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silveradept asked me, "What's so enchanting about Miraculous Ladybug?"
Oct. 29th, 2018 11:22 amalexseanchai posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
fictional_fansAnd it's a damn shame, I've decided, to let my answer languish in a locked post.
Now, obviously that answer varies by who's being enchanted, but here goes:
I hesitate to say Miraculous Ladybug is a magical-girl anime. But it's obviously a spiritual descendant of Sailor Moon Classic. (Which I bet Adrien's seen the full run of, btw.) You've got the hero team—it's usually just the two title characters, Ladybug and Chat Noir (the full title of the English dub, which is p much all I've watched, is Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir). You've got the big bad, Hawkmoth, who sends out a lot of littler bads (the akumas) while personally staying out of the way. And you've got the physics-defying stunts the heroes and the akumas pull off in combat, and their magical abilities—including, it seems, magic to conceal the identities of the heroes and the big bad. All that's ML's take on magical-girl anime genre conventions.
Characters-wise, you have Marinette Dupain-Cheng (oh look, she's a WoC), who's in love with Adrien Agreste, who is Chat Noir, who's in love with Ladybug, who is Marinette. Neither of them know this—Chat Noir badly wants to know who Ladybug is behind the mask, but he trusts her more than he wants to unmask her, and she trusts him as thoroughly. And these are two of the most blatantly neurodivergent characters I have ever seen in my life. I think they're both autistic, probably both ADHD, and Marinette has anxiety; Adrien's coping with a history of isolation and emotional abuse, and I'm not sure what labels go on the diagnoses that surely accompany those.
You also have Marinette's parents (they're not good parents on the level of Morticia and Gomez Addams but they're close, and Marinette's mom is a WoC) and Adrien's father (—see previous paragraph); Adrien's mother is Lady Not Appearing In This Film. And Marinette's closest friend Alya (WoC) and Adrien's closest friends Chloé (—no comment) and Nino (MoC). Alya's whole family are recurring characters as well, and Marinette's maternal uncle features in an episode, and the (human) mentor figure is an elderly Chinese man.
And if you count up these kids' classmates, you find their class (fourteen in all) has two more MoC and possibly one more WoC (Alix Kubdel's ancestry is unclear), and the characters who exist only as background parts are fairly racially diverse as well. And all fourteen kids in that class—who have a variety of body types, btw, and every time someone's tried to shame a larger character for largeness, it's bit that someone—are absolutely badass when the situation calls for it, and in most of those cases it's without magical weapons and shields.
Did I mention Ladybug's weapon is a yo-yo? (Chat Noir's is a baton, which is a really cool toy but not, y'know, a toy.)
On the meta level, one message that ML is explicitly pushing is stay positive and don't let your fear or anger get the better of you. Because Hawkmoth can't corrupt positive emotions. But I also read ML as pushing the message negative emotions can be damaging but are not inherently wrong, because offhand I think every single akumatized person was experiencing emotions that the narrative presented as valid. And it's certainly pushing the message don't deliberately cause emotional pain, because no few characters have done that and immediately found themselves targeted by the akuma whom they had just provoked.
The canon needs more queer—they haven't quite confirmed as canon Rose/Juleka or Nathaniel/Marc, but you hardly even need slash-tinted lenses to see those coming—and idk about the French original but the English dub needs to lay off the ableist language. (Also, the bit in the first chronological episode where Fu fakes being disabled is...okay, it's a little funny, but it's still ableist as hell.) And it's apparently a conscious decision to air the episodes in different orders in different countries so that the chronology is a pain in the ass to sort out. But that's about all I've got negative to say.
And the show is bright and colorful and puntastic and optimistic and fun.
The English dub is available through mid-S2 on US Netflix. Most of the rest of S2 can be watched in English dub on YouTube—all that's missing at this point is the second half and maybe the first half of the season finale, and that first half of the finale is definitely up in fansub.
Now, obviously that answer varies by who's being enchanted, but here goes:
I hesitate to say Miraculous Ladybug is a magical-girl anime. But it's obviously a spiritual descendant of Sailor Moon Classic. (Which I bet Adrien's seen the full run of, btw.) You've got the hero team—it's usually just the two title characters, Ladybug and Chat Noir (the full title of the English dub, which is p much all I've watched, is Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir). You've got the big bad, Hawkmoth, who sends out a lot of littler bads (the akumas) while personally staying out of the way. And you've got the physics-defying stunts the heroes and the akumas pull off in combat, and their magical abilities—including, it seems, magic to conceal the identities of the heroes and the big bad. All that's ML's take on magical-girl anime genre conventions.
Characters-wise, you have Marinette Dupain-Cheng (oh look, she's a WoC), who's in love with Adrien Agreste, who is Chat Noir, who's in love with Ladybug, who is Marinette. Neither of them know this—Chat Noir badly wants to know who Ladybug is behind the mask, but he trusts her more than he wants to unmask her, and she trusts him as thoroughly. And these are two of the most blatantly neurodivergent characters I have ever seen in my life. I think they're both autistic, probably both ADHD, and Marinette has anxiety; Adrien's coping with a history of isolation and emotional abuse, and I'm not sure what labels go on the diagnoses that surely accompany those.
You also have Marinette's parents (they're not good parents on the level of Morticia and Gomez Addams but they're close, and Marinette's mom is a WoC) and Adrien's father (—see previous paragraph); Adrien's mother is Lady Not Appearing In This Film. And Marinette's closest friend Alya (WoC) and Adrien's closest friends Chloé (—no comment) and Nino (MoC). Alya's whole family are recurring characters as well, and Marinette's maternal uncle features in an episode, and the (human) mentor figure is an elderly Chinese man.
And if you count up these kids' classmates, you find their class (fourteen in all) has two more MoC and possibly one more WoC (Alix Kubdel's ancestry is unclear), and the characters who exist only as background parts are fairly racially diverse as well. And all fourteen kids in that class—who have a variety of body types, btw, and every time someone's tried to shame a larger character for largeness, it's bit that someone—are absolutely badass when the situation calls for it, and in most of those cases it's without magical weapons and shields.
Did I mention Ladybug's weapon is a yo-yo? (Chat Noir's is a baton, which is a really cool toy but not, y'know, a toy.)
On the meta level, one message that ML is explicitly pushing is stay positive and don't let your fear or anger get the better of you. Because Hawkmoth can't corrupt positive emotions. But I also read ML as pushing the message negative emotions can be damaging but are not inherently wrong, because offhand I think every single akumatized person was experiencing emotions that the narrative presented as valid. And it's certainly pushing the message don't deliberately cause emotional pain, because no few characters have done that and immediately found themselves targeted by the akuma whom they had just provoked.
The canon needs more queer—they haven't quite confirmed as canon Rose/Juleka or Nathaniel/Marc, but you hardly even need slash-tinted lenses to see those coming—and idk about the French original but the English dub needs to lay off the ableist language. (Also, the bit in the first chronological episode where Fu fakes being disabled is...okay, it's a little funny, but it's still ableist as hell.) And it's apparently a conscious decision to air the episodes in different orders in different countries so that the chronology is a pain in the ass to sort out. But that's about all I've got negative to say.
And the show is bright and colorful and puntastic and optimistic and fun.
The English dub is available through mid-S2 on US Netflix. Most of the rest of S2 can be watched in English dub on YouTube—all that's missing at this point is the second half and maybe the first half of the season finale, and that first half of the finale is definitely up in fansub.
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