This alone is why I won't watch this movie. Not that Americans/Canadians are unable to do proper homage to anime, but there's something about female creators that makes their anime homages much more obnoxious compared to how Ciro Nieli, Craig McCracken, Genndy Tartakovsky, and Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko did their homages.
I guess, I don't know much about female animators and anime homages, I know they all do Sailor Moon fan art and Magical Girl Utena and insist that they are the first ones to like it before any other girl... I just don't get it.
But honestly, I didn't find it that bad. If I had to go a bit more meaner than what I posted before, what is really obnoxious about this movie is the semi-autobiographical nature of the flick.
This movie was writen and directed by Domee Shi, a 34 year old Chinese-Canadian woman who went to sheridan college (Calarts for Canadians) and started at pixar at the age of 22. You get to see this type a lot in the Burbank area of animation, 1st or 2nd asian immigrant generation, overachiever in school with tiger moms, lots of skill, hard workers but stiff thinkers.
So, when came time for Shi to get her first theatrical release, she made it about herself, and while the kids might have fun with the big red panda, Not for a second of the movie I couldn't not see the very self-indulgent and rather self-impressed nature of the movie which can be very obnoxious.
Nothing against autobios, but unless you have real bite about your life that you have to share, then I don't give a shit about you rather basic bitch take about self-discovery, which turns out it is the moral of the movie, you go girl be yourself.
Not to mention that this isn't even the first time Shi uses her experience with overbearing parents, her other Pixar short was just about that as well.
So maybe, just a shot in the dark, that is why these animes references can be seen as obnoxious, when rather just being a cool homage in a well placed way, it can be just off putting when exercised in a forced, self indulgent way in the manner of "look at what I did watch as a kid, neat huh?"