But in the style and colours used in this trailer they feel way more Chinese to me than Japanese. You will find them in Japan, in fact they’re not uncommon but that’s because China has had an incredible cultural impact on Japan. Seriously, those “Japanese” touches like the lanterns and the roofs that flare up at the corners. Because San Fransokyo looks great, it it’s meant to be San Beijing. What I did not expect is that they would get the wrong country. Either it could be clever and cute, a good way to point out cultural differences and make some gentle jokes about them, or it could be horribly, horribly offensive combining every stereotypical Japanese thing the creators could think of. When it was announced that this film would be set in an amalgam city of Tokyo and San Francisco I thought it could go one of two ways. I mean, I know that the odds that a character named Lord Deathstrike will appear in a Disney movie are about as likely as me voicing him but he sure does look like him doesn’t he? The animation is good, as to be expected of Disney, although you can now add me to the chorus of people who are getting a little sick of how samey Disney’s character designs are getting. A boy and his (insert noun here) stories work well for animation and children’s cinema and some of the greatest animated films of the past 20 years (The Iron Giant, How to Train your Dragon) have used it as a basis. Big Hero 6 is not a thematically dense concept, it basically amounts to “Hey Japan is different, lolz” so grabbing onto something in the property that shows more promise for exploration is a good idea. They’ve also chosen to focus on ” a boy and his robot” as their main story telling angle which I think is a good choice. I wish more Super-Hero stories in any medium had this tone and it certainly gives me Incredibles vibes.*
The low key slapstick, the mixture of humour with a genuinely threatening villain and the easy going heart to it. I love the tone this trailer gets across. However, Disney have opened up a whole new can of worms with some of their decisions. I’m pleased to see from this trailer that a lot of what I talked about has come to pass. Last year I wrote a piece explaining why I thought Disney had chosen Big Hero 6 as their first Marvel property to turn into an animated film and highlighting some of the issues in adapting the comic in a racially and culturally sensitive way.
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