It’s been a year since Turning Red entered the coming-of-age comfort canon, becoming a favorite amongst people who strongly recognise “the essence of being thirteen and your mum discovering your cringey anime inspired fanart” amidst other young adolescent horror scenarios. Set in the ancient times of the 2000s, director Domee Shi’s first feature film felt like a creative reinvigoration for Pixar Animation.

Co-written with Julia Cho, who also co-wrote Shi’s short film about empty nest syndrome, Bao—another first directed solely by a woman at Pixar—Turning Red introduces us to Mei, a Chinese-Canadian teenager living in Toronto. A family curse (or blessing, depending on your perspective) turns Mei into a gigantic red panda when she experiences any extreme emotions. It’s a Bruce Banner-esque transformation that doubles as a puberty metaphor as well as a connection between generations of women in Mei’s family.

It’s not just Turning Red’s production circumstances that are unique for the studio, it’s also one of the liveliest and most visually invigorating feature films that Pixar has put out in quite some time—moving away from the Emeryville animation studio’s increasing focus on photorealistic art direction and going for something a bit more expressive and stylized in its collision of various influences. As Demi Adejuyigbe puts it in a Letterboxd review, “the whole thing is so stylistic with its editing and movements, even in the ways it switches style to accentuate moments. Such a real big ‘fuck you’ to all the guys who learned the phrase ‘CalArts style’ from a meme and parrot it ad infinitum as their sole criticism to static designs like this.”

Anime is chief among the influences on its style and story—one of the throwaway title ideas as seen in the making-of doc was My Neighbor Toronto (a play on the celebrated Studio Ghibli film). Such influences are apparent in its visual language, from black and white impact frames to motion lines to more direct homages, like Mei jumping seemingly in the pose of the Studio Chizu logo, itself taken from Mamoru Hosoda’s The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.

Over the past year Turning Red has seen many accolades, including best animated feature gongs from the Boston, Florida and Toronto film critics’ groups—not to mention a boom in red panda popularity in certain zoos, according to zoo worker and Letterboxd member Rachel Anders. As the Academy Awards loom, where the film is one of the five feature animation nominees, I checked in with Shi to see how things have changed since its release, her favorite coming-of-age films and of course, anime (because how could I resist).

I like the ominous version. So since the film was released, you’ve become a vice president of creative at Pixar. I was wondering how things have changed for you since the making of this film.
So my responsibilities are kind of split between [being] in development again on a new feature film that I’m going to direct, but at the same time, I’m helping out other shows and first-time directors navigate the labyrinth of making a movie and trying to be there as a champion for them, but also a shoulder to cry on, a mentor. Just want to pay forward all of the that I’ve gotten in my career. Now I feel like the door is open for new diverse storytellers, that I will keep holding open for the generations to come. So it’s my goal right now.

Turning Red being a production led mostly by women, I imagine having the ability to pay it forward was very rewarding.
It’s everything. I feel like change is slow, but it’s happening. And then it’s also something that we have to constantly keep doing. That it’s not like, “All right, we made this movie and everything’s right with the world and our job is done.” It’s an ongoing thing that we have to continue championing.

The film had Sailor Moon on my mind already but now I’m reminded: have you seen the Tuxedo Mask meme, him swishing his cape and being like, “My work here is done.” And Sailor Moon goes, “But you didn’t do anything.”
I don’t think I’ve seen that meme, but I love me some Tuxedo Mask! It did feel like in the original anime that he would just throw a rose, say something, say some words of encouragement and then maybe leave. But then in some way, I feel like that’s better? He didn’t come in and solve the ladies’ problems for them. He came in with a rose, some words of encouragement, and he empowered them to solve their own problems. That’s a true male ally right there.

Exactly. Thank you, Tuxedo Mask.
Thank you, Tuxedo Mask!

Considering Turning Red’s cultural and experiential specificity, I was wondering what kind of reception you’ve had around the central themes of the film, around Mei as a character.
I’ve been loving seeing the reactions from audiences, especially kids and tweens. I get a lot of letters from tween girls that thank us for making the movie, for helping them deal with all of their emotions and issues with their parents, with their friends, with school. And really, it’s amazing to hear from these kids that, “Your film taught me that it’s okay to not be perfect, and that what I’m going through with my mom is normal, even though it’s really hard.” So that’s been just amazing.

