Love in Big Hero 6

Big Hero 6 is a very hilarious animated film about a boy named Hiro Hamada and his robotic healthcare companion named Baymax. Self-sacrifice, redemption, and compassion are virtues explored in the storyline as well. It is certainly good family entertainment.

Hiro is a young tech savvy adolescent from San Fransokyo grieving the untimely death of his brother Tadashi. More than just an older brother, Tadashi took on the role of Hiro’s moral compass, guide and inspiration to use his skills to invent future robotics’ technologies at the local university lab. Hiro is also bequeathed his brother’s invention—the person healthcare companion Baymax.

Baymax is programmed to diagnose and offer treatment advice for the physically injured, but soon learns Hiro’s pain is of a different sort.

When Hiro discovers the truth that Tadashi’s death was homicide, the grieving boy seeks vengeance, and attempts to modify Baymax into a battle droid. Baymax is unable to compute why be is being weaponized by the boy, but “how does this make me a better healthcare companion?” Hiro and Baymax then join up with classmates Fred, GoGo Tomago, Wasabi, and Honey Lemon, and the Big Hero 6 team seeks to bring justice to Tadashi’s murderer.

The Big Hero 6 team eventually learns that Robert Callaghan, the head of the university’s robotics program, was the culprit. Callaghan attempted to steal Hiro’s invention and burn down the school to cover up the crime, but Tadashi became collateral damage.

Callaghan’s reason for stealing the technology is to exact revenge on a greed driven tech entrepreneur named Alistari Krei, who was virtually cause for Callaghan’s test pilot daughter going through a space portal and being trapped on the other side.

Baymax’s continual quest is to know how to be a better healthcare companion to Hiro in particular, which the robot comes to realize is keeping the lad from striking down those responsible for his brother’s death. The machine resists being programmed into a weapon, and teaches Hiro that the essence of Takashi’s legacy was showing compassion to others.

Hiro sees the value of showing compassion and foregoes attempts to exact revenge upon Callaghan. The lad learns to save lives for the sake of reconciliation and restoration is far better than to take a life in an exacting vengeance.

Baymax and Hiro eventually go on a rescue mission when they discover the portal to the other dimension created from Krei’s failed experiment remained open, and that Abigail was still on the other side in hyper-sleep. Things go wrong in the extraction attempt, and Baymax must sacrifice his own body to allow Hiro and Abigail return through the portal, which was about to close. Here is the essence of love. It goes beyond just seeing to the other’s physical and emotional well-being, though these things are included, but love gives selflessly for the betterment of the other person. It was an act of love that made Baymax’s health care provides truly satisfactory.

Hiro, safe on the other side, discovers Baymax found a way to bequeath his own memory chip to the body, which allows the lad to resurrect his heath care companion. Estrangement comes to us all in some way, and we all yearn to be reconnected to something precious that was lost. It is also the essence of love to bring reconciliation to those separated from one another. Ultimately, the God of the Universe has come to seek those who have been lost.

~WGN