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Turning Red is a different kind of animated movie for Pixar. While it shares its magical realism with outings like Brave, the center of the film is a down to Earth depiction of modern hero Meilin Lee’s journey through her school days. Growing up in the early 2000s, Meilin has a love for manga, K-pop, and her pet Tamagotchi, a mix of interests that many current parents can no doubt relate to. In a chat with the Washington Post, director Domee Shi revealed how she tapped into her own experiences growing up to shape the character and her relatable set of fandoms.
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As it is with the creation of so many distinctive characters in fiction, Shi drew from personal experience when creating the heart of Turning Red. “Nerd geek culture from the 1990′s and 2000′s have now become mainstream. That’s cool. It totally wasn’t the case when we were growing up. Back then, I was vice president of the anime club… I was looked at as a weird freak.” Shi even related a story where she wore One Piece cosplay to school and regretted it, an incident that may have inspired the embarrassing transformation that gives Turning Red its name.
For the artistic side of things, Shi stayed in the same nerdy realm. Teaming with production designer Rona Liu, the team looked at how Nintendo fleshed out its colorful worlds when creating their vision of Meilin’s school days. “Both of us just love that chunky cute aesthetic, and that was definitely fostered by playing Nintendo games, like Pokémon, like EarthBound. There’s just something so appealing about how they are able to stylize their world in such an appealing, chunky, cute kind of way.”
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The end result of all this tinkering has been a successful creative endeavor that might just be ahead of its time when it comes to moving animation beyond stale formulas established in the last century. With more creatives than ever growing up with video games being just as important as more traditional media to their upbringing, we all may see even more offkey creations like Turning Red that take risks both visually and narratively. As for Domee, even if she “actively avoids it,” she can’t help but inject herself into her creations, and that will be true for her next project as well.
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