Hiro and Baymax are back! Last week, Disney XD announced a new Big Hero 6 television show based on the Academy Award-winning animated movie. Set to premiere in 2017, the show is going to pick up where the movie left off and focus on Hiro’s adventures at San Fransokyo Institute of Technology.
While it’s agreed that we can probably expect more witty banter, fist bumps and life lessons, we also have some other expectations for the direction of the show. Let’s take a look at what we want to see going into it.
1. No Culture-Washing
Big Hero 6 is so obviously multicultural that it may seem like we shouldn’t have a problem with it. However, the Big Hero 6 comic originally took place in Japan and had an all-Japanese cast of characters. The movie not only played on stereotypical Asian architecture to create the city of San Fransokyo instead of just setting it in Tokyo, it also changed the ethnicities of three of the six main characters in order to create non-Asian characters Honey Lemon, Wasabi and Fred. Nobody is saying that we don’t like these characters BUT erasing the Asian-ness of the original BH6 is not cool. While some of these things probably won’t be changed for the TV show, maybe Disney can introduce some of the original Asian heroes and villains from the comic book.
2. Science!
Big Hero 6 is based around science and the movie was chalk-full of the coolest science and technology. While science in fictional stories is always kind of questionable, it’d be super exciting if the show brought current theoretical and practical sciences to life in bigger and better cartoon form (for educational purposes of course). And, of course, it’d add more cool inventions to the BH6 arsenal.
3. Backstory on Hiro’s Family (i.e. bring Tadashi back)
Obviously, Tadashi (Daniel Henney) probably won’t make an appearance in the current timeline of television show, but we can still dream a little about seeing him in flashbacks. In the movie, Hiro and Tadashi live with their Aunt Kass (Maya Rudolph) and there’s no real explanation as to what their lives were like before the death of their parents, so the one way to bring him back would be to develop Hiro’s backstory, which could also inform how he handles certain situations at school.
4. Integration with the Marvel Universe
People forget that Big Hero 6 is technically a Marvel movie (complete with an after-credits scene with a Stan Lee cameo). We probably won’t be seeing Baymax and Hiro in the Infinity Wars movies, but it would be cool to see BH6 team up with Marvel characters like Spider-man or Iron Man (who many have proposed made a cameo in the Nerd Lab in the film) or to integrate the Infinity Wars plot in there some how.
5. More Glorious Baymax Humor (Accompanied By Equally Glorious Hiro Sarcasm)
More visual and verbal gags such as running out of batteries, not being fast, and constantly diagnosing Hiro with puberty and other teen afflictions.
Images via Disney