PSA: Headscratchers is a place to try and find In-Universe explanations. Try to avoid natter, going too off-topic and/or first person language. If a bullet has something you feel is incorrect, just fix it.
How come Ming's red panda form was the size of a kaiju, while her daughter, mother and sisters were not gargantuan sized as well?
The size of the red panda seems to be related to how the character deals with their emotions, Mei has a relatively small red panda form, because she is a child that ends up embracing the panda, it's a part of herself, she makes an effort to live with it and understand it, plus, she has friends that support her unconditionally. Ming is shown as a very closed up and cold person, is apparently friendless (even Grandma Wu appears to have friends, yet Ming doesn't) and projects an image of perfection constantly, her red panda is gigantic and destructive, because she saw it as something she HAD to get rid of, something horrible, she locked away these emotions and likely left the typical teen life completely aside and focused on being an overachiever, just like she wanted Mei to, so she didn't have a healthy way to express herself, unlike her daughter.
The Kesi tapestries of Sun Yee shows she was able to assume both sizes - a motherly cuddly giant red panda when caressing her daughters, and a gigantic kaiju fiery panda when fighting off the armies and bandits that threatened them. With Ming, the latter form seems to be jammed on constantly, and she can't control it.
Plus it's suggested that one of the first times she transformed, she scarred her mom which fed it even more. Then she further fed her trauma panda when she defied her mom and married Jin.
This is also backed up by the fact that both times Ming's Panda Spirit emerges (When her Talisman breaks, when she again separates from her Panda Spirit at the Astral Plane Mirror) it's sized more like Mei's & the others.
This troper always just assumed Mei's panda form is smaller because she isn't fully grown yet.
This is backed up by the fact that when Mei was on the astral plane and met Sun Yee, and Sun Yee transformed into her panda form, she was bigger than Mei. This makes sense, considering Mei is a child while Sun Yee was an adult.
This has little to do with anything, but the film's commentary mentions that she is 30% bigger outside the concert that when inside it, mostly so the Ground me?-Gilligan Cut would work
Ming tells Mei that Sun Yee passed her gift onto her daughters, but at the time she received it, her daughters were already born. Did she mean that she had more daughters later, or that there is a way of receiving the gift without being born with it?
Probably the latter. The Lee family have been suppressing their Gift for generations so it would make sense that they wouldn't want it to spread anymore than it already does by being born with it. But with Mei being the first in generations to embrace her Spirit, it's possible she may be able to grant the gift to others if she learns how.
Why do family members who have undergone the ritual continue to wear the talisman containing their sealed panda spirit? Wouldn’t it be safer to put it some place where it can’t be damaged and risk letting the beast out?
It would also make sense that they have it on their person at all times so that they know where it is. If they lose it, it could get damaged from exposure to the elements, or it would get damaged and they could transform out of nowhere at an inopportune moment. Imagine if you kept it in a shoebox in your closet, only for your careless child to find it, play with it and break it as children do.
In addition, the spirit remains a part of you. Even if being far away from it didn't create problems — which it well might — the ability of magic to manipulate the panda spirit means that an unscrupulous wielder of magic could use the sealed spirit to do almost anything to the spirit's host.
The Lee family worships Sun Yee and her red panda spirit. To them, the talisman is a religious icon, like a cross for a Christian. It also demonstrates that the wearer completed the red moon ritual. Wearing it is a statement of their faith.
This may seem esoteric, but what will happen to the rest of the Toronto Blue Jays' season after the destruction of SkyDome? All road games?
If the real-life pandemic results are any indication, they'll wind up using backup stadiums until repairs can be completed. It might speed up the purchase of the stadium by the Blue Jays' ownership, though.
They might've temporarily relocated their remaining home games to Syracuse, New York (where their Triple-A team at the time played), or Dunedin, Florida (where their spring training facility is located).
Why didn't Ming drop the pads off at the school office instead of spying on Mei and causing a scene?
Being a helicopter parent, she probably doesn’t trust anyone else but herself to handle issues with her daughter.
Besides, the pads are just an excuse for when she gets caught. The spying is the real objective, here.
