#chirp.ml
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s1ep20 guitar villain
it was fine. the pacing seemed okay, if not just a bit fast. like1.5 speed. i think it's very funny on u.s.'s part to release pixelator and then guitar villain. bc in pixelator we end with jagged stone playing a song dedicated to ladybug for saving his life against an akuma. and in the very next episode, jagged stone is getting akumatized.
anyway something i forgot to mention that i was thinking about in the last episode was the fact that "the power of love" in miraculous ladybug is about romantic love between the love square. and i think that was a HUGE mistake on the creator's part. like first of all, you can't call yourself a sailor moon fan if you don't get that the power of love mainly refers to her love for her friends, and that's what saves the day. like that's literally a trope in that genre! the power of love and friendship!! how could he get that so wrong???
like of course usagi loves mamoru and the other way around, but like did the creator even notice that every time she asks for strength and power, it mainly comes from her friends and fellow sailor scouts? like obviously mamoru being there as a support system is very important to her, and adds to her power, but her friends and fellow scouts are always there first.
this is a tangent, but related, but there are two versions of the miraculous ladybug theme song and it always bothered me that chat noir's lines just completely changed from the first version we heard:
from it's ladybug version (first version)
They look at me and think I'm cool
I'm Cat Noir, at night I rule
My ring is charged with energy
My claws are out, just watch and see
from miraculous version (finalized version)
I am a cat
Just chilling out
But in the night, she's all I think about
I feel so strong
When she's around
She picks me up when I am down
and later in the song, his line of "my force will only grow" to "my love can only grow" always irritated me.
they center his lyrics around ladybug and his love for her. and it really reduces his character, and also pushes his love onto ladybug who doesn't even want it.
edit: i should also add that they do very much change ladybug's line to center more around adrien, too. like it's a mutual fucking up of lyrics, imo. bc they center both the lyrics around the love square.
like they say, "the power of love, so strong!" but demonstrate none of it. chat flirts with ladybug, who just looks uncomfortable from it and has to stop his advances all the time, while they're fighting akuma, and marinette becomes brainless whenever adrien breathes near her. like how is that making them stronger? helping them save the day?
like the creator did know when sailor moon or any other magical girl anime references the power of love, they mainly mean the power of friendship right?? like he did know that it's not a fluke that the genre is literally called "magical girl anime" because they're usually a group of girl-friends right?? like he knew why these magical girls were all girls and friends? right??????
#chirp.ml#chirp.txt#it was a mistake to let this man create a magical girl anime#he does know that the “magical girl” is not a lone magical girl right. like it's just a reference to the genre#not how many magical girls there are
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s2ep17 frozer
i think i'm just gonna list the things i liked and didn't like
i don't like how persistent and insistent adrien/chat noir is for ladybug. again, i really think it's a very scary and dangerous pattern to teach children. obviously anyone of anyone gender should respect the person they like and their boundaries, but esp teaching young boys that they need to respect young girls's boundaries and bodily autonomy (whether either of them stay that way later in life).
i did however think plagg's sad face in adrien's bag was very funny.
the creator is trying to reignite the race war between chinese ppl and japanese ppl fr /j
i'm annoyed that, like with master fu decoding the grimore, or the fact that kim swims and has a a close friend who's crushing on me, we don't get any hints that kagami fences with adrien until this episode. bc last we saw, she had been defeated and then akumatized.
i thought marinette chatting with her friends was a cute little scene, but it's kind of soured by the fact that 1) all they talk about is adrien (so it doesn't pass the bechdel test) and 2) her friends don't even listen to her when she says she thinks they're just meant to be friends
honestly, yknow, i just didn't like this episode. which is not surprise. i just didn't like the set-up or the premise. again, i think under a better writing team and creator, the love square could work. i might still be annoyed with it, but maybe i would be less annoyed if it was actually done well on a technical level.
but i don't feel any stakes or miscommunication drama. all i see is a teen boy not respecting his partner's boundaries and who doesn't listen to marinette, and a teen girl who is unable to speak to her crush at all, and barely listens to him, either. like that's just. idk basic? and it feels dumb.
once again the pacing was absolutely shot because they had to spend half the episode setting up the love square, and the introduced love interest rivals. so what does that make that? if it's a love square, and luka is connected to mareintte, and kagami is connected to adrien,,,like some sort of creature i guess. the square is the face and the off-shoots are like. ears or smth. but anyway the fact that they wasted half the episode introducing and setting up the love creature means they had to rush through everything else.
instead of like. using other episodes to establish that beforehand.
someone in a server i'm in, after reading some of my posts on this, commented that this show is like french rwby and they were so on the money with that one. like all i can think about is hbomb commenting about how they could've set up so many new characters through naturalistic storytelling and instead decided to spend half their season on a prom arc.
ml is like that but like for everything. ondine makes a brief appearance in frightingale and suddenly we're supposed to know that she and kim are so close that she confesses her love to him??? the leap the audience has to make!!!
i also just was annoyed at both marinette and adrien the whole episode bc of how they acted at the skating rink. but i won't go into that here bc i think it's more personal than an actual critique. could it have been written better, absolutely. but i don't think i would've liked it all the same.
i do feel bad for luka. it's very weird they made him the way he is. why introduce him as a potential love rival when 1) adrien isn't going to pay attention bc he will always want ladybug and 2) luka isn't even going to fight for marinette? where's the drama in that?
that does remind me tho, i did want to complain about the fact that adrien doesn't listen to kagami. like she says something and he completely ignores her! she tells him it's not his technique, and 5 seconds later, he goes, "it must be my technique." like my dude. maybe if you like. actually listened to the girls who talk to you, you'd have better chances understanding them.
and it goes the same for marinette, too. luka asks if she wants to ride the subway back together and marinette completely ignores him in favor of watching adrien leave. she doesn't even indicate she heard him. and then what does she do? nothing! she just stutters and stumbles and it goes nowhere!!
also can i just say the fact that she was like, "let's bring the whole gang next time" and then instead of listing their classmates, who have been shown to hang out together--they went to the goddamn movies last time--she lists the two they were just with, and alya and nino. which, funnily enough, pairs them off quite nicely. /sarcasm
tl;dr what is this romance doing in my superhero show lol
also now that i've started ice skating, the fact that both luka and kagami can do those moves on ice indicates way, way more practice than you would think. there's no way, based on their comments to the skating coach, that they would be able to skate that well if they did not get consistent practice. luka especially bc he lifts marinette!! adrien and marinette too. i've seen inexperienced ppl and first-timers, they are not that steady, nor that confident. even when they're with more experienced skaters. they move slow, they hang close to the wall. that was so unrealistic lmao. don't give ppl false ideas about how easy ice skating is man.
finally, this man couldn't get ppl skating?? in paris, france?? france, where adam siao him fa is from????? hello???
