Nobita's Time Heist

Nobita's Time Heist

Author: A Silly Little Fool

Project Description:

Upon waking up, he finds that technology has regressed to sixty years ago. In the town of Tsukimidai, all memories of Doraemon have vanished without a trace, along with the regression of time.

After many twists and turns, Nobita and his friends learn the truth: an unprecedented, massive, and time-spanning war is unfolding, and its target is the future where human technology is booming. The dominoes hidden in the past have already fallen, and are about to form a monstrous wave that will engulf every era of humanity.

The only clue is a snapshot that also spans time.

On September 19, 1492, at the center of a vortex of spacetime turbulence, the Time Police captured a photograph of the back of a blue nursing cat-shaped robot.

Taking this opportunity, Nobita and his friends are drawn into a time-traveling heist. As they uncover more and more clues across different eras, a massive conspiracy gradually comes to light.

Alien Journey

Chapter 1: A Chaotic Era

The fourth year after Doraemon left.

Tokyo, Japan, Nerima City, Tsukimidai Ward. The sky is clear and cloudless, the warm sunlight streaming through the windowpanes. The street noise isn't too jarring, perfect for a nap. This kind of comfortable weather is for doing absolutely nothing.

He lay lazily on the table, his school assignments spread out on the table, with only a few words hastily written on them.

"Da Xiong, the competition is about to start! Quick, get Dad a beer!"

"..." His father's voice pulled him from his sweet dream. He lifted his eyelids, glanced at the clock, and saw it was 2:20 PM.

"Nobita!"

"Honestly, it's just the Summer Koshien tournament, what's so interesting about a tournament that's only held once a year?" He rubbed his messy hair and muttered, "Doraemon? Doraemon, please, go get Dad his ice cream..."

The brief silence in the room quickly woke him from his sleep. He turned his head, only to see a tightly closed closet, like a wall blocking his way.

"...Ha...right, how could I forget again?"

Nobita rubbed his nose, chuckled, and looked up at the window. A small kingfisher was flying past outside. "You're home now, Doraemon."

"Nobita!"

"Okay, okay, I'll be right there!" Da Xiong called out and turned to go downstairs.

No one noticed that his desk drawer rattled and clicked, as if something was about to come out.

But in the end, his room remained just as quiet.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

"when--!!"

The sound of a beer can hitting the ground.

When Nobita opened the door and saw the exaggerated half-moon shape, his pupils dilated instantly, and the beer can involuntarily fell from his hand.

His father, Nobita, a man who had fully entered "middle age," was wearing a half-moon hairstyle that he had only seen in period dramas. He was lying casually in front of the TV, wearing short sleeves. The TV's resolution seemed to have regressed to decades ago, becoming an old-fashioned device that constantly flickered with static.

"Honestly, Nobita, why are you so clumsy? You can't even hold something properly."

Although Dad complained, he didn't seem angry. He quickly grabbed the beer and sat back down on the cushion.

"Speaking of which, your hair... it's really a bit of a mismatch. You should grow it longer and tie it into a short braid; it would look better that way." He pulled the tab out of his beer, took a casual sip, and then the sounds on the TV excited him. "Look, the football match has started!"

"Wh...what game?" Nobita had almost never heard of those two words before and was immediately confused. "Dad, aren't you the one who loves watching baseball the most?"

"Baseball? What's baseball?" The father looked equally confused. The two felt like they were talking at cross purposes. "Using a bat to hit a ball? What's so interesting about that?"

"..." Nobita instinctively sensed something was wrong, said nothing more, and ran out the door in a few steps.

The world outside was vastly different from what he remembered; in short, it felt like a regression of sixty or seventy years. All the skyscrapers taller than four stories were gone; the fastest mode of transportation on the streets was the bicycle. Everyone, regardless of age or gender, wore extremely retro clothing and sported extremely retro hairstyles. The once densely packed telephone poles had become sparse, as if that bustling world had never existed in the first place.

"Ring ring—"

The sound of bicycle bells rang in my ears, as if from another world.

"How could this be?"

After the initial panic, his first reaction was to run for his life. Fortunately, the town was still the familiar town, although it was much older overall, he still managed to run all the way to that familiar place based on his memory.

"Shizuka? Shizuka—!"

……

"What's up, Nobita-kun?"

Shizuka, dressed in red hakama with a white shoso over it, slowly walked out of the house, leaving him stunned for a moment. The girl before him was almost a completely different person from the one he remembered—she had an extremely long braid that reached all the way to her heels, tied in a standard Emoto knot, perfectly befitting the appearance of a court lady, which was quite fitting for her surname "Minamoto".

