“Big Hero 6”'s most obvious use of homophones in English is lost in Japanese. Even with the recent French film, “Ernest & Celestine” (the last performance of the late Lauren Bacall), I preferred the French with English subtitles. When I saw the original version of “ My Neighbor Totoro,” the voice of the elderly pipe-smoking woman was gravelly and not smooth and June Cleaver clear as with the English dubbed voice cast. One of the reasons I prefer to hear the original Japanese voice cast is not only because I am somewhat fluent in Japanese and it always is good practice to hear more (I recently learned a few new words from a marathon of watching “Nadia: The Secret of the Blue Water” ふしぎの海のナディア at TIFF), but also because it is a matter of choices made by the original director. I haven’t seen that, but if it follows the subtitled version, there are some things lost and found in translation.
From the adverts I listened to at the Toho Cinemas, I understand there will be a Japanese dubbed version. That’s sort of the reverse of what I prefer in the U.S.: Original Japanese voice cast with English subtitles. At the press screening at Tokyo International Film Festival, we saw the English version with Japanese subtitles.
Cast of big hero 6 movie#
“Big Hero 6” is an American movie in Japan. Instead of a dark mask for a face like ASIMO or the robot in “Robot & Frank,” Baymax has two dots for eyes. He’s not fat, he’s big boned and pleasantly plump and that is played for laughs. Hiro is the 14-year-old boy whose brother, Tadashi, created Baymax, who resembles Honda’s ASIMO if the robot had a cousin training for sumo wrestling. “Big Hero 6” is renamed "Baymax" (ベイマックス) in Japan, which makes it seem as if the story is about the robot named Baymax instead of Hiro.
There might be one if the Japanese knew what Hiro stood for, but that’s one of the difficulties of translations and a reason why some people who, like myself, prefer to see a movie and hear the original voice actors while reading the subtitles. When Hiro becomes a hero in “Big Hero 6,” it’s a cute homophonic wordplay, but one that borrows from Japanese and slips into English without finding any reciprocal chuckles in Japanese. Isn't Disney the company all about the American version of kawaii? There's no cross-cultural problem here it's a match made in heaven that might disappoint only the fans of the original comic book series. Some Japanese men-and I'm not just talking about metrosexuals-embrace the kawaii factor. Taking place in an alternative universe anyway, a place where Tokyo has merged with San Francisco to become SanFransokyo, the movie embraces the Japanese side of animation and the cultural love for cuteness-the kawaii factor that isn't limited to squealing young girls.
What happens when the director of " Winnie the Pooh" ( Don Hall) decides to take a Marvel Comics property and turn it into a kid-friendly 3D computer-animated feature? "Big Hero 6" answers that question by straying far enough from the adult-aimed focus of the original comic strip that it becomes part of an alternative universe, one that will not become part of the Marvelverse but is very much a part of the Disney family tradition of cuteness.