#[I love Tiny!Vengeful!Hiro]

[kingofthewilderwest]

Which Big Hero 6 character is your favorite? Who do you think you'd be friends with? Which superpower/gadget from the movie would you choose, and if you could make your own, what would it be? Which part made you the saddest/cry the hardest? A lot of people want Tadashi to come back in a sequel, do you? Why or why not? What's your favorite message in the movie? Thoughts on the animation quality? Is Tuffnut Fred's ancestor? You don't have to answer all these unless you want to, but thank you! =D

O.O WHOA BARRAGE OF QUESTIONS WHAT??????

Heehee, I’m going to teasingly slip in this gif, but know I didn’t make the gif with any intention of being mean - I’m just making a joke. ^.^ This is a tidal wave of questions - feel free to send multiple, more manageable asks anytime you like - but it’s also way fun to be able to talk Big Hero 6 with someone. Feels like I haven’t had a good conversation about this wonderful story in ages, and seriously, I’m in THE MOOD to have a conversation about this story. So thanks so much for sending a BH 6 conversation starter!!!

Which Big Hero 6 character is your favorite?

Hiro Hamada, by a long shot. I feel as though Hiro has an endearing, natural charisma to his personality. The young cockiness combined with a lack of forward direction, the powerful intellect juxtaposing his obvious youthfulness, the sincere expression of his emotions jutting against how he attempts to hide his more vulnerable sides. From the very start of his character introduction, I was hooked. There’s so much to enjoy about his character.

On top of that, the writers delve into Hiro deeply. He’s treated with far more nuance and emotional complexity than other characters in the film - given as Big Hero 6 is, first and foremost, a story about how a young boy handles loss. Hiro is the one whose grief is explored. He’s the one where we see how someone can lose motivation, can become listless at grief… who can get wrapped up in anger, can make dark emotional decisions from the pain of his past… who can attach to old relics, find love in his brother’s legacy… who can find hope in overcoming, who can become determined, who can grow past the wounds of mourning and rise to a strong future. Watching Hiro go through all these understandable and powerful emotions, it’s impossible for me not to sympathize with him or relate with him.

I do find it interesting… increasingly less do I identify with teenaged characters. Their personal struggles, their mental stage in life, it’s become increasingly distant from my own mindset and current life challenges. It’s often easier to relate with characters who are at about the same maturity stage as oneself. But despite me being… eleven… years older than Hiro, and me definitely feeling our “age” gap, I connect to him far more than anyone else in Big Hero 6. His story, his emotions… they are the ones that I can relate most to. 

And there is something to be said that the movie’s focus on him makes him skewed to be more dimensional and appealing.

Who do you think you’d be friends with?

Potentially none of the characters from San Fransokyo Institute of Technology, if I’m going to be honest. It’s not that we wouldn’t get along - I don’t think we’d have those issues. But I do think it’d be hard for me to befriend people who are in the world of innovative physical sciences STEM, for as much as I appreciate that branch of science and read up on it for fun, it’s also not my strength, specialty, and expertise. For better or for worse, a lot of friendships in the college world come through sharing disciplines. Again, not always, and I did make friends from the engineering program when I was at the university, but it does make it more likely if we’re in more adjacent fields. I wouldn’t spend as much time with them, I wouldn’t be able to have classes with them, I wouldn’t relate as much to them, I wouldn’t feel like “part of the group” with them, I might not even have the chance to meet them.

Especially because… let’s be real… I wouldn’t go to San Fransokyo Institute of Technology.

So that, combined with me being with a severe introvert who enjoys making friends but usually doesn’t interact with buoyant socialness, means I probably wouldn’t make friends with that cohesive clique.

I think the person I’d be most likely to befriend would be Fred. Hands down Fred. Someone with his level of enthusiasm is hard for me to say “no” to, and I do appreciate friends like Fred in my life! I’d have a great time with someone dressed up in a mascot costume who adores superheroes and comic books and nerd culture. I’d find his presence quite welcome. We’d have lots to talk about. Should be fun!