Although her appearance remained unchanged, it's easy to imagine that with this attire, she wouldn't be able to move around as freely as usual.

She clasped her hands together, lowered her eyes, and smiled slightly at him, giving off a businesslike vibe.

"You...you still remember me, right?"

"What's the latest joke?" The girl seemed to have carefully practiced even the way she laughed, sweet yet dignified. "Of course I remember you, aren't we classmates?"

"That's good."

Receiving this answer finally put him at ease. It seemed that no matter how the world changed, as long as the girl still recognized him, there was still room for negotiation. He leaned against the outer wall in front of the entrance, sighed in relief, and said with a sigh, "I don't really understand what happened either. Luckily, Doraemon has already gone back, otherwise, he would probably suspect me again, haha..."

"what……"

The laughter gradually subsided, and he saw the confusion in the girl's eyes, a very ominous premonition rising in his heart.

"Shizuka?"

"Doraemon...Emon? (A homonym for Doraemon, and the origin of the character's name)" Shizuka frowned, looking puzzled. "What is that?"

Suddenly, Nobita's worst fear came true.

"Doraemon! He has a round head, a mouth big enough to fit a washbasin, and he's blue. Although he always claims to be a cat, he's actually more like a raccoon dog. He's a cat-shaped robot from the 22nd century!" Nobita's forehead was covered in cold sweat as he gestured frantically, explaining, "He has a magical four-dimensional pocket filled with all sorts of amazing gadgets: the bamboo copter, the Anywhere Door, the Passage Ring... Don't you remember any of them?"

The girl shook her head in confusion, her eyes already showing some worry as she looked at him.

"Nobi-kun, are you... alright?"

This is a euphemistic way of asking a question; what it actually means is, "Are you alright?"

Memories related to Doraemon seem to have disappeared.

Nobita felt a chill run down his spine. Following this logic, at this moment, he might be the only person in the whole world who still remembered Doraemon.

future.

Something must have gone wrong in the future!

Without another word, he forcefully grabbed Shizuka's wrist, dragging the young lady of the noble family along, and said, "Come with me!"

"Nobi-kun?" Shizuka was startled by his actions and exclaimed in surprise, half-pushing and half-reluctantly following him. "What are you doing? This... let me go..."

"I'm sorry, Shizuka. Someone stole our memories." Nobita didn't turn around; when it came to Doraemon, every step he took was resolute. "I have to get them back!"

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

Half an hour later, at Nobita's house.

Downstairs, the football match continued. Upstairs, my most trusted friends had all gathered, although they weren't quite the same as I remembered... but at least they were all there.

"So, you made us drop everything and rush over just because you imagined a round, blue friend who's barely half my waist tall?" Fat Tiger crossed his arms, raised an eyebrow, and compared to his increasingly burly adult self, the room seemed far too small. "Nobita, you little rascal..."

“I always thought you weren’t very bright, but not to that extent.” Xiao Fu was the only one among them dressed in a more modern, or more accurately, more Western, style.

Even so, he scoffed at what Da Xiong was saying, "Are you possessed? My dad knows a good spiritual medium, supposedly from France..."

"Maybe it's caused by too much psychological pressure, Nobi-kun. Have you been going through something lately?" Dekisugi asked with concern.

"Nobi-kun..."

It's no wonder his friends were so shocked; Nobita did seem a bit off. In the photo album spread out in front of him, the backgrounds of all the photos had been replaced with those from the Taisho era, and the blue figure he claimed to have existed was nowhere to be seen.

His friends looked at him with increasingly strange expressions.

How could this be?

Am I really going crazy?

Author's message

------

The new book is here!

Chapter Two: The Butterfly on the Other Side of the Earth, Gently Fluttering Its Wings

"No no no no……"

When Nobita jumped up and opened the closet door, he finally breathed a sigh of relief. As if he had won something, he tossed the spare pocket, which he had been using as a cushion under his pillow, in front of everyone, let out a long sigh, and sat down again.

Gian and Suneo, who both sported samurai-style topknots, exchanged a glance, their gazes towards him growing increasingly strange.

"Even if you pull out your loincloth, it doesn't prove anything, does it?"

"This doesn't look like a loincloth at all! It's clearly a pocket, a four-dimensional spare pocket, the one I was talking about earlier, that can pull out a lot of amazing gadgets... I've got it!" He imitated Doraemon, pulling a projector out of the pocket along with a stack of discs, "[Memory Disc]—!!"

