1. Everything is Based On Existing Technology

Animation-wise, it was a brilliant move to create a squishy robot that can emote and embody the ‘nurse as hero’ idea that Baymax is meant to represent.

But us tech nerds are already aware that the soft, huggable vinyl balloonbot, takes inspiration from Carnegie Mellon University’s work on soft robotics, inflatable robots currently in development for medical use. Soft robotics aren’t only useful for safety and smooshability reasons, but for any human-machine interaction where haptic response is best done in a less, well, robotic kinda way.

The microbot technology introduced by Hiro where a number of small robots work together under a hivemind to build larger versions of themselves is also rooted in technology as old as 6 years ago.

Even the floating wind turbines are for realsies.

As you stare at this arrangement of pixels glowing through your device’s screen, beamed at high-speed through internationally connected underground cables, let it be known that yes. The future is here, just not evenly distributed.

2. Cultural Mashups

The name San Fransokyo clearly hints at a mashup of architectural styles and a mesh of visual culture, as the trailers and posters show.

But more than that, it’s the way the cultural harmony never gets its face in the story or is really even acknowledged by anyone directly.

The main character lives in a narrow, three-storey house where the ground floor is the family business (very Japanese), but the outside of the house looks like this:

Honey Lemon is the only character who enunciates Hiro Hamada’s name with the proper Japanese phonemes but nobody points it out. The fact that Hiro and Tadashi are the product of biracial parents are not even mentioned.

If you live in San Fransokyo, nobody cares what you are, just what you do. It brings hope for a future where we can get past where we come from and focus on where we’re going.

3. It’s Based On a Marvel Comics Title

Speaking of where things come from, the title of the movie is based on this:

The story goes that Disney Animation Studios deliberately chose an obscure title so they can get away with completely changing it up on the way to making it a film. The screenwriter hasn’t even heard of the comic series.

Good call. Otherwise we’ll have a giant scaly green thing posing in front of our cinemas. Not sexy.

And not so fun for our comic nerds, right? Not really, because you still get a ton of references to fun otaku geekery like super sentai, kamen rider, Osamu Tezuka and plenty others.

Keep your eyes peeled and stay until the credits end. *wink*

4. Nerds Are Awesome

An important character moment in the film is when Hiro meets the other nerds for the first time at the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology. And yes, all the characters in this movie are nerds. Even the villain(s?).

It takes more than just stuffing a movie full of geeks to illustrate that it’s a good thing to be obsessively tinkering and perpetually curious. What this movie does also is show how risky inventions can be, how tedious, yet vital, trial and error is in discovery and how important it is to think first before getting into potentially sticky situations.

If you have a little cousin who’s sci-curious, bring them into this movie and make a proper nerd of them. They’ll thank you for it.

5. TJ Miller Is In It

This one’s for the comedy nerds. TJ Miller isn’t new to the voice-acting scene but his appearance here scores some great comedy nerd points especially seeing as he’s currently starring in Silicon Valley. A hilarious show about tech nerds that brought you this (NSFW):

So that’s all the best bonus bits in Big Hero 6 for all you nerds out there. Go see it, it’s good. I’ll do a storytelling analysis on Big Hero 6 in the future. I might not. We’ll see how this one goes.