Pixar movies, especially visually, and one of its scrapped titles beautifully explains that big difference. Pixar continues to be a powerhouse in the world of animation, and by now everyone knows what a Pixar movie looks and feels like, but the studio has been changing things up a bit in recent years. Its most recent project, Turning Red, has been a critical success but it has also been quite divisive, as it addresses topics that aren’t usually seen in Pixar movies, and its animation style is also different.
Although there have already been Pixar movies with female leads, such as Meilin "Mei" Lee (Rosalie Chiang), a 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian student who one day discovers that, whenever she gets too excited or stressed, she turns into a giant red panda, but she can turn back if she becomes calm and manages to control her emotions. Luckily, this family curse can be contained by performing a special ritual on one specific night – but no so luckily, that night coincides with the concert of Mei’s favorite boy band, and to further complicate everything, Mei also has to deal with her overbearing mother, Ming (Sandra Oh).
Aside from the topics of puberty, menstruation, and generational trauma, what viewers are constantly pointing out about Studio Ghibli’s movies, and one of the potential titles for the movie was a perfect reference to them: My Neighbor Toronto.
As briefly shown in the documentary Embrace the Panda: Making Turning Red, one of Turning Red’s alt titles was Studio Ghibli-inspired and was a reference to the studio’s classic Studio Ghibli visual influences.
Still, My Neighbor Toronto would have limited Turning Red as the story is a lot more than a Canadian girl in an anime-inspired/Ghibli-influenced setting, and ultimately, the movie’s main theme is puberty, and “Turning Red” is a great reference to that. Turning Red stands out from the rest of Pixar’s movies for the right reasons, and knowing that at one point a title that referenced one of Studio Ghibli’s most beloved movies was considered makes those differences even more special and exciting.
