Brand New Plot and Character Details For Disney's Big Hero 6

Those ever more popular Rotoscopers guys have teamed up with the always reliable Bleeding Cool to bring us all exclusive, brand new details about the characters and plot of Disney's hotly anticipated 2014 release, Big Hero 6!

Directed by Winnie the Pooh's Don Hall, Big Hero 6 will be Walt Disney Animation Studios' 54th animated feature film, and an adaptation of the lesser-known Marvel comic of the same name. The details come in video form, so check out Morgan Stradling (who wrote a great guest piece for us recently) giving you the lowdown below. Apparently it's spoiler free!



Set in fictional San Fransokyo, Big Hero 6 follows "a boy genius named Hiro Hamada, as he builds this robot to kind of take the place of his brother who recently was killed... He's dead-set" says Morgan, "on finding out who the identity of the killer is. But he can't do it alone, so he gets this group of young vigilantes together, and they are gonna figure out who dunnit."

Silhouettes of the characters from Disney's D23 Expo.

Here's what we learned about the film's characters from the video:

• Hiro: "Think Jimmy Neutron, but not as lame... He doesn't get along well with others, he's sort of misunderstood. He's actually a college student at San Fransokyo Tech with his brother Tadashi." Hiro and Tadashi (thanks to The Rotoscopers for clarifying the spellings of the names for us!) decide to do an Iron Man and make some cool metal robot-y stuff. Hiro's 14.
• Tadashi: "older brother of Hiro, and these two couldn't be more polar opposites," apparently. He's building "a caregiver robot, made of this soft, inflatable plastic material."
• Wasabi No-Ginger: A member of the research team led by Tadashi. He's "this African-American student who's really into this idea of creating a plasma blade... A plasma beam that'll cut things, but it won't cut humans." So like a lame lightsaber, I guess. Apparently he's "a man of few words."
•  Honey Lemon: "This super cute, bubbly blonde girl. Like a female Walter White," in so much as her love of Chemistry, apparently. There'll be no meth. This is still a Disney film after all. Very concerned about what she's wearing, but also likes blowing stuff up. As you do.
•  GoGo Tomago: Ticked off by Honey Lemon's curious outfits, thinking that she just does it to attract male attention. Y'know, like Mean Girls-y kinda stuff. "Sporty girl... super competitive. She has a really hard time taking orders from Hiro when eventually they form Big Hero 6.
• Fred: "Just Fred." No real purpose at the college, by the sounds of it; "he's just there."
• Cass: Hiro and Tadashi's mum, "she's nice, she's friendly." In Studio Ghibli-sounding fashion, she also runs a coffee shop out of the bottom level of her house.
• Yokai: The villain of Big Hero 6, who dons a Kabuki mask. His evil plan involves building "this big machine to get him into another dimension."
• Baymax: The big robot you can clearly see in both the concept art for the film that heads this post, and the character silhouettes above. "After Tadashi is killed, Hiro takes Tadashi's caregiver robot and kinda converts him into Baymax." Baymax is apparently a combination between Tadashi's caregiver robot and a fighting one that Hiro had previously made. The formerly soft, plushy robot is now cased in a suit of armour, but he still comes out with cheesy care-bear-esque lines.

Baymax as he appears in the Big Hero 6 comics.

Seems to be more akin with Wreck-It Ralph than Frozen; nice rotation between classic-with-a-twist Disney princess movies (Tangled, Frozen) and these very abstract, very intriguing concepts. These details have got me even more excited for the most intriguing Disney film in many a year. And with no Pixar offering next year anymore, this could be Disney's chance to shine out of their younger brother's shadow.

BC/The Rotoscopers have apparently got another collaboration in the works that looks "much, much further into the future." If we're going "much, much further," my money's on Ron and John's Moana, rather than, say, Byron Howard's Zootopia.

Big Hero 6 arrives in North American cinemas on 7th November, 2014. Us poor saps in the UK will have to wait until February, 2015 though. *sigh*

Thanks, Rotoscopers, for all this awesome news! Be sure to check out the new episode of their Animation Addicts podcast, with our good friend Pablo Ruiz talking about The Incredibles. Listen here.