and his friends explore the newly discovered country, they learn there is a Forbidden Forest that everyone keeps away from. The adventurous Chippo invites them to join him in cracking the truth behind the origin of their country and the "Ladder of Light" but soon ends up having to face off invaders.

Played the Game Boy platformer when I was a kid and quite enjoyed it. I didn't know Japanese at the time so I fairly much just skipped the story but still remember some of the scenes. That said, I'm still not too keen on settings with talking animals so I was a bit relunctant to watch this because it'll probably be some very simple story than a big adventure, but as a Doraemon fan, I felt like I shouldn't just watch the good movies only.

Turned out to be pretty good.

It gets off to quite a good mysterious start although the 1980-90s movies usually have a darker atmosphere than the millenial ones. Fujio's always been an advocate of protecting the environment so we often see such messages in his works. Here we see a pretty harsh message about protecting the environment and not wasting resources so that there is enough to go around. In this movie as a side story, the hill behind the school has been bought for development and the locals, including Nobita's mum plan to protest as the local area has lost enough natural environments already.

I think this is the only Doraemon movie is probably also the only one that shows the English word "Post" on the front gate of the Nobi home. Also, other than the door change in Nobita's room, I realised the front gates has also changed from solid wooden gates to metal black gate in modern movies and the mailbox has moved to the wall.

You also get to see where the toilet is located in the Nobi home which is probably the first time in the movies (I don't watch the TV series any more). And the Anywhere Door seems to only work if you know the places you are travelling between.