Big Hero 6

Baymax has the potential for good stuff as an anthology series with Baymax being the one character we always follow. In that travelling hero sort of way, but the use of comedy may hamper any potential the show has.

It looks like many of the shows they're coming up with are quirky character shows separated from the premise of their movie. Baymax looks more or less like "Baymax goes around doing fun stuff without the superhero aspect." We've known for a while that Zootopia+ is "the fun adventures of the Zootopia residents, rather than the cop aspect." The Cars show looks the same.

The Tiana show sounds like it's going to be a semi-sequel to the movie, though.

Looking back, I feel like this show wasted it's run. Tangled, despite not even needing a show, managed to give more depth to most of its characters and also introduce new and interesting ones. Big Hero 6 on the other hand was practically begging for a series, but failed to really add any depths to its characters, and managed to make them even more one-dimensional. Only Krei and his assistant actually got any more depth, and in the case of the latter, that was because she didn't say anything in the movie. The new characters introduced were mostly uninteresting, with the exception of a few, mostly the Arc villains. And once those arcs were up you never saw them again, meaning any change or growth was gone.

Also, the show was depressingly white for what is supposed to take place in San Francisco, a city that is in our world about 34% Asian and 39% White, and this show takes place in the future, and an alternate one at that too, where there is supposed to have been a lot of Japanese immigration in the past. As of today, 21% of San Francisco is Chinese ethnicity alone, meaning that in this setting, for Japanese culture to have such a heavy influence on the city (to the point of even changing it's name), there would have to be even more people of Japanese descent, then Chinese. Asians would be an outright majority with such a number. The show, in my opinion, doesn't reflect that. Considering the amount of new characters introduced, it looks even less diverse then the actual San Francisco.

Meanwhile, Tangled is probably even more racially diverse then it had any expectation to be. It's not a lot, but a couple of Black and Asian characters in a setting where one wouldn't expect there to be any at all, is something.

Also, this show had a real problem with giving so much time to its annoying characters. Fred and Noodle Burger Boy were just annoying. And given a lot of screen time. It's weird actually. We didn't need Fred to be so childish, as Baymax himself is the kid-appeal character. Now, if Fred were given some moments were he had to be genuinely mature, I wouldn't feel as annoyed by him taking so much of the spotlight, but that didn't happen. In fact, I'd dare say he got even more immature, as he now has a rival that's like a full ten years younger then him.

And frankly, it didn't seem like the show know what it was doing. Tangled had a whole myth arc planned out with each threat leading to the other. Meanwhile, the arcs here seemed disjointed, with Obake being gone for good at the end of Season 1, Liv Amara having nothing to do with him and taking up half a season, and then Trina being messily reintroduced at the end of Season 2. NBB, while related to Obake, just wasn't a big threat like the other three, and so came off as more of a nuisance then anything else. Momakase was frankly more dangerous then what would be allowed to be shown on screen, but since she was such a serious villain, she only appeared at the side of the first two arc villains, and only had two episodes were she wasn't working for them (her final appearance doesn't count). Other then that, she never appears, meaning that we get stuck having to see the comedic villains.

I mean I can see why the Execs decided to have the show re-tooled by season 3 and then cut that season in half. While I'm not sure if Tangled had better ratings then BH 6, it knew where it was going and could justify having three seasons due to its overarching plot. And it frankly did fun episodes better. BH 6 didn't do fun episodes well, as while the humor of Tangled would come from the characters personalities (Rapunzel getting pissed is funny), the characters of BH 6 barely had enough personality depth to make their reactions to anything funny. They pretty much act like how you expect them to based on their archetypes.

I'm rambling, but yeah this show was a waste in my opinion. Tangled didn't need a show, but made something wonderful with it. BH 6 was practically begging for a continuation in the form of a series, and did barely mediocre with it.

There's an expression about how good art comes when it has limits. The Tangled Series is a good example because right from the start, that show knew that it had a limited run and that it had to maintain being in-between the continuity of the movie and that one special where Maximus and Pascal recover the wedding rings. Disney also maybe had less control over Tangled when it wanted to get ambitious because cancelling their return to a Disney Princess with her own tv show would have looked bad, but that's . BH6 had probably a tough role since a sequel was confirmed relatively early in the TV show's production so anything done in the TV show would probably not get brought up in the movie. See the HTTYD franchise for example. Despite getting the team behind Kim Possible, I don't know how much control they allowed to do for BH 6 since the movies had dominant story power. That's probably why Fred, Hiro and Baymax got more plots than Go Go, Wasabi and Honey Lemon. When you aren't allowed to make real names from nicknames of character, you tend to stick to the characters who at least have real names and homes that the audience saw. The Diversity thing though may be a case of creating a superhero supporting cast first (including villains) with diversity coming later on as a "Oh I knew we forgot something". Because conceptually a lot of BH6's rogues gallery couldn't be turned diverse without compromising their gimmicks. High Voltage being a mother daughter duo with a little bit of Honey Boo Boo DNA, Mr Sparkles is a westernized take on the eccentric Japanese Game Show host so making him Asian ruins the joke, Ned Ludd couldn't be anything but white, Supersonic Sue and Baron von Steamer are rooted in The Silver Age of Comic Books which weren't a diverse time for heroes or villains, Momokase got lucky since her concept involved being in an Iron Chef parody. The Arc Villains have reasons to be how they are, and Globby and the Food Robots are excused due to being nonhuman even though Globby used to be. There were probably also many other cut concepts but I think the point is made. BH6 did waste it's potential most likely because higher ups would have gone a different direction if the show went a certain way when the show walked a tightrope. But this is still.

