Mei loves her mother and her family’s temple, the way she knows she’s supposed to. These details extend to the emotional ties painted in Turning Red. Shi renders the cultural specificities in Turning Red with such love and care (for instance, the group of older aunties who visit for the panda-control ritual, dressed in the tracksuits and brooch pins that many children of Chinese immigrants will recognize). Though Mei does feel restricted by the way her mother turns her nose up at 4*Town and embarrasses Mei in front of her crush, she still clearly loves her mom and her family. Mei and her friends are superfans of the in-universe boy band 4*Town, and instead of being a focus of deprecating jokes, as boy-band fandom so often is, their enthusiasm becomes a central part of Mei forging her own identity, a source of empowerment and most of all, joy.Īt the same time, Shi doesn’t depict Mei’s relationship with her mother and her ties to her family’s culture as burdens. It’s refreshing to see a whole cast of supportive female characters who enthusiastically lift each other up and share the same passions. All-ages animation, including Pixar’s, has historically focused most on male narratives, only leaving room for one or two girls, who are often pitted against each other. Mei’s friends - deadpan Priya (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), passionate Abby (Hyein Park), and ringleader Miriam (Ava Morse) - are all given unique and expressive designs. The triumph of Turning Red is in the way it unabashedly embraces adolescent girlhood, particularly the powerful friendships made in this time of life. As the date of the ritual approaches, Mei is torn between what her mother wants and what she herself desires. Mei’s stern mother, Ming (Sandra Oh), tells her she needs to permanently contain the panda with a magical ritual, which Mei dutifully agrees to - but with a new perspective from her close friends, she begins to see the panda not as a source of embarrassment, but a source of joy. As it turns out, every woman in her family shares this quirk - they turn into pandas when their emotions run high. After one particularly turbulent day, she wakes up and discovers that she has transformed into a giant red panda. Turning Red follows 13-year-old Mei (Rosalie Chiang), a spunky Chinese-Canadian middle-schooler living in Toronto in the early 2000s, juggling her devotion to her mother and her duties at the family temple with her budding sense of self.
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