Which superpower/gadget from the movie would you choose?

Baymax’s ability to fly. Or the ability to ride on Baymax like Hiro does. ;)

If you could make your own superpower/gadget, what would it be?

Realistically I don’t think I’d be able to make my own gadget. But let’s assume that I could, or that I had people helping me. I’d first and foremost want invisibility. That has an infinite number of uses, not to mention keep me pretty safe in conflict. After that, I’d figure out some cool things to go along with it.

Thoughts on the animation quality?

It’s a pretty movie with some fascinating lighting and color choices in a few scenes. There’s much that’s nice on the eye. 

I think the design of San Fransokyo is my favorite part of the artistic choices - the combination of Eastern and Western architecture, all the tiny little details, the signs and billboards and posters and people, it’s very fun. There’s always more for the eye to appreciate and love there.

Oh, and I own the art book, so methinks that says something about my opinion of the movie’s animation!

Here, let’s post some appreciative screencaps since we’re talking about it:

Ahhhhhh… like seriously? Aren’t these screencaps nice??? Isn’t this barrage of images WONDERFUL?

I like how there’s even a bit of scuffing on Hiro’s mask and armor during his fight with Callahan - as would only happen in the midst of action! 

Also, the more I’m thinking about it and browsing through screencaps, the more I’m seeing some REALLY fascinating potential metaphors with the color red, so. Maybe I’ll need to talk about that sometime in depth. But yeah I’ve got more or less zero major complaints with how BH 6 is animated.

Is Tuffnut Fred’s ancestor?

I prefer to keep characters who are voiced by the same voice actor separate according to the fact they are separate characters. Yes, T. J. Miller has a very distinctive voice and ad-lib style, and there is much to be compared between Fred’s personality and Tuffnut’s, but I don’t like the idea of theorizing characters are related due to some sort of meta detail like VA. Feel free to headcanon as you like! I’m personally going to keep Fred and Tuffnut in the separate, respective realms they are. They’re separate characters and I enjoy them best thinking about them separately.

Which part made you the saddest / cry the hardest?

Big Hero 6 has never made me cry, but it is touching and meaningful. When Tadashi first dies is always raw, so I’ll probably go with that. That’s when you feel him being missing - feel that hole - the “loudest.” But there are other scenes that deserve to be talked about for how they touch the heart regarding loss.

A lot of people want Tadashi to come back in a sequel - do you? Why or why not?

A few flashbacks could be okay, done right and not blatantly repeating the theme of the first movie, but that’s where I’d want it to stop. Tadashi in the past is fine. But Tadashi turning out to be alive would be a disappointment to me in such a hypothetical sequel - which as far as I’m aware, they took away the movie sequel prospects in favor of the current show.

The central message of Big Hero 6 is about loss. It’s about the fact that when someone is gone, they are gone, they aren’t ever coming back, they can’t come back. That’s what’s so emotional, touching, and powerful about Big Hero 6: there’s no magical cop-out whereby Hiro can get that hole in his heart reversed. If Tadashi returns alive, though, that slaughters the truth and importance behind the movie’s message. Suddenly, a story that is about how life can proceed respectfully and healthily forward without someone… is swept over in favor of unrealistic ideal outcomes. For me that would be a complete disrespect to the entire point of the story Big Hero 6 is.

I’m attached to Big Hero 6 because it doesn’t give me the rose-tinted “everything can be mended as before.” It’s still a story of hope and inspiration, but it doesn’t do that by wiping over the legitimate pain and suffering people share. We need to keep the pain and the suffering and the loss of Tadashi Hamada if we want Big Hero 6 to retain its meaning.

What’s your favorite message in the movie?

That’s what I talked about in the first post! XD It’s the message that there’s no way to reverse loss, but there is a way to heal.

There are other wonderful messages in BH 6 - the power of friends, the power of healing, and also one point that I don’t think is talked about enough: how we can react to loss in vengeful bitterness or respectful loving legacy. And I like those messages, too. There is some good content in the heart of this story.