But at the same time, I love hearing reactions from adults too about, “Oh man, thank you for bringing me back to when I was Mei’s age, and all of the embarrassment and the secret sketchbooks and the crushes and the weird fantasies. Thank you for putting that all up there.” I also get a lot of great responses from parents too, that thank us for starting these conversations with their kids about puberty, about getting periods. But also they thank me for starting conversations with their parents, their elderly parents. The whole idea of how, “Oh, are all of the burdens and trauma that I received growing up... Am I ing that on to my kids too?” So I feel like it’s just been amazing seeing how much our film has become this source of healing and comfort and discovery for a lot of audiences.

I also just love how that movie just showed just all of the specificity and hilarity of being a teenager and growing up. And I was really just so inspired by it because it was also directed and written by a woman. And it was just acted so well and just felt so authentic and funny and heartbreaking, and I just really love that movie.

It feels like both films have this perspective where you recognize something in their mothers that’s something that a younger self might not.
I feel like I couldn’t have understood that when I was thirteen. I just felt like the prisoner and my mother was the warden. But I think also through working with a crew of women, and a lot of them were—our producer was a mother of teen daughters and teenage sons—and talking with and having that perspective as we were making the movie really helped inform the character and the aunties and the grandma. It just helped us make sure that they felt fully rounded. You understood why they were acting the way that they were acting, or why they were making certain choices.

I love the aunties. They reminded me just a tiny bit of mine on the Zambian side of my family. Key difference is that my aunties would roast me the entire time. They would’ve stepped foot in that door and they’d be like, “What are you wearing? Why do you look like this?”
Oh my gosh. I mean, yes, I feel like there’s a universal truth to immigrant aunties that I’m really happy we were able to portray in the movie. But it was tricky though. It’s tricky when you’re making these movies, especially for a big studio, like Disney and Pixar. Sometimes you’ll try to take these big swings and you’ll depict this group, like these aunties or the grandma, in a way that you think is authentic to your experience. But then you’ll get notes back being like, “They seem really harsh. They seem really mean. Do they actually love Mei at all?” And we were like, “Yes, of course. That’s how they show love, is through nitpicking and pinching and poking.” But that was one of the challenges of making the movie, was trying to be authentic, but also making sure that the love was being communicated to people who are not familiar with that form of love.

Did a similar thing happen with Bao?
A little bit. I think with Bao, the idea of a mother smothering her little baby dumpling to death with love, that felt more gettable, I think. But the eating part, I think that was really interesting to see different people’s reaction and interpretation of that. I think a lot of moms and parents and adults understood that. But I think a lot of kids were very shocked and disturbed. But I’m like, “That’s real life, kid. That’s how your parents feel about you. They want to put you back in their stomach so they can keep you forever.”

What also helped too was initially we created this “Welcome to Turning Red” video, and we shot it with an actual camcorder from the 2000s. Our idea was to help initiate new on the crew and catch them up with the style and the vibe and the influences we were inspired by. We created this three, four-minute-long inspiration video that was almost like a parody of the actual opening of the movie. My VP just followed me around campus with a camcorder, and I was like, “I’m Domee Shi, and on this show, we do what we want, say what we want.” It was very fun and goofy and tongue in cheek.

Also, we showed clips from a lot of movies that we were inspired by like Lady Bird, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Rushmore. It was half a fun video, but also an inspiration and style guide that helped people on the show understand and wrap their head around what we were going for. So that helped a lot.

I was thinking of Mirai and When Marnie Was There a little bit as well, when Mei sees her mother as her younger self.
Oh I love Mamoru Hosoda, who made Mirai and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. I had met him once at an Oscar luncheon for Bao. I think when I went up to him, I started crying because I was talking about how much his movies meant to me in college when I was in animation school, I was just overwhelmed with emotion. And then I met him again for Turning Red. He actually interviewed me for a Japanese animation publication and he sent me fan art, which isn’t here right now, but I was like, “Oh my God. I just got fan art from one of my favorite Japanese animators.” It was Mei and Belle from his new movie Belle. I just have to return the favor at some point. But that was one of my favorite moments!