Sight Unseen: An Ignorant Plot Synopsis of Turning Red

 DISCLAIMER: I have not seen the film.  This synopsis is merely my best guess, based off of the trailer and my flabbergasted intellect.

 Mei is really young, but she and her friends watched 8 Mile starring Eminem.  Her parents didn't find out until it was too late.  Mei and her friends start beat-boxing on screen, while rap battling off screen.  She's gonna win the big rap battle and rip the city up.  Suddenly, she finds out that her favourite boy band is going to be performing.  Boy band music can be at odds with rapping musics, so she faces a crisis of identity.

This crisis is exacerbated by two red sky beams shooting up into the air one night.  Since the over use of sky beams in the late 2000s and early to mid 2010s, the international community has rallied around limiting their use.  Under special circumstances, a sky beam may be used as long as it doesn't impact the local Chamber of Commerce (and their interests) or hurt anyone's feelings.  The fact that two sky beams erupt is a massive breach of the 2012 amendment of the Geneva Convention to limit the use of weapons of visual effect (WVEs), also known as The Emmerich/Bay Accord.

The day after the dual sky beams, Mei wakes up to find that she has turned into a giant red panda.  This is super troubling, as when she went to bed she wasn't a giant red panda. Her parents try and calm her down and tell her it's a thingy that runs in the family.  Since they lost their pamphlet to address the situation entitled So You've Become a Giant Red Panda, they sit her down to watch Teen Wolf.

Mei decides that this whole giant red panda thing is pretty cool.  Her uncle Ben tells her that with great fur comes great responsibility, but she doesn't listen to him.  Her friends have always wanted to get into an electronic music discotheque, and she abuses her redness to get them in.  They are all underage, but the bouncer, Grady, couldn't help but take the word of the grand panda that they were all old enough.  Part of Grady's parole agreement is that he must take pandas at their word, and he doesn't want to go back to the clink.

Meanwhile at school, Mei uses her panda powers to segregate a fellow student who is wearing UGG boots. There are two reasons for this punishment.  First, UGG boots haven't been in style for about a decade.  Secondly, and much more important, is that UGG boots at no point ever actually looked good on anyone, anywhere, at any time.  Into the last stall on the right the girl goes, left alone to ponder on foot apparel.  Traversing the earth should be done in style.

At recess, word got out that Mei has become an unofficial member of the fashion police.  While playing dodgeball, some of her classmates taunt her.  Mei doesn't know what to do.  Her mother is in the car filming Mei to accompany Mei's college application to the Juilliard School of Playground Athletics.  The girls done do something they shouldn't, and mock Mei's mom and stuff.  Mei gets a case of Panda arm, and hurls a dodgeball at one of the taunters.  The ball breaks the wall of the school, and Mei gets detention.

Sitting quietly in the library after school, Bender offers her a cigarette.  She knows she shouldn't, but she also really has no understanding of what giant red pandas do to unwind.  Ultimately, she figures that the smell of smoke would stick to her panda hair.  She will already get grounded for dodgeballing the school, and smelling of smoke would only make things worse.  She declines the cigarette and is determined to find another way to unwind.  Mei has learned something and grown better as a person.  She listens to Don't You (Forget About Me) and Bender pumps his fist.