4★Town

4★Town is the friendship between Robaire, Jesse, Tae Young, Aaron T. and Aaron Z. from the Turning Red fandom.

Canon
4★Town is a Canadian boy band in the world the movie takes place in. There used to be four of them, but a fifth member joined and they didn't bother to change their label. They all wear shoes in unique colors to distinguish them.

Much of the plot of the movie hinges on Mei and her friends wanting to go their concert against their parents' wishes. After Mei reveals her powers to her friends, they come up with a "get-rich-quick" scheme by marketing her panda form to the school, making merchandise, allowing other students to touch her fur to earn 800 bucks in record speed. They even go so far as to film themselves performing one of their songs, "U Know What's Up" on camcorder.

But when Mei's mother Ming finds out about her daughter monetizing the panda "curse", she quickly crashes Tyler's party that Mei was paid to attend and thwarts their plans to go to the 4★Town concert. Mei and her friends have realized that the concert on the same day as the ceremony of Mei locking her panda form away, with Mei choosing to stay loyal to her mother and accept her request of going through with the ceremony. But on that day, Mei's father Jin finds the recording of their 4★Town cover and goes to talk to Mei, encouraging her to live her dreams. She bails out of the ceremony, jumping through Toronto to go the concert. But just as the concert was about to start, Ming loses control of her own panda and turns into a red panda the size of a skyscraper, wrecking the concert hall and endangering the lives of 4★Town and their fans. Mei distracts her mother from harming 4★Town and her friends and family work together to form a makeshift ceremony circle around Ming to banish her panda form once again. Their singing is not enough, but Mei's friends have saved 4★Town and cleared them up about what's going on. Mei was ecstatic about seeing her favorite boy band sing along to her family's chanting and the circle grows powerful enought that all of Mei's family members have a chance to banish their panda forms. Mei's mother tries to make up for thrashing the concert hall by paying for it out of her own pocket. The credits reveal that there are no hard feelings with 4★Town, with them taking a picture with Mei's friends and family and even autographing it. The after credits show that Jin has becoming a secret fan of the group.

Robaire
The de-facto leader of the group. Naturally, he's Mei's favorite, with her finding his ability to speak French very appealing.

Jesse
A former art student. He has two children. He's Priya's favorite. Accoriding to Domee Shi, he's the oldest member of the group at 26, with the rest of them being in their twenties.

Tae Young
The youngest of the group and the "sensitive" one. He's an animal lover and official description states that he personally nursed injured doves back to health. He also wears a bit of make-up and nail polish. He's implied to be Korean, which makes him Abby's favorite since she's also Korean.

Aaron T.
Another member of the group, with Mei considering him (and Aaron Z.) "talented, too". He's almost always seen with his namesake. Regardless, he's Miriam's favorite.

Aaron Z.
Yet another member of the group and Mei lumps him together with his namesake. The climax of the movie reveals that he's Tyler's favorite, with director Domee Shi revealing that it's because they're both half Black and Asian.

Fanon
4★Town was a hit with fans of the movie, to the point where the platonic ship between all of them is the second most popular Turning Red ship on AO3, after Meiriam. What helps is that they are very much depicted as if they were a regular boy band, meaning that fans were essentially allowed to go nuts with usual bandfic content without having to restrain themselves with thoughts of writing embarrasing fics about real people.

The most common guess about who the fifth member is boils down to either Tae Young (since Korean members of boy bands were rare in the 2000's) or either of the Aarons. The latter has led to its own headcanons about the two Aarons being childhood friends, with one of them insisting about the other being accepted into the group. If one of the Aarons is specifically pointed out as the fifth member, it's most commonly Z, since it provides a neat parallel to Tyler being the last member of Mei's friend group.

Headcanons about Jesse often have him as the official No. 2 to Robaire and his best friend, which is only hinted at in the movie with him being the second member introduced. His two kids are often thought to be twins, since he's a bit young to father two children with a larger age gap. Poeple also like to headcanon them as a brother and sister and that they refer to the other 4★Town members as "uncle".

Fandom
FAN FICTION