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s2ep14 syren
there was a lot wrong with this one but it's honestly a lot of what i've already talked about.
it was too fast paced but this time, it was because it was trying to do too much. it had to introduce the akuma, but also introduce the discord between ladybug and chat noir, but also introduce power-ups and magic potions and the fact that kwami can't know the secret ingredients, and also show adrien being a snotty brat, and spent so much time doing all that, we didn't even really get to see how their power-ups worked and they didn't even get new powers. other than the ability to breathe underwater. "underwater lucky charm" is not a new power lmao.
they introduced a whole new character we've never seen before except for a split second in frightingale, and the fact that kim swims regularly, and that they're apparently such good friends this new character has a crush on him??? it's so forced and contrived. they literally couldn't come up with a more creative way to introduce a new character that swims? or idk actually sprinkle in here and there that kim likes to swim and has a partner he often swims with earlier???
everything felt too unnatural. none it flowed well. these power-ups, much like hawkmoth's akumas becoming more powerful, gives us a false sense of raised stakes.
the new transformation is fun, sure. and the kwamis changing to match is adorable. but like, it's temporary and doesn't even give them new superpowers permanently.
the one thing i will commend it on is the fact that they actually took the time to explain things to make it seem more natural when ladybug figured out where the akuma was. but, again, they had to squeeze it into such a short period of time, we didn't even get any time to spend with this new character, this new threat, or the supers new superpowers/transformations. we didn't even get to see chat noir's new transformation or plagg's underwater self except in the end card. does chat noir have an "underwater cataclysm?"
it was just really badly set up. and badly written.
what was preventing them from introducing us to all these things slowly? sprinkling them throughout the other episodes. all kim had to do was mention his friend he swims with once or twice. all the writers had to do was have master fu talk about how he's decoding the grimore, which contains power-ups that he currently working on when marinette goes to visit him for rena rouge's miraculous.
the fact that he's conveniently working on these potions and the one potion he's working specifically has to do with water powers is very convenient and doesn't feel ham-fisted at all! /sarcasm
the one thing that's also not explained and doesn't make sense to me is the fact that kwami are immortal god-like creatures that grant users powers through use of jewelry but they need guardians to make special potions for them to power-up? that doesn't make sense. who taught the guardians the potions if not the kwamis? where did this knowledge come from? the gimore couldn't have written itself. but then who wrote it and who told the first guardian all these things?
this is not to mention the fact that these power-ups seem very specific to only akuma situations, you know? further providing evidence that they designed hawkmoth as a villain first and foremost.
the power-ups have to make sense in the context of the overall meta-narrative you're telling about how these kwamis and superheros came to be, and how they work and interact within the wider world. if we're supposed to assume that nooroo is supposed to be used for good, then we can't assume that the villains ladybug and chat noir, and the other miraculous superheros, faced in the past were akumatized victims, right? which means that it doesn't make sense to base their power-ups on what an akuma might do, right?
aside: have i already mentioned the fact that ladybug's yo-yo cleanses akuma provides more evidence hawkmoth was always a villain. bc it seems like that's a very specific power based on the premise of akuma.
anyway, so why does it feel too convenient that their power-ups do suit the akumatized victim of the episode?
they really didn't think about this at all, did they?
it feels like creator saw that sailor moon had powers-ups but didn't or couldn't come up with new threats for each season, so tried to incorporate them. but couldn't come up with a clever way to fit them in unless for very specific akuma circumstances, and so here we are.
everything feels like it moves too fast, yet also feels incredibly contrived and doesn't make sense when you think about it for 2 seconds longer.
i also wanted to complain a little about adrien being a little brat. like i know i've talked about how i think they should make him a proper duexteragonist but not in a way that makes him seem irresponsible and unfit to be a superhero in the first place. at the very least, if you're not going to do anything with that as some kind of character arc, then what's the point? now, it's own, that's a value neutral thing you can put into your story. but like with coding, GIGO. you have to at least try to make it work within the wider narrative or it's just gonna fall flat.
the premise of master fu choosing ladybug and chat noir on the basis of them being kind is bananas to me. like obviously you want your superheroes to be kind and somewhat selfless, but that can't be the only criteria or they'll go and pull stunts like what adrien did. he pities himself too much and it pisses me off. and also does not demonstrate fitness to be a superhero. bc sometimes you need to set aside your differences to solve the greater issue.
the writers seem to have a complex about their two mains in opposite directions and none of it is good.
like yes, he's a teenager, sure. but they don't even try to weave that into the greater narrative. it's not something that adrien needs to work on to become a better chat noir bc he is still a teenager. it's just there for suspense and convenience.
i was gonna end with a funny quip that was lighthearted and has nothing to do with my critiques of the show, but i can't remember what it was now. boo
edit: i remembered! the way master fu boils the kettle and then pours the "tea" directly into marinette's cup 💀 no steeping, not teapot, just boiled leaf water directly from the kettle. unacceptable. an old chinese man would never make "tea" like that. is that how they make "tea" in france?
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what's this i see?
could this be true?
a miraculous ladybug episode i enjoy from season 2?
s2ep9 frightningale
lol.
anyway, her akumatization outfit was atrocious. who the fuck greenlit that.
other than some like realism nitpicks (the way auditions were held, the fact that they had to start filming immediately without any like training or practice) i actually did enjoy this episode.
tho one more thing i want to complain about before i talk about why i enjoyed it: the fact that a music video in paris about ladybug and chat noir by an italian musician is supposed to be promotional material for gabriel's fashion line in china and korea is so strange to me. how is that supposed to appeal to the market in china and korea??? wouldn't it make more sense to do a collaboration with like a kpop and/or cpop band that wear his designs instead??? like it even keeps the music video aspect.
oh wait, last thing: chloe in a marinette/ladybug wig. that was. a lot.
but yeah, i don't really have much else to say negatively. the pacing was good. clara's always rhyming was a little cheesy but as you can see from the beginning of this post, i got into the groove of it. there's nothing wrong with a little cheese. esp when it's done so sincerely. i'm willing to put up with a lot of cheesy and/or cringey stuff when it's sincere. it was actually really funny that even though hawkmoth wasn't hit by her whip, he still rhymed to like encourage her further.
the dancing of ladybug and chat noir was a little weird but that's more personal than anything.
but what i liked most about it was the solution bc it actually felt like they were a team for once. the concept of them dancing as one was fun bc dance partners are in conversation and idk the symbolism i am probably looking too much into bc i don't think the writers thought about it as much as i am right now. and it's always nice to see chat noir's power actually put to good use, tho rhyming something with "cataclysm" is rough and i don't really think they managed it. more so because he says "optimism" and then "cataclysm" and i think that's cheating. they should've found a way to make that complete sentence/rhyme. but anyway. i also did like that they both got hit instead of just chat noir this time around.
