In May 2002, Meilin “Mei” Lee is a spunky 13-year-old Chinese Canadian girl who lives in Toronto, Ontario in Canada. She is a student prodigy and has an entourage of spunky girls consisting of Miriam, Priya and Abby. All of them are fans of the boy band 4*Town. However, Mei’s mother, Ming, constantly expects perfection from her daughter and tries to discourage her current interests, including her crush on a boy named Devon, who works at a convenience store. Mei and Ming spend their days tending to their Chinese family temple that resides next to their house.
One day, after having a nightmare about the red panda statues from the temple coming to life, Mei suddenly wakes up to discover that she has turned into a 10-foot red panda. After hiding this change from her mother and father, Jin, Mei discovers that she can turn back into a human once she calms down, as she only transforms when in a high-pressure of emotion.
Worrying for her daughter, Ming follows her to school one day, and gets into a fight with a security guard in front of her whole class, which embarrasses Mei so much that she transforms. She leaves the school and runs to her house where her parents explain that every female member from their family has been granted with the transformation on account of an ancestor named Sun Yee and it can only be sealed by a ritual on the night of the Red Sun, which is May 25th, where the Red Panda spirit will be placed in a talisman.
Mei’s friends soon see her in her red panda form but take a liking to it and inspire Mei to do the same. They also tell her that 4*Town will be coming to Toronto and hold a concert, much to her joy. However, despite showing that she is responsible enough to keep the transformation under control, Ming refuses to let Mei attend the concert. Despite this, Mei and her friends begin using Mei’s powers in order to obtain money needed for the concert tickets and soon, Mei becomes the most popular kid in school, to the point where her bully Tyler asks her to entertain at his birthday. However, Mei finds out that the concert will be happening on the night of the ritual (she originally thought it was May 18th, but Abby misread a flyer showing the schedule). She gets frustrated at this and soon takes her anger out on Tyler when he insults her, leading to the kids to fear her. Ming findings out what she and her friends have been doing and lambasts Mei for going out in public in her panda form.
