The Real RPG (Red Panda Girl)

I watched and ADORED "Turning Red," so I had to get this book. 

It's Mei's POV and it's already giving some good backstory and more in depth information.

I'm just going to babble as I come across things worth noting. This won't make any sense unless you've seen the movie. 

So we start out with the girls writing 4*Town FANFIC. YES. We all knew they did. 

The girls are over at Mei's, so they do come to her house with Ming's permission sometimes. There was a discussion about how weird it was to have so many photos of Ming and Mei doing stuff together. I disagreed with that because a lot of it was mother-daughter events, but yeah, the annual tea picture where the only change is how much bigger Mei is is slightly odd. 

And the book solved the main thing that was bothering me about the movie: Ming doesn't like Miriam because she talks about boys too much and Ming doesn't want Mei growing up too fast. I feel like there should have been a clear line in the movie addressing this, because Miriam has a very Jewish last name and it's not gonna look good on Ming's part unless she's very specific about why she doesn't like Mei's Jewish friend. 

Also, I obviously thought Ming was overbearing in the movie because you're supposed to think that, but I thought she was mostly a good person. But in the book, there's a scene in a restaurant and she refuses to tip because they waited "forever" for their food. NO. FUCK YOU, MING. She lost major points with that. 

There's a scene where the girls are working on their fanfic and Ming comes over, so Mei makes them hide it. Then Miriam says something about Devon and Mei covers it up. After Ming is gone, Mei tells Miriam not to talk about boys in front of her mom and Miriam asks why not but Mei never answers her. Would it have been difficult to say her mom isn't ready to hear Mei be interested in boys? Mei hides things from her mom but she also doesn't make it clear to her friends that she basically has a Mom Personality and a Real Personality. I feel like that would have helped a lot. 

A lot of the book is just the movie with little perspective twists or minor additions. There's one great line when Mei is upset about the Daisy Mart incident. 

"It's fine, you'll move to another city, change your identity. Sure, why not? I've always wanted to go to Buffalo."

Heh. I'm from Buffalo. 

There is a great scene with Mei and her dad going to the donut shop for a talk. I hate to say it but I honestly can't remember if this was in the movie or not. I don't think so? But it's a nice father-daughter moment, so it should have been left in. 

There's more in-depth stuff with the aunties that gives them more separate identities. According to the book, Lily's daughter is Vivian, who wasn't in the movie. Helen and Lily are described as Ming's cousins, while Chen and Ping are just "Mom's side of the family." Chen is Lily's mom, but I've read Chen as Ming's sister online. Yet if she was Ming's sister, then Lily wouldn't be a cousin but her niece. So I don't think Chen is Ming's sister. I think she's Grandma Wu's sister. This seems confirmed later in the book when Mei remembers her mother telling her that Chen was jealous of Grandma Wu because Wu inherited the temple and she didn't. So they must be sisters. There's a scene where Grandma and the aunties take Mei for dimsum that's pretty funny. 

So yeah, if you're a fan of the movie, I recommend checking out the book. It's pretty fun. Although it did not answer one of my two big questions from the movie: what is the Goth Girl's name?!!! And if you're looking for more hints about Priya having a crush on her, they're not in a book. Sadly! That scene isn't even mentioned.