okay, so i will say, swinging back to more criticism territory, i do think this episode would've been stronger elsewhere, and honestly in a better show. i think that if this was more serialized and they had sown a little discourse between them, like they're having a bit of trouble communicating with each other and there'd been some misunderstandings and hurt feelings, this would've been a really good episode to resolve all of that, and would've been really cathartic. or even if they had just put this episode after syren or something, yknow? like i don't like that adrien throws a hissy-fit, but it would've fit better narratively, if i can only work with what they already put out.
i'll end on a positive, though. i really liked the ending music video. i think it was a great idea to have all of marinette's friends dress in the masks and dance to the music video. it was really cute, really sweet, and i like that marinette danced with adrien and luka, who were both wearing ladybug masks. that was cute. (uh but again, how is that supposed to be promotion material for gabriel's fashion line in korea and china? like that's even further from what they had originally planned. he allowed that??)
edit: i enjoyed the rest of the episode so much i forgot that i also wanted to comment on the fact that the creator broke the law of the magical girl genre and didn't explain their disguises as magic. the reason that magical girls don't generally wear masks is bc the magic of the transformation makes them unrecognizable! but they completely ignored that and instead had some weird false-tense moment of them almost putting on the masks, and thinking that would reveal their identities. lame! like, look, any other show, i wouldn't have commented. but don't say you were inspired by magical girl anime and then break the genre rules like that.
ah, alas, woe is me
i could not end without more critique
it was just not meant to be
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s2ep16 captain hardrock
the unfortunate thing about this title is that my brain, for some inextricable reason, likes to make a penis typo and it always become captain hardcock
anyway it was a fine episode. the pacing actually seemed okay. chat noir's cataclysm was actually useful.
i think the only thing that annoyed me was the fact that marinette shouts "tikki, spots on" in a room that shares a wall to the room where all the captors are held??? like okay, i can suspect my disbelief a little, maybe assume with a family like the couffaines, they'd have soundproofed their walls or some shit. but it still breaks my suspension a little when they're in rooms next to each other. at least in sailor moon, they were always somewhere remote or a place where there weren't people around to see them transform.
actually, i just remembered the other thing and it's the fact that ladybug and chat noir's powers don't get upgrades like sailor moon's silver crystal and brooch do, so it gets old after a while hearing her shout, "time to de-evilize." her miraculous ladybug is fine, but the de-evilize is starting to wear its welcome on me.
and this is also the problem with not resolving hawkmoth sooner. and not, like, coming up with unique villains and antagonists and threats each season like sailor moon did. bc, again, new threat, new power-up, new powers. it keeps things interesting and raises the stakes.
and while i will give them that they are raising the stakes in this series by introducing new supers and thus incentivizing hawkmoth to also raise the stakes, it's moving as a snail's speed. you can't just keep throwing things at hawkmoth and hoping it sticks (i.e., spoiler, i know that he, at some point, obtains possession of the other miraculous in the miracle box and wears them). like that's just silly. could they really not think of another threat ladybug, chat noir, and other miraculous users could face?
it feels false. like they're telling us the stakes are raised bc look! a new super! and look! we're revealing more about hawkmoth's motives and goals! when really, we're just watching the same old, same old.
now that's not necessarily a bad thing, esp if this show was intended for kids younger than 12, but i'm sure kids younger than 12 would get tired of seeing the same thing over and over again at some point.
i really wish the creator had just taken more time and care and thought more about what he wanted to do with this show. he could've created his own zodiac, totally unique to this universe, but obviously based off the chinese zodiac. and he could've constructed their powers based on what he sees in those creatures. and, even though they may not all be in use in the first few seasons, he could've thought about how they'd get power-ups and change over the course of, say, 5 seasons.
and for each season, there's a new villain/threat. and in each new season, a new super or two is introduced to fight the growing threat. and they have more than one superpower (like sailor moon) that they can "unlock" in each new season to further help the new threat.
the bare bones are actually not that difficult, esp if he was inspired by magical girl anime like sailor moon. obviously coming up with multiple unique powers for each miraculous would be difficult, but, that's the fun part, too.
tho, with that, i do think you'd need to scale something like that back. having at least 12 in the zodiac is a lot. but i'm pretty sure there are more than 12 in this zodiac. bc there's the standard zodiac (i assume, i haven't gotten very far and they have revealed very little to us about them at this point), plus the ladybug and black cat miraculous, plus the butterfly and peakcock miraculous, plus the fox and turtle. that's a lot, and it feels like they bit off more than they could chew making so many.
now that i'm thinking about it now, though, why add 6 new animals to the zodiac? it just feels clumsy. like they thought more about those miraculous than the others because they knew they were going to use them.
and like, there's six unique ones already! why were they so dead-set on also using the animals in the chinese zodiac??? just make your own, man!! did he do it bc he knew he wouldn't be able to use oriental mysticism without it looking racist if he didn't have animals from the chinese zodiac? bc i hate to break it to him, but it still feels very racist. this is not to mention that so many cultures have zodiacs, most famously the greeks!! so there's no reason he couldn't have just made his own and then designed master fu in, perhaps, a more ambiguous way.
i mean he could've also coded master fu as chinese or even just still made him chinese, just with a different zodiac. but if everything else stayed the same, they'd still fall into oriental mysticism, so idk.
anyway i'm thinking too hard about this. i'm not going to rewrite this. i just think they could've put a lot more time and are into their overall story.
ah i did want to mention luka. love him. love the english va they got form him. he does not sound like a teen boy. i am very excited to see him akumatized (i'm pretty sure i have, it's just been so long, i don't remember it exactly). he is a little bit cringe, a little bit like 1960s hippie vibe. i think at some point he needs to learn to use his words lol. his awkwardness with conversation is very funny tho. i should use that in fic if i ever decide to write more ml fic
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s2ep10 gorizilla
this episode was just like. so bad.
the akumatized object
hawkmoth suspecting adrien might be chat noir
hawkmoth being a villain before the butterfly miraculous was created
wayhem
emilie agreste
adrien being chased by fans
i'm going out of order bc i want to address the ones that won't take paragraphs, but what a strange set-up to have adrien suddenly become popular and well-known as if he isn't the son of one of paris' most prestigious and well-known fashion designers. like adrien has already modeled for the agreste fashion line??? okay i know that if i saw a model, i wouldn't even know except maybe thinking they'd have the looks for a model, so that's fair. but, again, it just seems weird given that marinette was able to google him on the first day of school and finds tons of photos of him. it just reasonably means that if someone were looking up gabriel, they'd stumble across his son, right?
anyway, not a huge sin. just felt really strange, given the previous set-up with adrien.
