Ming Lee

Villainess Overview

Gallery

Evil-doer

Full Name

Ming Lee

Alias

Ming

Panda Ming (Red Panda form)
Mom (by Mei)
Psycho Mom (by Tyler)
Mingzilla (by Tyler, novelisation only)

Origin

Turning Red

Occupation

Temple curator

Powers / Skills

High intelligence

Charisma
Willpower
Cooking skills
As a red panda:
Red panda physiology
Superhuman strength

Hobby

Looking out for her daughter.

Baking.

Goals

Normal form:
Have Mei Lee grow up to be the "perfect" daughter as herself.
Decieve Mei to leave her friends and remove her panda (both formerly).
Make amends with Mei and Wu (succeeded).
Pay Toronto $100,000,000 for the damages she caused at the SkyDome (ongoing).
Red panda form:
Take Mei Lee back home by force.
Punish Mei Lee for her "disobedience" and "dishonor" (both formerly/abandoned).
Destroy the SkyDome and shut down the 4*Town concert (red panda form; partially succeeded).

Crimes

Misdemeanor

Emotional Abuse
Trespassing
Assault and battery
Stalking
Terrorism
Public endangerment
Property destruction
Attempted child abduction

Type of Villain

Obsessive Control Freak

“	How could she? How could she do this to… HER OWN… MOTHER?! MEI-MEI!!!!	„
	~ Ming's villainous breakdown, as she began to transform into a giant red panda.

Ming Lee is the main antagonist of Pixar's 25th full-length animated feature film Turning Red.

She is Mei Lee's overprotective, controlling, overbearing, and strict mother. Although constantly harsh with her daughter and being an obstacle towards her desires, Ming ends up redeeming herself and understanding her daughter by giving her more independence at the end of the film.

She was voiced by Sandra Oh.

History[]

Ming first appears when Mei comes home from school. The two then pray before giving tourists a tour of the family temple. In the evening, Ming enters the bedroom and discovers explicit drawings of Mei and mistakenly believes that Devon attacked her daughter. This moment humiliated Mei who is again mocked by the school bully Tyler who posted Mei's drawings all over the school.

While watching her daughter at school, Ming discovers that Mei has transformed into a giant red panda and follows her through town to their house. Ming then explains the ancestral story connected to Mei's transformation and explains that she must learn to manage her emotions to prevent her panda from coming back.

Later in the film, Ming is unaware that Mei is using her panda to entertain her classmates, to raise money and go to the 4*Town concert. One evening, Mei goes to Tyler's birthday party without her mother knowing. However, the latter arrives when Mei, in her panda form, attacks Tyler after an argument and she discovered Mei's panda stuff she had hid under her bed earlier. After Ming is done being scolded by Tyler's parents after Mei attacked him, Ming angrily goes over to Mei's friends Miriam, Abby, and Priya, and scolds them for putting all of this stuff in Mei's head and letting her attack Tyler. The three girls deny this and Ming refuses to hear them out. She then takes her daughter home to prepare for the ritual.

Right after, Mei's ritual takes place but it is interrupted because Mei refuses to part with her panda and she goes to the concert to be with her friends. In a fit of anger, she pushes Ming away, whose collar breaks when she falls. Mei's attitude consumes Ming with rage and she starts rampaging in her panda form caused by her rage and Mei's disobedience

An enraged Ming goes to the 4*Town concert where Mei is, terrorizes the audience and destroys the sign of the singers caused by her rage and Mei's rebellion. Mei finally dares to stand up to her mother saying that she lied to her several times and that she had to come to terms with the idea that her daughter was growing up. This only ticks Ming off even more and Mei distracts her mother so that the rest of her family can start another ritual. Mei accidentally knocks out Ming who falls to the ground. Thanks to the singing of the aunts and the 4*Town, the ritual works and Mei discover her young mother in a celestial plane. Understanding what Ming has been through, the two girls reconcile and Ming parts ways with her panda and eventually agrees that Mei can keep hers.

