Hold up, is that a tamagotchi? Are we in the 2000s? What makes Mei turn into the adorable,
ravaging red panda? Stay tuned for nostalgia, fluff, and more things only adults notice
in Turning Red! But be warned, there's major spoilers ahead.
Turning Red starts with an extended sequence in which Mei introduces herself by speaking
directly to the camera. While breaking the fourth wall isn't unheard of in films,
these days we're most familiar with people talking directly to the camera
when it's the camera in their smartphones. As a result,
it makes sense that viewers may initially think Turning Red takes place in the present day.
However, there are many things about the movie that indicate it actually
takes place around 20 years ago. While none of the kids carry smartphones,
there are other details that make the time period even more evident.
One of the first hints about when the movie takes place happens when
Mei's friend Miriam gives her a CD of a 1999 concert of their favorite boy band 4*Town.
Not only were boy bands like *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys huge around the turn
of the century, CDs were still the preferred method on which to listen to and own music.
By the end of the film, the year has specifically been identified as
2002 — but until then, small details offer clues about its time period.
While kids learn about puberty in health class, until you go through it,
you can't really understand what it's like. As a result,
teenagers and adults are likely to relate to the film's depiction of early adolescence
and realize just how perfectly the story encapsulates the experience.
Adolescence involves physical and emotional changes,
and Mei turning into a red panda speaks specifically to the emotional turmoil
of this time in life. Before adolescence, children are perfectly happy spending time
with their parents and letting them dictate how they should be and what they should do.
Starting in early adolescence, though, children start becoming more interested in their friends'
opinions than their parents'. Plus, they start having all sorts of urges they can't explain.
Mei experiences all of this in dramatic fashion. She wants to
remain the perfect daughter in her mother's eyes so she starts to hide things from her,
yet at the same time her mother's desire to protect is starting to feel stifling.
"Mei Mei, tell him you forgot your pads."
This leads to a whole raft of emotions that are pushing her in several directions at once,
nicely summing up the fraught transition from young child to budding adolescent.
The first time Mei turns into a red panda, it's in response to a nightmare.
So when she walks into the bathroom and looks at herself in the mirror, she reacts with horror.
Mei's parents can hear her distress from the kitchen where they're eating breakfast, leading
Mei's worried mother, Ming, to venture to the bathroom door to find out what's wrong. At first,
Ming assumes her daughter must be sick, but soon she realizes something more unusual is going on.
"Wait… Is it? That — Did the — did the red peony bloom?"
"No!"
Adults will know Ming is wondering whether Mei has started menstruating. However, children
are likely to be just as confused as Mei, whose response to her mother is less-than-convincing.
When Mei introduces herself at the beginning of Turning Red,
she makes a point of showing off a round pink accessory on a key chain attached to the strap
of her backpack. While children may not know what it is, adults will recognize it as a Tamagotchi,
a toy that was especially popular in the late '90s and early 2000s.
While the graphics in the models from the early 2000s were rudimentary,
kids often got very attached to their Tamagotchi.
Tamagotchi are still made today, but they're nowhere near as ubiquitous as they once were.
Plus, more advanced technology means their graphics are more sophisticated,
they can connect to other Tamagotchi, and you can even take pictures with them.
Mei's Tamagotchi doesn't have nearly that level of interactivity, but even though the movie doesn't
put too fine a point on it, it seems she's done a good job of taking care of her digital pet.
When Mei turns into a red panda, she grows to be twice her normal height and substantially wider.
Yet something adults will pick up on is that Mei's fantastical size
doesn't make sense if she's truly taking on the guise of a red panda.
That's because red pandas are fairly small, with adults growing to be only a bit bigger than a pet
cat. So although Mei takes on the basic look of a red panda, with her red fur and white accents on
her face and ears, if she looked like a real-life red panda, she'd actually get smaller, not larger.
This gets especially ridiculous when Ming lets out her red panda that stomps through
downtown Toronto. Of course, the magic that causes Mei's family to turn into red pandas
could be blamed for this. Especially since it seems the size of Mei's and Ming's red pandas
is proportional to the big emotions they're feeling.
Nonetheless, even though Mei is adorable as a red panda,
making her very popular with her classmates, the real-life red panda's diminutive size
is one of the things that arguably makes it even more adorable.
Turning Red focuses on the mother-daughter relationship between Mei and Ming,
yet there's another mother-daughter relationship that also plays a role in the story:
the relationship between Ming and her mother, Mei's grandmother.
When Grandma learns that Mei's red panda has appeared, she travels across the country with
Ming's sisters to help with the problem. When she arrives, both children and adults will notice
that one of Grandma's most defining features is a prominent red scar across her eyebrow.
No one mentions how she got the scar, but adults will realize a small moment in the
film subtly sheds light on what happened. When Mei's grandmother goes to talk to her alone,
she mentions that she and Ming used to be close like Ming and Mei are. That is,
until Ming's red panda came out and ruined their relationship.