okay, going off-track here but i will say i do like that adrien was the damsel in distress this time. esp since they were referencing godzilla in this episode. that was a nice change of pace. but again, the only praise i'll give it.
can they stop referencing popular movies tho? this one wasn't as bad as the sapotis one, though. bc at least this one doesn't butcher someone's cultural folklore and mythology.
edit: i take that last paragraph back bc i just realized it's not godzilla they're referencing, it's king kong! i just thought godzilla bc of the name similarities (and how the west has done all this king kong vs gozilla bullshit). and while i guess it's clever to name him gorizilla bc he's called the gorilla by adrien, i think it's,,,insensitive, to be generous, for the creator to co-opt the name from godzilla here. bc 1) the gorilla turning into a giant gorilla has nothing to do with godzilla except for his size and, as referenced by the show itself, has more to do with king kong, but 2) it's frustrating to see the west completely miss the point of the creation of godzilla bc from my understanding, it was a direct response to the fear from radiation poisoning and effects felt after the u.s. bombed hiroshima and nagasaki in wwii. it's not malicious, but it's certainly ignorant racism.
they really couldn't think of a fun or clever pun for this one that has more to do with king kong?? not to mention, not all of their akuma names are clever or puns, so it's not a crime for them to just. not do a clever name here. in fact, it would be the exact opposite had they decided to try and reference king kong a bit better. bc what they did end up doing feels like it should be a hate crime tbh. anyway, back to the regularly scheduled post.
how did wayhem know that gorizilla was tracking adrien by scent?? when and how did he figure that out? like on one hand, i will admit, that's a clever way to resolve the issue with adrien being chat noir, but it's also weird that wayhem just knows how gorizilla works when we didn't even see how he figured it out or his thought process. it just comes out of the blue and it would've been really nice for them to spend a second longer letting us in on the secret.
the odd choice to keep concealing emilie's face was also very strange bc. we've already. seen her face??? in the first season??? so why make it mysterious mystery now?? what i really want to know is if they go into anything about who she was and what she did before she died or whatever happened to her in the remaining 3 seasons (goddd there are still 3 seasons and they didn't even get to any major arcs in them??) like right now, she's just a pretty lamp. a pretty, fridged lamp.
once again, another point in the "they created hawkmoth before the butterfly miraculous." i just realized this now, but the kwamis tell you what to say to transform. and the fact that gabriel has to say "dark wings, rise" to transform tells me he was the villain first. bc what kind of superhero would say "dark wings?" yknow?
i think this was the episode that convinced me that he like, actually cared about his son. the va for hawkmoth is very good. but i do wonder why then, when in the s3 time-travel episode they have gabriel body his son into the effiel tower after they infiltrate his underground shrine?
well, anyway. i'm glad i didn't totally make up the fact that gabriel actually loves his son in some capacity.
what i wanted to say here mostly tho was i think it's very funny how easily these characters take what they see at face value. i mean, obviously they have vested interest in doing so but it is just very funny to me. bc ladybug and chat noir no longer believe gabriel could be hawkmoth bc he was akumatized, and gabrial no long believes adrien is chat noir bc they were allegedly in the same place at the same time.
that just reminded me, jumping around here, the fact that they took a lot of short-cuts in this episode. in more ways than one. like the fact that in volpina we see ladybug extremely concerned about adrien and almost unwilling to leave him alone. but here, she just drops the concern completely and takes chat noir's word for it, even tho last time she didn't? it's just not internally consistent and that felt extremely off to me.
there was another short-cut i wanted to mention but i forgot what it was. it had something to do with character models bc i was going to use the fact that one of the little girl character models in this ep was clearly just manon with the colors changed as evidence that they take short-cuts. and there's nothing wrong with that, i understand that animation is time-consuming and hard. esp on a tight schedule, i had just wanted to point it out that it hurt its own narrative. like i'm not blaming the animation team, i just think it detracts from the show. i'm all for giving animation teams way more time to do their jobs, so we actually have something nice to look at. i don't mind waiting longer. but ceos sure do.
finally, i think the akumatized object was really badly done. how did ladybug figure out that that's what the object was when 1) it's so small compared to gorizilla and 2) it was hidden in his pockets? it's not implied that she saw adrien drop his lucky charm that she'd given him, so how could she have known? not to mention, to assume the gorilla picked it up is a huge logical leap. how could she have been so sure that the gorilla picked it up and not one of the fans/mob? esp since they would presume it belonged to adrien? how could she have been so sure it didn't fall onto the tracks, shoved by one of the fans' feet? there just a huge plot hole that i have to jump here that i can't.
i'm also a big annoyed that the object has more significance to adrien than the gorilla. like up to this point, the object is always something that the person holds dear to them in some capacity. but marinette's charm bracelet she gave to adrien? it doesn't really fit with the pattern they've been showing us for a season and a half.
also also, something i had wanted to mention in the last episode too, the fact that they don't communicate and somehow intuit or infer what the other wants is very, very annoying. like i get they're trying to fit everything into 25 minutes and i've complained about things being too fast, but that's not really an excuse when spongebob was able to fit two whole narrative arcs into a 30 min show, 15 mins for each. and none of them ever felt rushed or incomplete.
anyway, what i'm trying to say here, is that whenever ladybug has a plan, she rarely, if ever, explains it to chat noir. nor did she explain it to rena rouge in the last episode. they just suddenly knew, and that's bad writing. it also teaches kids that they shouldn't communicate when communication is actually incredibly important. no one can read minds, sometimes you have to use your words to get meaning across. but this show is really dead set on trying to convince kids that telekinesis is a thing, i guess.
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s2ep12 sapotis
i actually think how they defeated the akuma was really clever, and it actually had chat noir's power be useful. and i thought it was funny the only time plagg wants to do his job is when his cheese is in danger. but that's all the praise i will give it.
i think that introducing new miraculous and new superheroes in this way is clumsy and doesn't make a lot of sense.
first of all, why didn't we spend any time with marinette and master fu as he taught her about the miraculous in the miracle box and what their powers granted?
bc it really breaks that suspension of disbelief when marinette goes to master fu and he asks her to choose from what, like 20 different miraculous that we, the audience, know nothing about and assume that she knows all of their super powers when we didn't see it. i'm not saying they have to spoil the surprise of the superpowers each one grants, but they could've at least shown us a montage of marinette learning about them so we have some knowledge that she did spend time learning more about miraculous.
then there's a line from chat noir talking to rena rouge about her superpower, as if he suddenly knows, too, when he actually knows way less than marinette. bc he doesn't even know master fu exists, and for some strange reason, master fu doesn't decide to let him in on the secret until he threatens to not save paris. yknow, his job. tho that's a spoiler for a later episode, so i digress. the line just struck me as very strange, considering he doesn't know much of anything.
