Turning Red is full of carefully crafted details that make it a magical coming-of-age story rooted in Chinese culture.

Pixar's latest success, Turning Red, follows Mei Lee, a 13-year-old girl who turns into a red panda every time she feels a strong emotion, thanks to a family curse. This newly acquired ability, which is an obvious metaphor for teenagehood and menstruation, soon opens the path for Mei to understand more about the underlying dynamics of her family.

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Turning Red is full of carefully crafted details that make it a magical coming-of-age story rooted in Chinese culture. It tackles important topics, such as puberty, mother-daughter relations, and the social pressure women (especially Asian women) deal with on a daily basis.

In the same way that Enrico Casarosa based Luca on his childhood in Italy, Domee Shi, the director of Turning Red, was inspired by her own childhood as a girl of Asian descent living in Canada in the early 2000s. It doesn't take a genius to notice Turning Red's autobiographical vein.

First, Turning Red includes many real-life references to teenagehood in the 2000s, such as boy-band fever and Tamagotchis. But also, the director has commented that Ming, Mei's mother in the film, is inspired by her own mother. This is the same for Abby, one of Mei's friends, who is based on one of Shi's best friends in real life.

Four years before directing Turning Red, Domee Shi created Bao, a Pixar short film that was released alongside The Incredibles 2. Bao tells the story of a Chinese-Canadian woman who finds a solution for her empty-nest syndrome when one of her homemade baozi becomes sentient.

Bao, which also tackles motherhood and toxic family relationships in non-white families in only eight minutes, is one of Pixar's most successful short films. In fact, this film earned Domee Shi an Oscar for Best Animated Short Film at the 91st Academy Awards in 2019.

Turning Red combines the two-dimensional anime aesthetic and the tridimensional CGI Pixar style. According to Domee Shi, she has always loved anime's exaggerated facial features and character reactions, because they help the audience understand what the characters are feeling all the time, so she made sure to include this in Turning Red.

Anime fans surely notice some references to anime in Turning Red. For example, the way the characters' eyes grow and twinkle when they're excited or the Auntie Squad morphing sequence that is obviously inspired by Sailor Moon. What's more, Mei's curse being triggered by specific situations also reminds the audience of classics like Ranma 1/2, Inuyasha, and Fruits Basket.

Turning Red isn't completely autobiographical, but its creators were definitely inspired by their own lives. For example, the elementary school Mei and her friends attend is a real school in Toronto called Lester B. Pearson, in honor of the Canadian Prime Minister from 1963 to 1968.

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Lester B. Pearson is fondly remembered in Canadian history due to his policies that promoted bilingualism and a multicultural Canadian society. The Turning Red, the characters are all non-white people living in Canada, and so were the film's creators. In a way, Mei, her family, and her friends are living proof of Pearson's work in Canadian societies.

When the audience first meets Mei's friends, Priya, the most stoic one of the squad, can be seen holding a vampire romance. The book, titled Nightfall, is clearly a parody of Stephenie Meyer's famous novel Twilight, which follows the love triangle between a vampire, a girl, and a werewolf amidst a turf war.

The Twilight tetralogy was one of the most famous series of the 2000s. This romance novel effectively modified the audience's perspective on vampires. Twilight became a staple of early-century teenagehood. Including this book in Turning Red only adds to the 2000s nostalgia vibe that the creators wanted to convey with this film.

As happens for most teenagers, one of Mei's biggest fears is social status. Unfortunately for her, one of her classmates, Tyler, is always there to witness some of her most embarrassing moments and he loves to mock her. Even though he begins as Mei's nemesis, Tyler becomes one of her best friends by the end of the movie. This is actually foreshadowed.

As part of their character design, Mei dresses mostly in red and pink colors. This is also true for her friends, Miriam, Priya, and Abby, who each have their own palette. Abby's is purple, Miriam's is green and Priya's is yellow. Although he isn't a friend, Tyler's blue color coordination matches the girls', signaling that he will join the group soon, which he does.

In order to seal Mei's red panda inside her own talisman, the Lee family must perform an ancient ritual underneath a red moon, which is basically a full lunar eclipse. This astronomical event, which happens during the climax of the movie, is based on a real-life phenomenon that occurred one day after the movie events take place.

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Turning Red takes place in Toronto, Canada in May 2002 and the end of the film occurs on May 25th. This isn't explicitly stated, but there are small details that show it such as Mei's maple leaf t-shirt and several calendars. According to the 2002 astronomical calendar, there was an actual full moon eclipse on May 26th, 2002, however, it wasn't visible from Toronto as it happens in the film.

Like many other Disney and Pixar movies, Turning Red is full of easter eggs. These are small references to other films created by these companies. Some of these easter eggs are easy to catch on a first watch. However, many others take a hardcore fan with a truly keen eye, such as the Bao restaurant at the beginning of the movie, which shares its logo with Shi's short film.

Some of these easter eggs are references to other Pixar films. For instance, Toy Story's Pizza Planet Truck can be seen by the end of the movie, when Mei runs to the SkyDome for the concert. But others are direct homages to Disney and Pixar as companies, such as the Pixar ball floating in the pool at Tyler's party and the hidden Mickey in Ming's donut holes.

As it happens with most recent Disney and Pixar movies, Turning Red doesn't have a villain. However, Mei's mother, Ming, often feels like an antagonistic figure because her actions sometimes cause more harm than good to her loved ones. Regardless, she only has good intentions — as happens with Abuela Alma in Encanto.

In earlier creative stages, Ming was a more villainous character. Instead of supporting Mei, Ming would try to monetize her daughter's curse without consideration of her feelings. This idea was scrapped because Domee Shi felt it made Ming a way more two-dimensional character.

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Mayra García is a Comic Lists Writer for CBR. Her main interests include linguistics, superheroes, and food.

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