"You are your mother's whole world, Mei Mei. I know you'll do what's right."
If you notice, the grandmother briefly touches her scar. It's a fleeting moment, but it seems
to indicate that when Ming's red panda appeared, her emotions were so out of control that at one
point she scratched her mother — leaving her with a permanent reminder of what happened.
When Mei initially turns into a red panda, it's awkward and scary.
She's much bigger, so she can jump farther and climb higher...
but she frequently miscalculates her landings, and falls and stumbles as a result. Later on,
she becomes more comfortable with her new form and is able to dance and jump around while
switching from panda to human at will. It's a cool party trick, but for the most part nothing more.
Yet, during the climax of the film, when Mei decides she urgently needs to join her
friends at the 4*Town concert, her red panda form seems to endow her with superpowers.
Mei bounds over rooftops as the panda, periodically switching back to human,
only to leap off another building as she switches back again.
Then when she reaches the concert venue, she leaps through the open retractable roof,
sees her friends in the crowd, and manages to propel herself so she lands right next to them.
It's something many of the most seasoned superheroes would have trouble pulling off.
"Oh no."
Kids will love the animated antics, but adults will be left scratching their
heads about how her abilities became so extreme so quickly.
Turning Red makes it clear that Mei is the apple of Ming's eye. She sees
Mei as the perfect daughter, and when we meet Mei,
she's doing everything in her power to ensure she lives up to her mother's impressions.
Yet, Mei is also starting to forge her own identity apart from her mother and
her overwhelming expectations. So when Ming's mother calls and Ming
responds with anguish and then cowers as her mother criticizes her over the phone,
adults will realize that Ming is heading down a similar path with Mei.
Later in the film, when Ming's mother tells Mei that she and Ming used to
be close before Ming's red panda emerged, this perception is reinforced. Just like her mother,
Ming wants Mei to stay exactly as she is, but Mei is growing up whether she likes it or not.
If Ming remains overprotective as Mei gets older, Mei will soon feel like her mother
is suffocating her, just like Ming seemed to with her mother. Although she's unaware of it,
Ming is recreating the same kind of relationship with Mei that she has with her mother,
the kind where the pair will still love one another but will never be as close again.
"I hurt her!"
"Who?"
"My mom! I got so angry…"
The plot of Turning Red hinges on Mei becoming a red panda and the havoc she causes because of it.
However, the rules around what triggers her to change forms are never made especially clear.
The movie vaguely indicates that any strong emotion will bring out the panda,
which means as long as Mei stays calm, she remains human.
While initially it appears that only strong negative emotions cause the change, later when
Mei starts changing at will, it seems the panda may respond to strong positive emotions as well.
Yet, when she discovers that thinking of her friends enables Mei to keep her panda in,
it seems perhaps this isn't the case.
If that weren't enough, Mei is told that the ritual performed
on the night of the red moon is her one chance to get rid of the panda.
But, if you notice, when she's in trouble, her mother, grandma, and
aunts all smash the trinkets that hold their pandas and once again take on red panda form.
When Mei is safe, they once again suppress their red pandas through the ritual,
which suggests that, if she wants it, Mei should have a second chance to
use the ritual to let go of her panda at a later time as well.
Throughout the history of film and television,
there have been characters that transform from one form to another,
and they've all dealt with the issue of what happens to the character's clothes differently.
"My clothes don't fit."
In most "Dracula" films, for example, the master vampire is unclothed as a bat,
but he's fully clothed in evening wear when he turns back into human form. Meanwhile,
on the TV show "The Incredible Hulk," David Banner famously loses his shirt when he becomes the Hulk,
but somehow his shorts manage to shrink and expand
as his form gets bigger and smaller. It's some serious fabric witchcraft.
"At last! Satan himself has come to face me!"
Adults who have been sensitized to such details by a lifetime of watching productions like these
are more likely than kids to notice that in Turning Red, Mei stays fully clothed
when she's human and has those clothes poof away as soon as her red panda fur comes out.
This is understandable given this is a family film. Still,
it could have been fun to see Mei's red panda form wearing her skirts and sweaters.
The boy band 4*Town is essential to the story of Turning Red. During the late '90s and early 2000s,
tweens and teens went as gaga over The Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC as Mei and her friends do over the
boys of 4*Town. The movie perfectly captures how these bands served as a way for early adolescent
girls to bond, express themselves, and experience their first crushes in a relatively safe way.
In fact, the film showcases exactly what made these groups so appealing by styling them as
non-threatening pretty boys. They come across as cool and creative, and their songs suggest that
if they ever decide to commit to you, they'd only love you, and they'd love you completely.
The film even features three original songs written by Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell,
which mimic the simple but catchy tunes that boy bands are known for and made them popular
over the years. Any adult who spent time as a tween swooning over a boy band or dancing with
friends to their music will instantly recognize their experience in the depiction of 4*Town.
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