How is Ming not in prison for the destruction of the SkyDome or under Government investigation? I'd Imagine governments would want to investigate her and Mei, the latter having been on the news. They'd probably ask questions about how they can turn into giant Red Pandas, wouldn't they?
Well Ming is still a citizen of their country and the government presumably didn't go the route of Inhumanable Alien Rights so locking the entire family up in a secret lab was a no-go. Either they have some already existing policy regarding the supernatural which allowed for leniency in situations such as that. Or if this was an entire unprecedented situation for them then they may have deferred to the judgement of mystical experts and shamans such as Mr Gao. The fact that the Lees are raising money to repair the SkyDome does suggest they're working to make repay the damages. Its also quite possible that they were ordered to pay for the reconstruction.
The authority probably think locking up the whole family for this kind of supernatural event would rise too much suspicion. Make up a more believable cover up story , set up a "fake-ish" fund raise board at the family temple to make them repay the damages , while keep a close eye on the family , is a more workable and easier to be done plan.
All else aside, the government probably did bring charges, though the most suitable charge would be vandalism. Moreover, they couldn't really lock up Mrs. Lee — she's the primary wage earner for the family, even if she couldn't turn into a kaiju. So fining her is the most reasonable response under Canadian law.
As for government study, they really can't get much more out of them than is already being given. By the end of the picture, "Pandapocalypse" is a common story, and Mei is transforming in front of crowds every day. Even if they wanted to, all they'd have to do is politely request an assessment — governments are like that. Most of the time, you simply don't need to lock people up to study them.
Judging by how no one seems too shocked by the appearance of giant pandas, nor went running and screaming from Mei (most of the time...), supernatural occurrences are probably a normal thing to experience in their world. So it might not be that important to worry about unless some actual danger were present.
Ming could plead insanity that the panda form gave her the mind of an animal or something. There's probably not a lot of study on Chinese-Canadians transforming into giant red pandas.
If Ming's red panda form is kaiju-sized, how exactly is the secret of their red panda transformations still a secret by the time it happens to Mei? How the hell isn't it public knowledge? Say perhaps that she didn't go on a rampage in her teen years like in the movie, she still would have been the size of a building and there would have been witnesses, newspapers, photographs, footage.
It's possible while her panda form was always larger than the others it wasn't kaiju size in her youth. But lack of control over 20 years + the extreme stress of Mei rejecting her orders caused her to explode into extreme size.
The movie takes place in 2002, so Ming likely would’ve been a teenager in 70s or 80s. There was personal photography back then but not nearly as ubiquitous as today with everyone having cell phone cameras, and portable video was much rarer. If she calmed down quickly and didn’t go far past the temple, it’s possible the incident might’ve been written off as an explosion or earthquake, and anyone who claimed to see a giant monster dismissed as hallucinating. They also would have little chance of learning the panda was Ming herself.
When Mei has her panda-ears in her human form, her human ears are also there. Does this affect her hearing? Are the panda ears cosmetic like this? When her first transformation starts to wear off, the panda's ears are the first to go. Is she deaf in that brief moment?
We're dealing with a divine blessing here; normal biology likely doesn't apply. Having two sets of ears will only affect her hearing based on which set she's actively using, for example, allowing her to switch between the two sets as and if needed. As for "no-ears panda", it's possible that her hearing gets interrupted, but just as possible that she receives a magical substitution of her normal human hearing for that brief moment — we simply don't know.
Regarding the last question: as with most mammals (including humans), the pinnae (the furry upright bits) are not the red panda's actual ears. They only collect and focus sound waves into the ear canal, which makes sounds louder and clearer, and also help tell the direction the sound is coming from. So for "no-ears panda" Mei, sounds might be a little muffled, and she might have some trouble telling their direction, but she wouldn't be deaf.
How does the “curse” work? Does it affect only daughters or it can affect sons too?
It was already established in the movie that the blessing affects only women in the family.
Ming's wording of 'Sun Yee passed the gift to her daughters, and they passed it to theirs' is a tiny bit ambiguous as she could have meant the Yee/Lee family only had daughters for one or two generations, but Grandma Wu clarifies that it is the Women in the family who face the challenge of dealing with the Panda.
