Turning Red

Turning Red is a 2022 American computer-animated fantasy comedy film produced by Pixar, written and directed by Domee Shi (in her feature directorial debut), starring the voices of Rosalie Chiang, Sandra Oh, Ava Morse, Hyein Park, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Orion Lee, Wai Ching Ho, Tristan Allerick Chen, and James Hong. Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell contributed with the soundtrack. It was premiered on Disney+.

Meilin "Mei" Lee (Chiang) is a 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian girl living in Toronto in 2002. On one side, she is the dutiful daughter of Ming Lee (Oh), taking care of the family temple and trying to be the perfect daughter. On the other side, she is an Extroverted Nerd who loves hanging out with her friends Miriam (Morse), Priya (Ramakrishnan), and Abby (Park) and fangirling over popular Boy Band 4*Town. Despite the increasing conflict between these two sides of her teenage identity, Mei thinks she can deal with this pretty well...

That's it, until one morning she awakes transformed into a gigantic red panda.

Turns out that this is an ancient blessing, inherited by all women in her family, that lets them transform into gigantic red pandas, a transformation that is triggered by harnessing emotion. Now Mei has to learn how to control this power, and also discover who she really is and who she wants to be.

Do not confuse this film with the trope Turns Red.


 * The Ace: Meilin, as she is the best student in her school. However, the pressure is slowly getting to her.
 * An Aesop:
 * You become the full person who you want to be by embracing every part of you, even the parts that you don't like.
 * Bottling your feelings is never a good idea because they will explode at the worst moment.
 * One for the parents: whatever parenting choices your parent made shouldn't inform the way you raise your own kid nor the kid's own future.
 * Aluminum Christmas Trees
 * Many viewers felt that Ming's antics were over-exaggerated and cartoonish, but many people of Asian descent have stated that their parents were exactly like that. Director Domee Shi even said that the scene where Ming stalks Mei to the school was based on personal experience.
 * Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Ming.
 * Animesque: while the visual style is mostly Pixar, there are several instances of exaggerated emotion rendered in anime style. Mei's drawings are in an animesque style.
 * Blessed with Suck: to Sun Yee, the ancestor who receive the power of transforming into a giant panda, it was a blessing, as it let her protect her daughters and her town from bandits and enemy armies. But after several centuries and with times of increasing peace and urbanism, this power has become highly dangerous and inconvenient, so most women have opted to seal it at the first chance they get rather than living with it.
 * Boy Band: 4*Town
 * Cuteness Proximity: Abby is affected by Mei's red panda form in this way. The girls decide to exploit it after noticing that the rest of the school reacts the same way.
 * Education Mama: Ming, who learned it from her own mother.
 * Extroverted Nerd: Mei.
 * Generational Trauma: This is the central conflict of the film. Mei has spent her whole life pleasing her mother Ming but her mind and body start to rebel after Ming humiliates her in front of her crush Devon after accusing him of being a sexual predator. Ming in the meantime remains oblivious to the fact that she's emotionally abusing her only daughter while thinking she's helping out and shaming her for the crime of being a teenager...because Ming's own mother did the same to her. It's implied this emotional abuse and shaming runs several generations back. Her mother didn't even approve of Jin, Ming's Nice Guy of a husband, and is quick to berate Ming if Mei appears less than perfect..
 * Informed Attractiveness: Devon, the convenience store clerk Mei and all her friends have a crush in, isn't ugly at all but he evidently doesn't seem to deserve the amount of female attention he receives. In fact, this is an in-universe point: when Mei, who initially didn't see him as attractive, questions her friends about it, Abby answers that he may not be as hot as the 4*Town boys, but he is actually available here, unlike the unattainable world-class hottie idols.
 * My Beloved Smother: Ming. A good part of the film conflict is that Ming cannot turns it off, seeing Mei as mostly an extension of herself, and humiliating the poor girl with well-meaning but misguided instances of helicopter parenting
 * Nice Girl: All of Mei's friends are this. Demonstrated when, after their Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure, Miriam still cared for Mei's Tamagotchi.
 * Shown Their Work: There really was a lunar eclipse on May 26, 2002, the date of the film's climax.
 * "Well Done, Daughter" Girl: Mei, at least at the beginning. It's revealed that she is merely the latest on a legacy full of this, with her mom Ming being exactly the same towards her own mother.