![]() “I remember watching it, repeatedly rewinding it and just pausing it and just being so amazed at how these drawings could feel so real and expressive,” she says. Her family didn’t have much money, but one day her dad brought home a VCR and a copy of Disney’s “Aladdin.” That’s where her relationship with animation began. Shi was born in Chongqing, China, not far from where red pandas live, and emigrated with her parents to Canada when she was 2. “ just felt like the perfect style to kind of bring this girl's emotions to life,” she says, “because anime is so colorful and expressive and fun, and that all just feels like Mei.” At Mei’s age, Shi was watching “Sailor Moon” and getting inspired by anime. Shi says she wanted the animation to reflect how a tween Asian girl sees the world. “Turning Red” features some anime moments, like when Mei’s eyes expand with sparkles and stars upon seeing her favorite boy band or a boy she likes. And Mei Lee’s mother has very strong feelings about it all. In Disney and Pixar’s all-new original feature film “Turning Red,” confident-but-dorky teenager Mei Lee is torn between staying her mother’s dutiful daughter and the chaos of adolescence. The panda also represents intergenerational trauma and how each generation deals with it, Shi says. Mei’s mom, voiced by Sandra Oh, worries about the panda problem - one she and her mom also experienced. “Making this movie, I just wanted to understand like what was going on, not just from my point of view, but from my mom's point of view as well.” “I went from being that perfect little daughter to overnight changing into this wild hairy hormonal animal who was like fighting with her mom all the time,” she says. ![]() In “Turning Red,” she wanted to celebrate that period of her life and explore it from every angle. Shi grew up in Toronto, where the film is based, and the conflict comes from her own upbringing. Her favorite boy band is coming to Toronto but she can’t see them because of her strict Asian parents. The conflict between Mei and her mom stews: Her mom is upset to find a B- assignment under her bed. “It was such a specific story,” she says, “but it was also so universal that we've all been there that they couldn't resist picking it up.” Disney and Pixar’s all-new original feature film “Turning Red” introduces 13-year-old Mei Lee and her mother, Ming. Of the three teen girl coming-of-age stories Shi pitched to Pixar in 2017, the animation studio was drawn to her magical puberty idea because it made everyone cringe. The animal’s red color symbolizes menstruation, anger, embarrassment and lust. The black and white panda has been done before in movies, Shi says, but not many people in the west know what a red panda is. But it just was so juicy and tempting to just go back and revisit it in this weird and quirky way.” “This is just a time in all of our lives we just want to forget about. ![]() “When I came up with the idea, it was just this hilarious image in my head of this girl that loses control and just poofs into this giant, red, hairy, hormonal animal,” she says. But instead, Mei turns into an 8-foot panda when she gets emotional - a metaphor for “magical puberty,” Shi says. Mei hides in the bathroom from her mom, who thinks her daughter has her period for the first time.
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