I don't see how you can just say that big hero six was whitewashed and leave it there, because there were clearly poc characters, and it seems that even if it was whitewashed, it still has reedeeming factors (feminism boost, honey lemon NOT being such a copy-pasted anna rapunzel 'generic spunky female')
First and foremost, I CAN say it was whitewashed and leave it at that. Because it is. I call it as I see it.
The original Big Hero 6 took place in Japan, and from what I gather of my research into the comic, all the characters WERE Japanese.
Not only was the movie set in AMERICA (San Fransokyo=/= Japan. And please ask yourself why it’s necessary to set it in America, Disney has set many a film in other countries like China, France, Norway, England, so it’s not like Disney HAS to set its movies in America for any reason.) There is literally one East Asian character. One. We went from a cast of totally Japanese characters to ONE vaguely East Asian character. We white people can go ONE movie without being represented, seriously. There is also literally ONE other POC in the movie, it’s the same old tired game of “spot the POC!” that the movie industry likes to play, claiming that it’s being racially diverse when, really, we white people are blind to the fact that it’s not because we see ourselves represented in a fairly vast spectrum.
As for the Rapunzel/Honey Lemon thing, if you can’t see Rapunzel in a helmet/GeekPunzel when you look at Honey Lemon, I encourage you to look again. Because it’s the same damn art with a pointier chin and fingers that would snap off if you shut them in a door or breathed on them wrong.
Even if it has redeeming factors (and I am not denying that it does or that it may have, I have not seen it and am not familiar with the comic, so I will not comment on that at present), you can’t ignore that something is problematic just because it has redeeming factors. Go ahead and enjoy Big Hero 6, please do. But don’t deny that it has problems as well.