i'm surprised he didn't react more to the fact that ladybug said she had a plan and came back with a new superhero, or the fact that there are more miraculous that ladybug clearly knows about but that chat noir doesn't. that seems really inconsistent, given the later stink he makes about not knowing what ladybug does.
i also really hate how inconsistent their changing back is. bc they say a few minutes, but way more than just a few pass by the time they do. and when they say they do, and when their miraculous starts beeping also seems very inconsistent and solely plot-driven. whatever is the most dramatic.
the whole convo between chat noir and rena rouge about it is also really weird? like why go over the fact that she's going to change back soon when we already know this? why should the audience assume that her miraculous works any differently than ladybug and chat noir's? why couldn't they have skipped over her worry about changing back and just dove right into her not revealing who she was to chat noir?
speaking of rena rouge, i think it was a really bad way to introduce more miraculous and new supers. bc i feel like if a teen were given a magical item that turned them into a superhero, they would need way more time to adjust than a few seconds. ladybug didn't even tell alya what her power does, she just took off. she said she'd explain along the way but we never actually get any of that on screen?
also the fact that the perils of paris have to come to a screeching halt just to introduce a new super is extremely clumsy and awkward. you can't halt your action to introduce a new super! you need to do that sooner! it's just a bad set-up all around.
the fact that master fu is hesitant to give out more than two, which is strange in and of itself, considering he handed out the two most powerful. like yes, you need ladybug at the very least to cleanse the akuma, but like if you're so worried about that, why give the two most powerful out? especially the two ones that when combined will grant someone's wish regardless of the laws of the universe? bc they're supposed to balance each other out? ladybug can't work without the black cat? we've already seen she can, so that's a moot point.
and why would hawkmoth care that there are more miraculous in the city. only the ladybug and black cat miraculous can grant his wish right? why does having a guardian in the city so important to him?
not to mention, this further provides evidence they designed hawkmoth as a villain before designing the butterfly miraculous. bc ladybug's cleansing power relies on butterflies to cleanse in the first place.
i got off on a tangent, but the whole set-up is a house of cards. you examine it too closely and the whole thing comes tumbling down.
master fu is hesitant to give out more miraculous, so if ladybug needs help, it forces her to go to him in the middle of a battle to get another one, then she has to take the time to find a temporary super, then they have to make it back to chat noir. like that's just really bad writing, but also really bad logistics within the show itself.
finally, i think it's great that they're trying to incorporate more of alya's heritage into the show, but i find it a little suspicious that not only do all the sources i find about the sapotis lead back to this episode specifically, but also that the sapotis multiply after eating, which reminded me of an older movie made in hollywood called "gremlins." like i guess it's fine to reference a movie like that, but why butcher a creole fable to do it? esp bc i also found a tweet from the creator where he goes, "yes it's definitely a creole fable! i can't provide a source! but i'm sure fans from overseas can give better context."
like obvi, as a white man, he can't exactly speak on creole myths and fables, and i certainly don't want him to. but like can he at least show he did some research on them, actually? can he show he put some care into this episode? show that he like, actually did the work? like he could've at least said, "yeah, i read it in this book or article on this website [link or source]. and i spoke with some ppl from that area/culture about it. and i highly recommend you look these resources up, and find some of your own too! as this is not something i can talk about in-depth." and then like, invite fans from that culture to talk more about it in a thread or the comments or whatever it is they call it on twitter.
like it's really not that hard.
i did find someone on tumblr find some resources about it, though. and i will link that here. it's late and i can't verify these sources on my own. but maybe i'll come back to it if i plan to make this rewatch into something bigger like a deep dive video essay
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s2ep3 glaciator
ah an episode for the marichat shippers. actually, i guess for all the love square shippers except for ladybug and adrien (whatever that ship name is called, i've forgotten--no wait, is it ladrien?)
anyway it was a dumb episode. but andre is the most french character i have ever seen lol. i unironically love how he mostly talks in rhymes. i'd sure like to see what kind of ice cream he'd give me, an aroace.
but anyway, the fact that adrien lies to his friends and ditches them to plan a "romantic dinner" with ladybug, showing that chat noir doesn't listen to ladybug really annoyed me. like plagg is right! she said she had other plans, she was letting him down gently. and he completely ignores her!! and then he's hurt by her???
like i guess i'm okay with him putting his feelings aside to be able to deal with glaciator, bc that's the most mature thing chat noir has ever done to date, but it feels hollow bc chat noir doesn't listen to ladybug. and adrien is convinced that he still has a chance--that she'll just change her mind about him despite telling him outright that she loves another boy and only sees him as a friend. it gets extremely weird after a while, and steers far too close into very worrying behaviors.
and his heel-face-turn doesn't feel earned. like i was annoyed at first that he just put his feelings aside so quickly.
but i was also annoyed with the whole set-up of why he was annoyed. i had a reason i didn't like his sudden shift, but it's gone from my brain, so i'll move on.
the thing is, what really frustrates me about the love square is how much it doesn't work. adrien doesn't listen to marinette. chat noir doesn't listen to ladybug. and marinette gets too flustered around adrien to properly pay attention to what he's saying. like maybe it's just me being an adult, and this being a kids' show, but it is annoying that they're "meant to be" when they can't even communicate. communication is key to a good and strong relationship. not feelings. not destiny. communication!
i hate to say this, but there is a universe where i could see the love square working in a way that doesn't feel contrived and hinges on the fact that they always talk past each other. but under better writers. in a show with a solid writing team, i could actually see the set-up working really well. bc miscommunication is a common trope used to create drama. i don't prefer it, but that doesn't mean it can't work under the right--or write, get it?--circumstances.
likewise, marinette being a dick sometimes is fine narratively speaking. that's allowed, that's fine. it creates conflict and shows that she's flawed. but under this set of circumstances, i found it really frustrating that 1) she doesn't want anyone knowing she has a huge crush on adrien even tho everyone knows and 2) that's the set-up to her being a dick.
and listen, under better writers, i don't think it would've bothered me that much. points 1 or 2. bc ppl do do weird, irrational, and downright mean things when they're stressed or scared. but again, adrien doesn't listen to marinette, and everyone knows she likes adrien anyway. why try to hide it?
i mean i know why. i saw the post about the creator apparently stating somewhere that the reason she gets so flustered about adrien is because she confessed her crush to kim once (wow, real original, put the two asian people together bc they're both asian) and apparently got embarrassed by chloe. but, and i cannot stress this enough, the audience doesn't know that at this point. so we have no idea why she acts the way she acts, nor why she doesn't want ppl to know (even tho they already know!!).
i don't know, i just feel like i'm criticizing things that can't actually be criticized, bc in a better written show, i could see them working. unfortunately for me, this is not a better written show. it's barely a show.