Where are the 4*Town managers or stage crew during the whole panda fiasco? The band could've been killed from the rampaging panda Ming yet there are no adults present to evacuate the members safely. And it took a while before all of the members managed to get off their wings, and there is no one present to help them. And not to mention, there seems to be a lack of safety protocols in case of emergency, because the boys were dangling helplessly during the whole fiasco without a quick way to get off the stage.
Possibly fleeing for their lives from a huge red panda tearing the SkyDome apart. Unlike the fans, they'd know that there were no plans for a kaiju attack during the concert and would not have the 'it's part of the show' hesitation. There's no telling whether the wire rig control crew space was damaged during the whole fiasco either — it's probably better to assume the crew fled than, say, died under rubble while struggling to get the boys down.
How did Tyler get Ming's number?
Depending on the school there are sometimes student registries with their home’s or guardian’s number in case of emergency. Or he might have gotten it from a classmate, or copied it from a group project, and so on.
Phone books and landlines were also more common back then.
He might also have been bluffing. He never shows any explicit proof that he has Ming's number, and might have just been banking on Mei's fear of disappointing her mother.
This is 2002, before cellphones really started to replace landlines; and Mei's family lives in a temple. He would probably just call the public number of the temple and ask for Ming.
What's Miriam's last name? For a good while her last name was Wexler, (a clear reference to the Merriam-Webster dictionary) but the Pixar website now calls her Mendlesohn. Why the sudden change, and what's the official one?
The same can also be asked about Priya. Her last name was Dewan for a good while, and now it's Mangal according to the Pixar website.
Honestly speaking, how much was Mei jumping Tyler at the latter's birthday party a savage warbeast slipping its leash, and how much was an already upset middle schooler lashing out at the jerk who just insulted her mom?
It was 100% "already upset middle schooler lashing out." Going by what we see in the movie, the red panda transformation changes the person's physical form, intensifies strong emotions, and lowers inhibitions, but it never initiates action. What the panda does is what the person wants to do. Neither Mei nor Ming even tries to say "it was the panda, not me": they know it was them, not an otherworldly spirit, that did those things.
I suppose a better way to phrase the initial question is if Mei's shorter fuse, weakened impulse control, and more explosive temper makes her unfit to be among prospective victims or remains within a standard deviation or so of the median middle-school student. It is telling that even when she blew up at Tyler she was shaking him and screaming in his face; potentially dangerous and traumatizing given her size and strength, but if she were trying to maim or kill the brat....
Why doesn't Ming attempt to press charges or call the police on Devon after wrongly believing that he was molesting Mei?
Because it was immediately pretty clear that that was not the case. That 30 year Old looking skin accusation was her retreating the hell back while saving face.
She still presented the drawings to him and declared they lost a loyal customer.
A protracted police investigation would have furthered traumatised Mei.
It's entirely possible that Ming was planning on drawing out the situation into a much larger investigation, but Mei's transformation the following day distracted her from that. Even if Ming still wanted to go through with pressing charges, doing so would have placed a spotlight on Mei.
What happened to Mei's Virtual Pet after Mr. Gao sealed Ming's panda? Did it die or something, or did it just cease to exist?
It got upgraded. It & Ming’s Panda Spirit are now one.
Virtual pets aren't living creatures and probably don't have souls. Presumably the programming of the Virtual Pet device was overwritten / replaced with / overridden by Ming's Panda Spirit.
How much of a separate entity is the Panda Spirit? The implication was that it’s just a force of nature, but there was that whimper that Mei’s Panda gave her when she had almost separated from it, & that look back that her Mother’s Spirit gave her when they did separate. Do they have minds, personalities & feelings of their own, or is it because the person is literally shutting away a portion of themselves?
I'd say the latter. The whimper is just an expression of Mei's personal reluctance to let go of her panda side/powers/emotions.