In the end, a reformed Ming makes amends to the town, and she comes to appreciate Mei's friends, even inviting them to eat at their house at the Temple.

Personality[]

Ming is a very strict and disciplinarian mother, but that's because she loves Mei and only wants to protect her. However, she is closed-minded and despises her daughter's likes like the 4*Town band and even her friends, especially Miriam as she believes of them being bad influences on her daughter. Ming's controlling nature often gets Mei in trouble such as when she constantly checks on her at school or indirectly breaks the friendship between Mei and her friends. When things don't go her way, Ming is shown to be very hot-tempered and it turns out that her anger issue had failed her in the past.

In her red panda form, Ming becomes way more aggressive and violent than she normally would. Blinded by anger, she thinks nothing of the unnecessary harm she causes, as seen when she crashed the 4*Town Consert. She also refuses to admit her mistakes.

Appearance[]

Ming is an slender and average height, adult, Chinese-Canadian woman with light olive skin, brown eyes with bright green eyeshadow and black eyeliner for makeup, a thin long nose, a mole under her left eye, and long jet black hair that is tied into a low bun at the lower back. She wears a light blue and aquamarine, wrapped Cheongsam dress with a green blazer, dark grey pantyhose, and low-heeled dark green heels. She also has other accessories like green orb earrings, a red moon talisman necklace (which is later replaced by a pink tamagotchi), an auburn handbag, and sunglasses she wears whenever it's appropriate.

As a red panda, Ming resembles her daughter with a few key differences. She is way much larger than Mei, along with having longer, shaggier fur, having fur in a fire-like motif on her chest area, and a thick curl of "hair" on her head between her ears. Her facial features remain mostly the same, retaining her eyeliner and mole, and having purely red eyes.

As a teenager, Ming is 16 years old, is shorter, only slightly taller than Mei, she also wears her hair down and loose, which is shown to be armpit-length. She wears silver square glasses, a short-sleeve light blue Peter Pan collar shirt with two buttons on it, a knee-length dark blue chess skirt, gray tights and black Mary Jane shoes.

As a young adult, Ming's appearance is almost the same as a teenager, except that she wears her hair in low ponytail with dark green scrunchie, has discarded her glasses and wears a green coat tied to the collar on the blue polo shirt.

Trivia[]

Like her voice actress, Ming is Asian-Canadian.
Her and Mei's relationship is sort of similar to another Pixar mother-daughter duo, Merida and Queen Elinor in Brave (which was released almost a decade prior to Turning Red) as like Elinor, despite wanting what's best for her daughter, she oversteps her bounds and it results in her relationship with her daughter becoming toxic.
- They also have similar hair colors at the end of their respective films, with Elinor and Ming having dark hair, and Merida and Mei having red hair (Mei's hair turned red when she became a red panda).
Ming is represented by the color green. Being Mei's mother, this makes sense as Green is considered a positive and nurturing color, but also jealousy; represent of Ming's jealousy toward Mei for having friends and getting to go to the concert, while Ming have to put her family first when she was the same age as Mei, however, it also actively contrasts the color red, representing the imbalance in her relationship with her daughter. Ming wears blue as well. Blue signifies harmony and tranquility but also coldness and depression, representing how Ming shows coldness on Mei's friends and depression due to the expectations her mother puts on her.
- Incidentally, Miriam is mostly adorned in green as well. This represents how both Ming and Miriam have their own nurturing take on Mei in her most difficult time of need.
Her panda is contained in a red necklace at the beginning of the film; at the end, it becomes contained within Mei's Digital Pet toy.
Mei finds out the reason her mom was so overprotective was because of Ming's mother Wu who Ming accidentally hurt her mom by giving her a scar when she was a red panda.

Navigation[]

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Literature
King Nicholas

Manga
Ansem, Seeker of Darkness | Xemnas

Villains

Villains
Ming Lee \| Tyler Nguyen-Baker \| Abby Park \| Priya Mangal \| Miriam Mendelsohn \| Grandma Wu \| Jin Lee \| Soldiers