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no episode tonight bc it's late and i'm tired and my arm hurts :'(
but i'm rewatching hbomb's rwby video and his comment about how rwby figures out its own plot as it goes along bc the writers just aren't very good made me think of ml
and made me realize the reason the creator had the origin episodes 3 episodes before the finale was bc he finally figured out what the plot of the show was going to be. and it further confirms my theory that he designed hawkmoth to be a villain before designing the butterfly miraculous.
bc up until origins, hawkmoth's lines are about capturing the ladybug and black cat miraculous to rule the world and shit like that. but after origins, when we learn that the two pieces combined will grant its user a wish, regardless of the laws of physics and whatever else, hawkmoth starts talking about making his one wish come true.
and with the introduction of the grimore, they had to then backfill hawkmoth's butterfly miraculous to somehow make it seem like it's actually used for good. which is never a good decision bc it's so obvious.
they painted themselves into a corner and then didn't even wait for the paint to dry before walking back to the door.
or better yet, they didn't just start from the corner
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s2ep6 gigantitan
this episode was fucking stupid and hawkmoth is an idiot.
i would leave it there but there was more i disliked about this episode.
the pacing was bad, they were talking too fast. the set-up was contrived. chat noir's cataclysm did nothing once again.
so much of the set-up was contrived, too. the weird mission to organize a date between marinette and adrien--the fact that the girls being there also meant they decided to help ladybug even tho that's extremely stupid and dangerous. alix is right that it's a little creepy marinette knows that much about adrien and his schedule. and the marinette says no to adrien giving her a ride home in the end??? like i know i don't like the love square at all and think they should've focused more on the power of love via friendship, they're the ones who want the love square to be a thing!! so why have her say no?? she doesn't even know why she said no, so why should we buy into that?? the writers are so incompetent!
but the thing i realized would've been a really cool character growth arc: is marinette realizing that ladybug isn't someone else, it's her. like obviously sometimes we feel more comfortable with things when it's anonymous or ppl won't be able to tell its us. but that's still a facet of ourselves.
marinette as marinette doesn't feel confident in herself, and is very shy. but she's still very smart, well-spoken, and outgoing. she can think on her feet in a pinch. and those are what ladybug is too! what would've been a cool arc or her was marrying the two sides of her. having her come to understand that she's the same person, even as ladybug, and applying that knowledge to her civilian side of her life.
and then something for adrien/chat noir if we're going to make him a deuxteragonist. but idk what it would be. he doesn't have an identity crisis, he just wants more freedom. that's not really a conflict of character.
also funny to me that to pad time for this one, the writers had to have ladybug come up with a convoluted plan, even tho chat noir is right from both a watsonian and doyalist viewpoint. watsonian in that her lucky charm is one of her superpowers that helps them save the day. doyalist in that there's never an episode we've seen where she doesn't use her lucky charm. it's like when you're watching a crime procedural and they catch the bad guy but there's still 30 mins left in the episode. if it looks like they're going to defeat the akuma but there's still 15 mins left and she hasn't used her lucky charm, we know she's not going to defeat the akuma.
now i know that it's supposed to parallel marinette and her friends coming up with a convoluted plan so marinette to spend some with adrien and it was supposed to be a learning experience or whatever. but if we only get one line from marinette about not making things too complicated, which again, didn't even get her anywhere, then that's just not enough. bc if you took that singular line out, it would look like the writers padding time. and again, it still felt that way to me, even with the line.
funny to me that ladybug talks about singing the akumatized baby a lullaby during her plan explanation, pretty sure she said chat noir could do it. only to tell him she didn't want to hear him sing like 5 mins later when they're actually luring the baby away.
anyway, this episode was a mess. hawkmoth should've known as soon as the baby couldn't see "miraculous" back to him to find another victim. also doesn't he have the power to take away an akuma's powers even after akumatization? why didn't he use it???
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s2ep13 the dark owl
ah, fatphobia, my favorite /s
that aside, tho we will not forget it, nor will we forgive it, i actually enjoyed this episode. it was well-paced and honestly tense. the fake-out with the miraculous was really good. but what i remember most when i first watched it was how tense it was when the dark owl actually managed to take one of ladybug's earrings. i legit thought they were going to do something drastic there. credit where it's due, it was a well-done episode.
ladybug's second lucky charm use was a little contrived but not enough to be merit any actual criticism from me.
i will say tho, again, i wish adrien had slightly more time at the end, where we got to see him hanging out with nino. like again, if the writers want to convince me that he's the deuxteragonist, they have to show it. they can't just say it and expect me to believe it.
anyway i had a galaxy brain idea: chat noir should've just been a girl lol. besides it would've fit a lot better with the magical girl genre. since i'm aroace and don't like the "power of love so strong" in this show being strictly romantic, i personally would just have them be friends (or qpp) like it usually is in the magical girl genre, but they could also be lesbians.
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s2ep11 robostus
wow, an episode where chat noir was actually useful.
pacing was better. i can believe in AI in a show about superheroes and magic. but what i found strange was the combination of technology and magic. bc technology could maybe make certain appliances come to life and be malicious, in a sense, if we're to believe markov is truly AI. but magic could only make a things like dumb fridges, microwaves, and machinery come to life the way they did.
like building a mech out of mostly construction machinery is pure magic, bc it's not computers controlling them. it has a battery that transfer electricity.
it was just interesting that they identified "any object that has electricity" as something robostus could control. there's nothing wrong with it. because again we're dealing with believing in magic and superheroes, as well as true AI. but it was still very strange. (that's also just not how technology works, most of the time. the cars one really got me. yes there are smart cars like that. no, surely not everyone in paris can afford one.)
i thought it strange marinette was suspicious of max talking to his bag, considering she spends considerable amounts of time talking to her purse. esp, as far as netflix's release schedule is concerned, max literally sacrificed his life to save marinette last episode. so much for being such great friends, eh. i also found it strange that she didn't seem to know max very well, and made a weird face when markov flew out to help, before doing a complete 180, and suddenly accepting him and helping max.
as far as overall writing goes, i think it's dangerous to introduce a character like markov and have him akumatized, because they skirted dangerously close to a situation where ladybug and chat noir were out of options, and going to lose their miraculous. i think that max helping them was a really good way to solve that problem. the only reason i'm pointing out this problem now is bc once you introduce something like that, someone as smart as markov fighting against ladybug and chat noir, you have to believably then get them out of that situation. and that can be difficult. i'm actually impressed they managed to do that, honestly, bc their writing so far has left much to be desired.
but okay, i will give them that much. it's not much, but they did solve the issue in a creative and believable way.
i remember the fandom going crazy over this episode bc we have hawkmoth fighting and dodging fucking missiles. i can suspend my disbelief for a lot of things, but him exploding missiles in a metal dome hits the limit. where is all that energy going??!!
also fuck max i guess. we're just gonna leave him in the stadium and he has to find his own way home.