Really tough question. I would lean toward the first choice: the panda spirit is an entity in its own right, but bound by strict rules: it can give its person great power, but only when its person asks. It was, after all, meant as a blessing, and its whole reason-for-being is to help its person. If its person welcomes its aid, person and spirit become partners, like a great rider and his/her horse. But if the person tries to repress and lock away the spirit, it becomes frustrated. It wants to do what it was created to do, and it can't. So it comes out at inappropriate times and in inappropriate ways. Mei's panda spirit whimpered during the ritual because it had done its job well and knew it, so it really didn't understand why she was rejecting it.
Where did Jin and Ming get the box of kittens from?
The temple has a couple of resident cats. In the scene where the aunties arrive, there are two adult cats resting on the steps in front of the temple entrance, along with a kitten that looks a lot like one of the box kittens.
The bookThe Real R.P.G.: The Story of the Red Panda Girl mentions that one of the stray cats that hung around the temple had just given birth to a litter and that Mei thinks the box kittens must’ve been them.
Why does Ming dislike Miriam? I mean, she doesn't like any of Mei's friends initially, but why single out Miriam?
There are some suggestions that it is because she is White and has thus been given a more chill Western upbringing that she could "corrupt" Mei with rather than that of her fellow Asian-Canadians' Abby (Korea) and Priya (India). Note for example that Miriam's parents would let her go to the concert as long as she pony up the CA$200.
A more sinister possibility is that Ming is subliminally aware that Miriam is the Team Mom for Mei's circle of friends, and therefore sees Miriam as competition for her daughter's affection - not in any romantic way, but more like a surrogate mother-figure. If that's the case, then Ming's reaction to Mei ditching the banishing ritual takes on a much darker tone: not only has her daughter openly defied her in the presence of her family, but Mei has also run off to be with her surrogate mother, proving that Miriam has won that competition and Ming has lost it.
Both, on top of Ming being a control freak. If you really think about it, a lot of Ming's characterization is an Expy of the mom from Bao, who was equally disapproving of her Bao's (western) friends for hella similar reasons——It wouldn't be out of character for Ming, on top of her control freak ways, to be especially disapproving of quote-unquote "western customs", being quite traditionalist.
What was Ming’s plan for dealing with the emergence of Mei’s Panda? She had to know it was going to happen but she seems totally unprepared.
I think pretty much what she did end up doing ("This is normal and expected, Story time, I went through this too, it Will be fixed at the next Red Moon"). But Denial is not just a river in Egypt and every new day was yet another normal day with her CHILD Mei until after 13 years it wasn't.
Also I think they said Mei's came out earlier than expected, so Ming might have thought she had a bit more time to prepare.
Ming confirms when Mei asks 'Why didn't you warn me' that she thought she would have more time & that she wasn't expecting the Panda because Mei is 'Just a child' & there should have been signs, but the point about her not seeing Mei as growing up is a valid one.
Maybe she was planning to give her the talk that evening since she thought Mei had just gotten her first period?
When Ming is relating Sun Yee's story to Mei she said that Sun Yee loved Red Pandas so much that she asked the gods to turn her into one. Did she mean an actual Feral Red Panda? Was this a case of Being Human Sucks and Sun Yee was willing to leave Humanity behind, or was having the Panda form being a kind of Super Mode something she wanted all along?
Considering how Revered Sun Yee is by her descendants & that her Spirit still watches over and assists them with the ritual, its doubtful that she disliked Humanity. Its more likely that when she prayed to the Gods for the power to protect her daughters the Gods granted it in such a way that combined that power and also her love of Red Pandas.
While Jin’s advice to Mei about learning to live with your ‘Messy’ side is inspiring, it seems somewhat undermined by the others re-sealing their Panda Spirits at the end. Is the message there supposed to be that for some people, it’s just too late?
It could be seen that way, but there's also a more optimistic interpretation. Just before the aunties start through the astral portal, one asks petulantly "Mei-Mei's keeping the panda?" and another replies, "It's her choice." That plus Mei's closing lines indicate that "it's your choice whether or not to embrace your messy side(s), and always will be." Mei thinks of her panda as a friend, so choosing to embrace it was easy for her. But the others have all been thinking of their pandas as monsters for so long that changing now would be very difficult - not impossible, but difficult. They can do it if they want to; the question is whether they want to.
