Baymax!

Honestly I love the idea of Baymax, free-roaming health care companion, more than the idea of Baymax, crime-fighting robot. Especially if he provides lollipops. (Where does he keep the lollipops?) This is where AI research should be going, not on stealing people’s writing and images to make crappier versions full of lies and too many fingers. When I take the kids to the park, there should be a robot that is summoned to their cries of pain and dispenses bandaids, lollipops, and gentle wisdom. Now, that’s the future liberals want.

This series of shorts explicitly takes place in the Disney version of the Big Hero 6 universe, with Baymax as your personal health care companion, living in Hiro’s room above the Lucky Cat Cafe. The voices remain the same—Scott Adsit, Ryan Potter, and Maya Rudolph. Baymax is still a little invasive, inasmuch as he never waits for consent before scanning people, but he is summoned by various cries of distress. He helps Cass (Rudolph) with her sprained ankle, Kiko (Emily Kuroda) with her chronic pain, Sofia (Lilimar) with her first period, Mbita (Jaboukie Young-White) with a fish allergy, and Yachi (a cat, uncredited) with a swallowed earbud. Then, the people of San Fransokyo help Baymax.

So okay, we’re going to start with the one everyone else is talking about because seriously, we have a theme this month, and this show continues it. In episode three, we have Sofia. She’s a junior high school student—like my son, as established, and like Mei and her friends from Turning Red. And we are not using metaphors here, friends; Sofia just flat out gets her period. And the word is used. And the word “menstruation.” And “tampon.” And “pad.” Even “wings.” And when Baymax is in the feminine hygiene aisle, getting help from a bunch of women, he also gets help from two men. One is a dad who says his daughter uses a specific product, and one is a trans man who tells Baymax which one he himself uses.

Trans men get periods. It’s a thing. I have at least one friend who took Depo in part to prevent that, but it still happens. What’s really sweet about the scene is not “OMG woke!” but that everyone in that aisle recognized that it is, yes, truly a dizzying array of products—the second Disney work we’ve done this month that gets into that—and works to teach Baymax how to navigate it. It’s people coming together. Frankly, I suspect that Baymax is well enough known in the area that everyone works out pretty quickly exactly what’s happening and wants to help a girl they may or may not even know with what has to be an awkward situation given the time of day.

The other odd duplication we have this week is Jaboukie Young-White as an awkward gay man trying to ask out his crush while dealing with the stress of familial expectations. Does he like fish soup? Maybe. And maybe he doesn’t. Maybe there’s something else he likes even more. He’s going to have to figure that out for himself. And Baymax is definitely not helping. Okay, he gives some gentle wisdom, but when it comes to matters of the heart, you really don’t want someone telling your crush about your hormone levels.

Baymax continues being the inhuman lovable marshmallow from the movie. Kiko accurately points out that he will make you face your deepest fears, but everyone in the group of people he helped still love him. Even the cat, who can’t understand, you know, human language. Cass is afraid of not being able to care for Hiro (and Mochi, of course). Kiko is afraid that a life of pain, alone, is all that’s left to her. Sofia is afraid that everything is different now and she won’t be able to be a kid. Mbita is afraid of letting down his parents and probably also how he’s going to live his life when he’s the owner of Just Fish Soup and has a fish allergy. Yachi is afraid of basically everything, because street cat. They all face their fears, except Baymax, who doesn’t have any.

Red from the YouTube channel Overly Sarcastic Productions refers to Baymax as the perfect inhuman robot. He is extremely literal. He does not process metaphor unless it’s explained to him. He doesn’t have human emotion. He doesn’t have an approximation of human emotion. And yet you want to let him take care of you because seriously, he’s just a big squish. He’s adorable. I could watch hours of Baymax just helping people out. Also I would really love one of my very own.