Mei Lee

Meilin "Mei" Lee is the protagonist of Disney•Pixar's 2022 animated feature film Turning Red. She has the ability to transform into a giant red panda whenever she has a strong emotion.

## Personality

Mei is a very passionate and eager person. She highly enjoys school and learning, especially things like math (which the rest of her peers don't like). She cares deeply about the environment, as she and her friends are shown with campaign signs to protest current issues, such as the whale populations, and the human littering that needs to stop.

Before Mei's power activates, she was carefree, reckless, and didn't really care what people thought of her. She liked saying and doing what she wanted all day, all the time. She was also really extroverted, dramatically entering school and proudly hanging out with her friends. Mei was also very close with her mother, Ming, as they hang out together a lot and get along really well. She also has a secret crush on Devon, the local convenience store worker, making drawings of him as a buff merman, a centaur and many other things; Mei is horribly embarrassed when Ming discovers them.

After Mei's power activates, she is way more cautious of how she acts, afraid that she will unleash her red panda form at the wrong time. She is very ashamed of and angry towards her new ability for causing huge disruptions in her life. The fear of inadvertently transforming, as well as Ming's helicopter parenting, makes Mei very anxious and frustrated. This in turn leads to her relationship with her mother becoming strained. However, Mei's friends help her come to terms with her power and accept it as part of her, giving her a more positive outlook on it and allowing some of her old self to come back.

Mei has a close bond with her parents, though her relationship with her mother is much more complex as Mei has striven to be her mother's "perfect little Mei-Mei", in her schoolwork, chores, and mostly keeping her personal interests secret from her mother, knowing she wouldn't approve of them. As a result, Mei is very anxious around her mother, especially when she is hiding her interests from Ming (such as her crush on an older boy and her being a fan of the boy band 4★Town), and she's dismayed by how her mother doesn't approve of Mei's friends, especially Miriam. This leaves Mei unable to really stand up to or speak up against her mother, due to fearing her disapproval and disappointment.

After her powers activate and she comes under stress in trying to keep them under control, Mei's friends help her find the peace and calm she needs to do so, and Mei realizes that by thinking of and focusing on her friends she is able to keep her powers under control. This is because, unlike with her mother, Mei can be herself around her friends and not have to hide who she really is without fear of disapproval or exclusion, as her friends love and accept Mei as she truly is as a person, as opposed to Mei having to be her mother's "perfect daughter" and living in constant fear of her disappointment, meaning that Ming is actually the source of Mei's anxieties and issues.

When she undergoes the ritual to seal her panda spirit, Mei realizes the panda actually helped her to be her true self, not because of the transformation but because it gave her the courage and confidence to be who she really is and not the "perfect daughter" she was raised and expected to be, and refuses to give it up, defying her mother and family's expectations. When confronted by her mother (who'd flown into a rage and unlocked her panda spirit) Mei finally stood up to Ming, confessing her lies, but declaring she wasn't the "little Mei-Mei" Ming wanted her to be anymore and that she (Ming) had to deal with it.

Seeing her mother in the celestial plane, and realizing that Ming suffered emotional scars from issues and tensions with her own mother that she never resolved, Mei finally understood that Ming had suffered far worse than she had, and helped her mother find closure and make amends with her own mother. Though Ming and their relatives chose to seal their panda spirits again, Mei stood by her decision to keep hers because it had helped her begin to find who she truly is as her own person, and though she fears that might cause a divide between Mei and Ming, they find mutual assurance that as long as they love and remain true to each other they will keep their bond as daughter and mother strong and healthy.

Indeed, their bond steadily improves as Ming has found peace within herself, with her own mother, and even with Mei's friends, as she's glad to see Ming warm up to her friends by inviting them to dinner in their home. Mei is glad that Ming is trusting her more and letting her live her life and be her own person, and though they miss the way things were, they are happier and closer than ever.