Turning Red: Ming's Panda Ceremony Warnings To Mei Were All Lies
Warning: This article contains spoilers for Turning Red.
Mei's panda in TurningRed is a source of huge anxiety for her mother, Ming, which actually leads the latter to lie to her daughter about the important panda ceremony. Pixar continues to expand on the trend of animated films directly dealing with generational trauma, in a similar vein to the hugely successful Encanto,withTurning Red. The film is a timeless coming of age story about female friendship, and specifically maternal relationships, with Mei and Ming being the catalyst for the topic.
When Mei transforms into the panda, her mother explains that their ancestor asked the gods to turn her into the animal in order to protect her family, due to red pandas' importance to her. Since then, the female family members have all had a red panda too when they've come of age. While it is abundantly clear that Mei and Ming in Turning Red do not have a bad relationship, Ming is nonetheless a product of her own trauma which is then inadvertently pushed onto Mei. As a result, Ming pushes Mei into the ceremony that would see her panda trapped in a talisman, and doesn't really give her a choice about the process. Though this is clearly not the best parenting strategy, Ming does express a touching apology to her daughter in Turning Red's ending. She doesn't, however, address the fact that she lied about Mei's panda ceremony.
Related: Turning Red: How Mei Lee's Costume Reveals The Ending
Ming tells Mei that there is a ritual that can be done on a Red Moon to trap her panda, calling it a ''cure.'' Ming then warns her that the more she releases the panda, the more difficult the ritual will be, and also mentions that Mei only has ''one chance to banish it.'' These, as it turns out,
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