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s2ep8 befana
yknow i think this show could've really done a great job demonstrating to kids how everyone can do mean or bad things when they're feeling low/experiencing negative emotions
and don't get me wrong, it's never good if someone takes their shitty mood out on others. but what i mean by that is more so that it can happen to anyone and everyone is prone to it, so it's important to be aware of it.
it's not an excuse, but a reason. it's not right, but experiencing negative emotions isn't a bad thing. you may not be in the right all the time, but it's okay to feel them.
like this show could've done so much with teaching kids and/or young teens emotional intelligence. instead we got,,,whatever That is supposed to be.
anyway the pacing was actually okay. but the lighting design was really weird throughout the entire episode. it's not really a criticism, since i knew that 3d animation is already hard and anyone on the animation team definitely had their work cut out for them. it just seemed like they may have been given a deadline that didn't allow them to put the care they usually would into the animation and lighting. which is all productions fault and not the animators'.
i honestly don't really have much else to say. i mean, more punishing marinette, but what's new. i'm annoyed that when it's "revealed" it's a party marinette only focuses and zooms in on adrien, even tho it was a team effort from her classmates/friends and said classmates/friends stood up for her and protected her when befana was trying to capture her. so like. wow. that just makes marinette look kinda like a bitch. but more so, i'm annoyed the writers don't understand where "the power of love" comes from in magical girl anime. it's not called magical girlfriend and magical boyfriend anime for a reason.
at least chat noir's cataclysm was kinda useful this time. i thought the comment about how cats climb when they're scared was weird, but they do the exact opposite. they hide. if a tree happens to be the safest place, then sure, they can climb. but why exert extra effort when you can hide in something small and already on the ground?
befana making hawkmoth say "please" was very funny.
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s2ep7 riposte
i actually don't have much to say for this episode. it was actually better paced (tho, i am tired and had a long day, so my perception of time may be off).
i will say, while the convention of introducing a rival is not uncommon in a show like this, i don't think the writers pull it off well. and i know i say this about a lot of conventions they use, but i think it's just a fact that the writers aren't skilled enough--at the very least, they're not skilled enough when working on this show--to execute it in a satisfying way. especially if they have to work off the rule that marinette must be punished by the narrative to "balance" her luck as ladybug.
bc then, rather than ending up with marinette as a main character learning things and making mistakes bc she's a teenager in high school, and just trying to navigate her world as a teenager in high school and a superhero, it can be boiled down to just, "she's just cosmically unlucky." and that's kinda like using the "it was all a dream" cop-out (unless, in rare instances, it actually works/serves the narrative and lines up with the overall themes). a rule that marinette must be punished by the narrative is not a theme. nor is it something you should hinge every episode on.
i know i bring this up a lot too, but it doesn't help that, once again, the writers treat the show like it's serialized but write it like it's episodic. what's the point of teaching marinette lessons if she's just going to reset at the beginning of the next episode? and i know she does, bc i distinctly remember her getting jealous again over adrien and kagami bonding over shared histories.
but mostly, before i started this episode, i was thinking about how bad a decision it was for the creator to make his superheroes teens and not examine what the meant further. like, obvi there's nothing wrong with a kids show heavily featuring kids as the protagonist(s). kids deserve media where they can see themselves go on fun and wacky adventures.
but what i mean by the creator not really thinking through what that actually meant is the fact that, to use as an example, a grown man would get so angry, he'd turn into an evil version of himself, and attack a teenager. (as much as i agree that chloe should be soup.) like okay maybe most of these can get a pass, but something about it just seems,,,off.
put another way, i don't think using the convention of the bad guy being an adult in bad on its own. like any other trope or writing convention, it's value neutral when being discussed separately from any one piece of media. i think it's very cathartic for kids to see a child protagonist overcome adversity and save the day, especially when part of that adversity is the adults in their lives not listening to them, bc they deal with that every day. and i'm sure it's very vindicating for them to see the kid stick it to the adults in the show. and i love that for them!
ml is not that.
it's not a show that's trying to have a discussion about how sometimes adults will not listen to you, and so you have to be brave and figure it out, find allies (both in peers and other adults who will listen to you, if that's something you want to include), and save the day.
it's a show about a grown-ass man continually trying to steal jewelry off two teenagers. and it's just unfortunate optics that the adults he akumatizes 1) sometimes go after children, and 2) fight children outright. it's like that meme, nearly threw hands with a 12 year old (derogatory)
like again, it's not a bad convention when done right and with purpose. but again, ml does not have that purpose. the akumatized adults are simply there to be akumatized, and there's not really a lot more thought put into it than that.
and it's not impossible to feature adults in a show like this, either! it's not wholly similar, but similar in the genre i think ml was going for, but ned's declassified had adults--namely teachers, and they served a very important purpose! they were the bad guys when they needed to be, and more importantly, were there for the kids as mentors and guides when they needed to be. and there was nothing wrong with the premise. the kids were allowed to be upset at being treated unfairly or harshly by these adults, while still maintaining a positive rapport. not to mention, these adults were often balanced out with adults who wouldn't listen to the kids, as a juxtaposition. every adult introduced served a narrative purpose.
so like, it's possible. i just don't think the writers were equipped to handle it.
final comment: the creator is really trying to rekindle the race war between chinese and japanese people by introducing kagami as a rival fr
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s2ep4 despair bear
you're not gonna believe this, another episode i absolutely despised
racism
chloe's character
nice v kind
implication that it's difficult to be kind
being kind to gain something
marinette being compared to chloe
chat noir
this list is more to remind me what i what to cover, but they're all interrelated.
the racism one is pretty standard whenever chloe features. like it's not overt racism like kung food, but it's unfortunate optics for the writing team to have this rich white girl keep targeting her working-class mixed classmate and her black friend bc marinette just happens to be the main character so things have to happen to her. say it with me folks, you can't make a character non-white and then not examine what the means within your wider text.
the thing that irritates me the most is that chloe's character is treated with far too much grace. like putting aside wanting her to become soup, it's very grating for people to always give her the benefit of the doubt, and think she can change, and then scold marinette for not trusting her when all chloe has done is harass her and be racist toward her. she gets a miraculous for this behavior!!
speaking of, the fact that this episode should be more about chloe actually learning a lesson about how her words and actions effect people, it became more about marinette/ladybug learning to,,,idk accept that chloe can do nice things sometimes? like i'm not going to use the word "change" bc chloe did none of that.
and i'm mad that they had a scene where chloe actually helps ladybug bc it would've actually been quite a powerful moment for chloe had the writers been better at their job. (this is usually where i would throw something out there as a demonstration about how easy it would've been, but considering that chloe has thus far been an incredibly mean and racist person, i don't want to give her character any more thought than necessary.)
