Doraemon

Doraemon  is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by the manga writing team Fujiko Fujio. The series has also been adapted into a successful anime series and media franchise. The story revolves around a robotic cat named Doraemon, who travels back in time from the 22nd century to aid a pre-teen boy named Nobita Nobi. The Doraemon manga series was first published in December 1969 in six different magazines. A total of 1,345 stories were created in the original series, which are published by Shogakukan under the Tentōmushi manga brand, extending to forty-five volumes. The volumes are collected in the Takaoka Central Library in Toyama, Japan, where Fujiko Fujio was born. Turner Broadcasting System bought the rights to the Doraemon anime series in the mid-1980s for a US English-language release, but canceled it without explanation before broadcasting any episodes. In July 2013 it was announced that the manga would be released digitally in English via the Amazon Kindle e-book service. It is one of the best-selling manga in the world, having sold over 100 million copies.

Awards for Doraemon include the Japan Cartoonists Association Award for excellence in 1973, the first Shogakukan Manga Award for children's manga in 1982,and the first Osamu Tezuka Culture Award in 1997. In March 2008 Japan's Foreign Ministry appointed Doraemon as the nation's first "anime ambassador.Ministry spokesman explained the novel decision as an attempt to help people in other countries understand Japanese anime better and to deepen their interest in Japanese culture.The Foreign Ministry action confirms that Doraemon has come to be considered a Japanese cultural icon. In India, its Hindi translation has been telecasted, where the anime version is the highest-rated Kids show, it won the best Kids Show award at the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards India.n 2002 the anime character was acclaimed as an "Asian Hero" in a special feature survey conducted by Time Asia magazine.An edited English dub distributed by TV Asahi aired on Disney XD in the United States starting on July 7, 2014 at 12:30 PM, 11:30 AM (Central).

Name
The name "Doraemon" can be roughly translated to "stray." "Dora" derives from "dora neko" and is a corruption of nora (stray). "Emon" is an archaic component of male given names like Goemon. "Dora" is not derived from dora meaning gong, however the name is a pun on this and the fact that Doraemon loves dorayaki. The name "Doraemon"  is stylized as an unusual mixture of Katakana and Hiragana

Manga
In December 1969 the Doraemon manga appeared in six different children's monthly magazines published by Shogakukan. The magazines were aimed at children from nursery school to fourth grade. In 1977 CoroCoro Comic was launched as the flagship magazine of Doraemon.

Since the debut of Doraemon in 1969, the stories have been selectively collected into forty-five books published from 1974 to 1996. Shogakukan published a master works collection consisting of Twenty volumes between July 24, 2009 and September 25, 2012.

In addition, Doraemon has appeared in a variety of manga series by Shōgakukan. In 2005 Shōgakukan published a series of five more manga volumes under the title Doraemon+ (Doraemon Plus), which were not found in the forty-five Tentōmushi pipi volumes. On December 1, 2014, a sixth volume of Doraemon Plus was published. This was the first volume for eight years. Ten volumes of the series were available in a bi-lingual edition by Shogakukan English Comics.

In July 2013, Fujiko Fujio Productions announced that they would be collaborating with ebook publisher Voyager Japan and localization company AltJapan Co., Ltd.to release an English language version of the Doraemon manga in full-color digitally via the Amazon Kindle platform in North America.Shogakukan released the first volume in November 2013.This English version incorporates a variety of changes to character names; Nobita is "Noby," Shizuka is "Sue", Suneo is "Sneech," and Gian is "Big G," while dorayaki is "Yummy Bun/Fudgy Pudgy Pie.