Yeah, even if you removed all of the Executive Meddling out of the way, I do think this show's biggest weakness is how underdeveloped anyone who wasn't Hiro and Fred was. They didn't have any character arcs or development. We didn't see their lives or any relatives or their own group of friends. I do wonder if there was a mandate restricting the use of most of the crew, since even the show's OCs like Momakase and Globby felt more realized than half the main cast.

I don't think there was anything wrong with the show having seasonal villains. I don't think Obake needed to return since he had a good send-off and I liked the idea that his legacy would be haunting the city after his death. It's just too bad that the legacy ended up being Trina and NBB. The former needed a lot more time to develop and flesh out before she could work as a major antagonist. The latter was an overused gag character that you could tell was NEVER meant to be a main villain before the mandates kicked in. Liv had potential, but she should've had her own season to actually achieve said potential. At the very least, we know "City of Monsters" was meant to be a three-parter before plans changed.

And though the shit to full humor for the final season was also a mandate, I'd argue the tone issues were present in season 2, especially the latter half. It's why the conflict between BH 6 and the police lacked any weight, and why Trina's emergence as a major antagonist fell flat. The bombardment of Fred episodes definitely didn't help.

I don't think a BH 6 sequel was ever officially announced. Maybe that could've affected the lack of development for most of the cast, but the Dreamworks shows certainly didn't care if they contradicted any future movies.

I have to admit, I have something of a soft spot for Season 3, because I felt that Gogo the Wowerzoo, or whatever that episode's name was, where she acts as a teacher was pretty interesting. It really brought Gogo out of her comfort zone, and forced her to see a new side of herself. That's literally the only redeeming thing I felt about the season and umuch of the show as a whole. Unfortunately, the rest of the show acts like that moment in the movie in which she hugged Hiro, no questions asked, didn't happen and that it's super super unusual for her to not be edgy or unemotional.

Ironically, Cassandra from Tangled, who sort of has a similar dynamic with Rapunzel that Gogo has Honey Lemon, had many more moments of showing different sides of herself. She wasn't just all "aloof badass".

Yeah, I agree with that. It was nice to see them actually do something with the premise of the group moving on from college and onto professional life that the premiere set up and otherwise ignored. I think it undercut itself a bit by making a big deal of Go Go hugging a kid for the reason you mentioned, though.

I wonder if the potencial for sequels could also harm things.

Like, for what I know the writer have said they dont have any plan for a tangle sequel and they dont want to make one. And given that movie was release a whooping 12 years ago(men, I feel old) is clear new material wont be overide by sequels. Which probably help to some extent since what the show said about rapunzel power it stay

New trailer for Baymax!

So I'm guessing this ignores the tv show that came out a while back?

Sure looks like it. I think I saw something that explicitly said so, but I can't remember where, if at all.

There was a tweet/rumor posted by one of the Disney TVA fan accounts that said that the people who did the movie were basically writing the series off as "non-canon" because they reportedly hated it.

It was a baseless rumor that was quickly discarded.

This is a show based off of the movie, not the TV show. I'm not expecting any references to the series, but not because they're writing it off or they hated it. They're probably just doing their own thing.

Hiro looks a bit strange here. It must be the lighting. But, I have to say, looking at the this trailer, I realize now how much the animation/art style of the movie helped to add to its charm. The art style of the show on the other hand doesn't do it favors. I am also realizing that emphasizing Baymax's medical nature isn't a bad path to go on. The superhero stuff is rather generic as far as the franchise goes (its just not a strength as BH 6 doesn't even provide an interesting superhero premise like say My Hero Academia or other non-DC/Marvel superhero settings), while its the movies' setting/look (which can only be done justice in its original CGI style), characters (Baymax and Hiro mostly) that make it interesting. As the show leaned into common Superhero tropes too much (with Fred lampshading them), it wasn't able to really form its own identity, I think. It all seemed too self-aware. And since it didn't even really try to rectify any of the movies weaknesses, in particular with the characterization of the rest of the team, the show in the end just ended up feeling not all that additional to the franchise as a whole.

I mean, if the series is any indication, Hiro is a year older from the end of the last movie. Maybe puberty is finally catching up to him.