like ladybug turning to chloe to help her stop despair bear just bc chloe helped once. and then chloe being arrogant and overconfident about it, and all ladybug has to say (or not say, as it were) is to smile?? as smile that clearly communicates, "well what can you do?"
not praise her! actually tell her that what she did was dangerous! call her out for her racism! again, i think anyone as racist and unwilling to learn as chloe is should be turned into soup. punch nazis!
anyway.
it just frustrates me that after chloe affirms that she and adrien are still friends, she immediately goes back to being a bitch. i commented on this when the episode first aired, and i'll say it again here: the fact that she didn't learn a single thing and all adrien has to say is, "some people can never change." is my joker origin story.
i also hate that they gives us glimpses of a tragic backstory in this. as if this is supposed to make me feel bed for her. cool story, still murder and all that.
which leads me into points 3, 4, and 5. i think it's wrong to teach children that they should be kind just to gain something. they should be kind bc you care about your fellow humans. that's like how fundi christians teach children--it's fear-based. "you go to hell if you don't do what i say." except what they say changes and often does not involve being kind to everyone. it also communicates that people should be kind under some kind of pressure, so if the pressure isn't there, what's the use in being kind?
and i generally like to distinguish nice and kind in conversations like these. it makes me think about that post that talks about the difference between like east coasters vs west coasters. now, i'm a west coast best coast girlie to my grave. but i will admit that, like the post points out, they're nice but not kind. while many on the east coast are kind, but not nice. and the difference there is important.
chloe can be nice. but she's never kind.
i also really hate the implication that it's difficult for some people to be kind. i think that the ways in which we can be kind are a skill that we learn over time. but being mean isn't not our default setting. i'm not entirely sure what i'm trying to say here, but it just bothered me that the narrative essentially teaches and supports the idea that it's in chloe's dna to be mean or something. she's just a spoiled rich white girl.
marinette is a mess in this one. once again, she's the one who's supposed to learn the lesson. not only that, but she's once again so caught up with adrien that her brain melts out the side of her ears, and the narrative is made worse for it. when's that "the power of love so strong" gonna kick in? i had so much more to say and articulated much better, but i'm tired. just know that marinette's arc in this episode was also bad. but are we surprised?
edit: i remembered what i wanted to say. and the heel-face-turn marinette does at the beginning of the episode, going from "chloe just accused me of wrong-doing because she hated that me and my dad were getting positive attention and she wasn't getting any attention at all, and i'm angry about the injustice of wrongly accusing me of something serious," to "omg omg omg adrien spoke to me and stood up for me" is sooooo annoying and just butchers marinette's character. again, it's not bad for her to have a crush on adrien, but in these writers' hands, it's not done well.
once again chat noir is brainwashed to fight against ladybug and his cataclysm is useless. i should start keeping a tally.
and once again, ladybug proves that she does not need him to win against an akuma, reaffirming they're not equal partners despite what the writers want us to think.
also i know we know gabriel is hawkmoth, but does he really have so much time, he just stands around in his dark butterfly lair, waiting for scenarios to play out that call for an akuma? sometimes they show him being busy with fashion, but seriously?? i know he's rich, but i've seen the craziness of fashion week shows. there's no way he has that much time.
not to mention hawkmoth seems to be near-omniscience if he can sense that chloe is throwing a party and prepare an akuma for it? like i didn't realize this before, but it's never explained how he knows. like is that just part of the butterfly miraculous? but like. why? further evidence that they designed the villain before the miraculous itself bc if it were being used by a good guy, why would they need to sense that?
the one thing i actually liked about the episode was how ladybug beat despair bear (ignoring chloe's part). i thought it was clever, which is something the writers are lacking in spades.
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s2ep2 prime queen
shit we're two for two so far for release order
i also remember this episode specifically being one of the episodes i absolutely despised.
i made a post about it on my ml sideblog i think (or my main), but basically i just found it profoundly uncomfortable that the writers even came up with this idea and green lit it.
i've also mentioned this before, but bc we, the audience, know that chat noir and ladybug are high schoolers/teens, but the rest of the paris doesn't, it can get the writers into trouble. and what i meant by that was exactly what happened in prime queen. prime queen is what i was thinking about when i made that comment.
bc maybe it's a little harmless to the parisians within this world. but to the audience, anyone older than like 22 (i hope) would understand how uncomfortable it is to watch a grown woman harass two teens into confessing their love for each other in front of millions (or thousands at least, i'm bad at estimating).
like i can and can't believe that the writers would write something like this to, idk, fuel love square shipping disc horse, but the only way they could think to do it was have this grown-ass woman harass two teenagers. like even if they'd had this bare bones idea for nadia to be akumatized trying to a get a prime-time tv show, they could have done it a different way. there are other adults in the show. and there are other celebrity adults in the show she could have tried to embarrass/humiliate.
they haven't evolved, nor have they become better writers since the first season. tho i'm not surprised, given when s2 came out, i was just as disappointed with s2 as i was with s1. except now that i'm older and looking at it more critically, i'm realizing just how bad the writing is lmao. and also better able to articulate it (at times; i should stop doing this at night before bed lol)
and maybe i wouldn't be so mad about the way chat noir acts in this episode, again, if adrien was actually treated as a true duexteragonist, rather than a side-character who just happens to be there. and only on occasion actually helps ladybug in a meaningful way.
and this was yet another example of him not helping. bc not only did he keep wanting to kiss ladybug when she had already told him no! but from a writing standpoint, his cataclysm also was useless. there was no point in him using it on the door bc ladybug's miraculous ladybug power would've taken care of it. the writers really couldn't come up with a better way to have him use it? i don't know why i'm surprised anymore that they can't.
finally, of course, marinette being punished for existing. the fact that tikki scolds marinette for treating being ladybug like a celebrity, and then of course, the interview goes badly. so she changes her tune and relays to chat noir that they shouldn't have gotten caught up in appearing on television since they're superheroes. when that wasn't even marinette's intention in the first place!!
small things: how did nadia even ask them? do the people of paris just announce that they're getting ladybug and chat noir to come and these teens have to somehow figure out they're being called on. the person just has to hope they'll show up? like what kind of insane logic is that? and also alya commenting that ladybug has never given her an exclusive interview when. SHE LITERALLY HAS. MARINETTE AS LADYBUG GAVE ALYA AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW FOR HER BLOG WHEN SHE ACCIDENTALLY DELETED THE VIDEO OF LADYBUG ACKNOWLEDGING ALYA LAST SEASON.
like listen, i don't keep a lore bible, so i'm not really one to talk (only kinda). but at least i reread my shit to remember what i've already put down.
final comment: hawkmoth's fucking lair at different times of the day is more dynamic than whatever it is the writers are doing with this show.
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