With 1,787 regular episodes plus 30 specials over 26 years, this series is the second-longest-running anime in Japan, behind only Sazae-san.

After the 1973 Doraemon anime ended, the rights were left in limbo when its production company, Nippon TeleMovie, folded; producer Daikichirō Kusube eventually secured trust from creator Hiroshi Fujimoto (Fujiko F. Fujio) to bring the series to Tokyo Movie.

When Kusube asked Fujimoto for permission to remake the anime in 1977, Fujimoto initially stayed silent and then asked for a written proposal explaining how the new version would present Doraemon, saying he wanted to personally choose who he 'married his daughter' to this time, since the first anime adaptation had been a disappointment.

Director Isao Takahata, who had a prior connection with Kusube, was recruited to write the pitch proposal that ultimately convinced Fujimoto to approve the new anime.

Before landing at TV Asahi, the show's proposal was rejected by Yomiuri TV due to management skepticism, and only found a home after TV Asahi programmer Takahashi Hiroshi pushed for a new low-rated evening slot to be filled, eventually greenlighting the pilot titled 'Benkyō-beya no Tsuribori'.

Many of the iconic catchphrases associated with the characters — such as Doraemon's self-introduction ending in 'desu,' Jaian's boastful self-introduction, and Shizuka's nickname 'Shizuka-chan' — were not in the original manga but were ad-libbed and invented by the voice actors themselves, notably Nobuyo Ōyama and Michiko Nomura.

Voice actress Nobuyo Ōyama deliberately shaped Doraemon's personality to be gentler and more protective than in the source material, insisting the character, being a robotic babysitter, would not use rough language or call Nobita by name without an honorific.

Because the show initially aired in a daily 10-minute weekday slot, maintaining consistent character art was difficult, and some episodes suffered from notably poor or inconsistent animation quality; these episodes were deliberately excluded from home video releases until a later boxed set.

Complaints from creator Fujiko F. Fujio about character designs not resembling the manga and Doraemon's inconsistent proportions led the studio to redraw the character model sheets starting in the show's second year of production.

Although Doraemon's canonical height is stated as 129.3 cm, the animators deliberately drew him at an effective 100 cm on screen simply because it looked cuter, exaggerating his height difference with Nobita far more than in the manga or the 1973 anime.

Composer Shunsuke Kikuchi scored the series and its films for over 20 years, and the theme song single 'Doraemon no Uta' had sold 1.5 million copies in Japan by 1987.

The show's highest-ever recorded audience rating in the Kanto region was 31.2% on February 11, 1983, and producer Kimura Junichi noted that ratings in Southeast Asia commonly exceeded 70%.

An unofficial English dub was bootlegged in Malaysia by Speedy Video, while an official Canadian dub titled 'The Adventures of Albert and Sidney' aired only in Barbados, and a planned U.S. broadcast on Superstation WTBS never materialized.

In late 2004, TV Asahi publicly announced a complete voice cast replacement for the show's 2005 renewal, ending the original run of the five main voice actors who had held their roles continuously since the very first episode in 1979.