Mei and her friends all believe that her sharp change in attitude is due to the red panda's influence. However, events in the early part of the movie seems calculated to hammer home the message that "Mei-Mei can't trust her mommy anymore": Ming grossly embarrasses Mei twice, didn't tell her about the panda, promises to help her fight the panda and then breaks that promise, and then denies her permission to go to the 4*Town concert. At the same time, Mei acquires a goal that's stronger and more immediate than any she's ever had before: to go to the concert no matter what Mommy says. How much of the "new Mei" is due to the red panda, and how much to these other factors?
I think pretty much zero percent because of magic panda. But I am also one of those who reflexively went 1:1 with the Red Panda Female "Inconvenience"-metaphor and whose brain thus entered a HORRIBLE place once Mei started to Hustle the Panda for petty cash.
I think Mei had on some level regarded her mother as someone to be managed/appeased rather than completely trusted for some time at the start of the movie, but the Trauma Conga Line that was the first act certainly reinforced the former attitude.
So the 4*Town concert in Toronto actually takes place on the 25th instead of the 18th. Did nobody among Mei's group of friends ever even bothered to double-check this entire time? Didn't anyone tell them?
Evidently not.
After Mei transforms into a panda in class, the school guard who was trying to take her mom away doesn't look directly at Mei's panda form, but he still seems to be looking inside the classroom. Did he somehow not notice Mei as a big red panda standing there and then running away? Surely this cannot be Unusually Uninteresting Sight.
Same reason nobody in the classroom noticed the huge pink cloud that appeared around her.
The security guard, the math teacher, the drivers involved in the accident - nobody seems to pay much attention to Mei-in-panda-form during her mad run home from school. It makes this troper wonder if there's a Weirdness Censor element to the red panda transformation. Only people who know about the red panda, like Mei's family and Mr. Gao, can see it. And kids can see it because they're more ready to accept the weirdness. But everyone else just ignores the giant red bear-monster, or immediately forgets it.
How did Grandma Wu know that the tuft of red panda fur she found was recent enough to confront Mei over? How did she know it wasn't missed during cleanup after one of her earlier, uncontrolled transformations?
Mei’s parents diligently clean their house, especially if they’re going to have guests over. If there’s any panda hair, it must’ve been recently so it wasn’t already swept up.
And they didn't expect them to come so soon, as said by Ming, she said "you're here so... early."
Alternately, she didn't know it was recent but confronted Mei to make sure that Mei made the "correct" decision; better safe than sorry after all.
The first time the Lee family tries to do the ritual to re-seal Ming's spirit, upon seeing it isn't working, Mei's friends go to recruit 4*Town to help. But how did they know that that would work? They don't know at this point that all that's needed is singing from the heart (we're given no indication that Mei explained this at any point before things went to hell), and this have no way of inferring this until Mr. Gao shouts "Sing from the heart!" while everyone is dragging an unconscious Ming into the circle a bit later; for all they knew the specific chant was more important, and they didn't know that chant, so at the time what could 4*Town had done?
It's likely that they didn't know but it looks like Miriam just saw Mei's family singing, heard Grandma Wu's order to sing louder and figured more people singing might help especially if they had microphones connected to concert grade speakers.
Most if not all of the red pandas have swirl patterns on their arms (most noticeable when everyone is in panda form to drag Ming into the giant circle; Ming herself doesn't seem to have it but her red panda form is already an outlier for other reasons). Is there any sort of significance behind this?
Domee Shi said in an interview that the swirl patterns in Mei's (and by extension all her female relatives') fur were just to make her feel a little bit more magical and not exactly a real red panda.
More of a random question - but were cell phones that widespread in 2002 Canada that Jr. High kids had them?
Also texting wasn’t really that big until like 2009-ish, check out the first iPhone reveal and note what they didn’t mention.
Alternative Universe 2002. Cell phones weren't that much of a thing back then but, in Turning Red, they're more of a thing because the plot requires 'em.