(Memory disc: In the form of a CD, used with a projector, it can store, read, modify, and delete a person's memories, just like editing a movie.)

"What's this?!"

Suneo and Dekisugi exclaimed in surprise. The latter even stepped forward, picked up the four-dimensional pocket, and examined it repeatedly, showing great curiosity. "How can such a big thing be pulled out of such a small pocket..."

"If you're going to be surprised, do it now. You'll remember soon enough." Nobita rummaged through the stack of CDs and quickly found four, each with his friends' names written on it: "Takeshi Gouda," "Suneo Honekawa," "Shizuka Minamoto," and "Hideaki Dekisugi."

“Not bad, Nobita, this kind of projector is quite rare. Do you want to put in a disc? Put in a couple of good ones.” Gian wasn’t interested in this magical pocket, and said with a grin, “I think Zatoichi is pretty good.”

"To be precise, it's not playing a disc... Please close your eyes for a moment."

Not knowing what he was up to, everyone did as he said, and Nobita was able to place the discs one by one on their foreheads. As planned, the four discs, once on their respective heads, were lifted up by an invisible force field and suspended at about the height of a fist. Pressing the projector's power button, the discs began to spin, injecting information into their brains.

"When Shizuka was taken to the ancient world, her memories were erased by the 'Forget-Me-Not Grass,' and she turned into the 'Red Mask,' right? Doraemon and I were almost scared to death... (This scene is from the 2012 anime 'Nobita's Encounter with the Masked Queen.')" Nobita said while setting up the memory fragments to be implanted in them. "Later, in order to prevent this situation of 'a companion being brainwashed and losing their memories,' Doraemon and I came up with a plan."

The last key was pressed, and the disc slowly spun, filling it with their unique memories.

“Every now and then, you’ll store some memories here on your own.” Seeing everyone’s eyes gradually clear from confusion, Nobita couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. No matter how the world changes, as long as his friends are there to support him, it doesn’t seem so scary anymore.

He also sincerely remarked that the plot of losing memories happens frequently in other anime, and such a misunderstanding would usually take eight or ten episodes to film, but in his case, it was over in less than half an afternoon.

……

"Oh my god, this outfit is so outrageous..." Shizuka looked at her own attire through the dimly lit window, then cupped her slightly flushed cheeks and said coquettishly, "What era's aesthetics are these? Edo period?"

“I’ve always wanted to have a samurai hairstyle, hmm, hmm.” Fat Tiger kept turning around, trying to admire his retro outfit through the blurry glass. “I always feel… a little strange.”

"Phew, thank goodness I left a backup with Nobita, otherwise we would have been in real trouble." Suneo visibly breathed a sigh of relief. "By the way, Nobita, how come you're completely unharmed?"

"I……"

Nobita was speechless for a moment. He thought about everything he had done that day, but still couldn't figure out the answer to the question.

"Oh dear, Suneo, you're still not used to it? He's always like this. Last time at the Para something-something lamp in Utopia… (from the 2023 theatrical film *Nobita's Ideal Land*)"

“Paldapia lamp,” Shizuka kindly added.

"Yeah, that's the lamp. It didn't affect Nobita at all, did it?" Gian waved his hand with an expression that said, "I'm used to it." "Just think of him as having a special constitution and being completely immune to brainwashing, right?"

"I know, it's America!" Dekisugi suddenly opened his eyes from his long period of contemplation and shouted in a low voice, which was unusual for him. He usually gave people the impression of being quiet and calm, so his shout had an unexpectedly good effect, immediately attracting everyone's attention.

Once the keywords were revealed, those who needed to understand understood, except for Nobita, who hadn't been bothered and was completely confused, unable to comprehend what they were saying.

Having high mental resistance also has its downsides. For example, Nobita has never lost his memories, so he can't keep up with their pace.

“I roughly compared the two memories, and the only difference is…” Dekisugi casually grabbed a piece of scrap paper from Nobita’s desk, sketched a world map with his pen, and lightly touched the pen tip to the vast landmass of North America. “Here!”

“In our memory, there is no such country as the ‘United States of America’. On the contrary, this land is still divided by warlords, drug lords, liberals, and refugees, and wars break out every now and then.” The handsome and talented young man tapped the map he had drawn freehand with his pen and analyzed, “If there is anything different, it should be this place.”

"That's strange." Fat Tiger shrugged. "They're a million miles away from us, so why would they have such a big impact?"

"..."

Perhaps noticing the strange looks his companions were giving him, Fat Tiger couldn't help but mutter to himself, "What's wrong? Did I... ask a really stupid question?"