Sample bias: Because we see several cell phones in a quick montage where they are used to illustrate the spreading of the friends' idea of using Mei to raise the ticket money throughout the student body, they kinda do look like most students have them. But for all we know, there might only be a few dozen students with them, and the news is mostly transmitted by speech & written notes. Pixar put the cell-phones in because the target audience aren't going to understand how kids used to communicate primarily by meeting up and passing notes in class.
How did Mei's panda transformation manage to change her clothing? I could understand the hair change since the red was derived from the panda fur, but her clothes are separate from the panda form, and she wasn't wearing the white shirt with the Toronto leaf before her transformation.
Is this referring to her first transformation? If so, the maple-leaf shirt is her night-shirt: she's shown wearing it before she goes to bed and has the 'trigger' nightmare.
Her clothes changing the night of the ritual is a lot harder to explain, though. When she dresses for the ritual she puts on a red robe over a sort of long-sleeved wraparound tunic. After she runs off to the concert and gets rid of the robe, she's wearing her usual pink polo shirt and blue skirt. Where did the tunic go?
At the start of the movie, Mei's hair is black, much like her mother's. After she transforms into the panda for the first time, it becomes red and stays that way for the rest of the movie. Did nobody-not even Mei's friends or her school's faculty-find this weird? In addition, if the panda curse being "activated" was what permanently changed Mei's hair color, then why wasn't that the case with her mother or aunts?
Mei is not the only student at her school with an unusual hair color; one of the goth girls, for example, has purple hair. It's likely that everyone just assumed that she dyed her hair, and that no one had a problem with that. Priya even tells Mei that red looks good on her. As for only Mei retaining her red hair, it seems that red hair is an indicator of currently possessing a panda spirit and not of ever possessing one. The red moon ritual separating out the panda spirit is shown to change one's hair color back to normal if the ritual is completed (Mei's hair is seen to turn black briefly even in the physical world as the panda spirit mostly exits her body) and repossessing one's panda spirit changes one's hair color back to red as seen at the end when all the Lee women are in the astral realm in their human forms before they complete the ritual again.
If it’s only female descendants of Sun Yee who turn into red pandas when they get highly emotional, what happens to male descendants when they get highly emotional (I.E. what abilities do they gain)?
There's nothing to suggest male descendants gain any abilities at all when they get highly emotional. That said, it may be canon compliant for trans male descendants to inherit the ability to panda out if it is tied to female puberty or for trans female descendants to get it if Supernaturally-Validated Trans Person is in play.
Abby speaks in a mild Korean accent. She's clearly been in Canada long enough for her English to be flawless and her accent on the way to fading completely by the time she hits adulthood, but the accent would indicate that she spent her formative years in Korea. Why then is her name Abby? Granted, she doesn't owe anybody an explanation for why she has a Western name but a Korean accent, but it does invite questions and suggest a fairly complicated upbringing that bounces between Korea and Canada a couple of times. Either that or she deliberately overplays her accent as part of her hammy, cuckoolander, Tae Young-obsessed persona. So... what's her story?
On her name being "Abby", the main two theories are "She's first-generation, her parents having immigrated to Canada before she was born and was given a Western first name due to it being more culturally relevant" (in which case she probably plays up the accent for her own reasons) and "Abby isn't actually the name on her birth certificate; it's a nickname she selected with the help of her parents to make interacting with her Western peers easier after moving to Canada early in her life but after her formative years, which were spent in Korea hence the accent".
The accent might also be explained by Korean being her first language due to the way her parents raised her. Maybe her parents home-schooled her until middle school. Her voice actress, Hyein Park was born in Toronto so that proves Abby need not have been born in Korea to have that accent.
If the family started removing the panda from each female once they moved to North America, wouldn't removing the panda once mean no descendants from that branch would ever gain the genes that cause them to turn into red pandas?
It is implied that gaining a panda spirit isn't purely genetic. If it were, Sun Yee's own two daughters wouldn't have inherited it. Rather, it seems panda spirits preferentially inhabit female descendants of Sun Yee once they come of age and, if Panda Up! is canon, it seems any pubertal females who are not descendants of Sun Yee in the vicinity of broken talismans are valid hosts for panda spirits too at least temporarily.
