Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir (seasons 3-present)
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Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir (French: Miraculous, les aventures de Ladybug et Chat Noir; also known as Miraculous Ladybug or Miraculous) is a French-South Korean-Japanese superhero/magical girl CGI series produced by Zagtoon and Method Animation in collaboration with Toei Animation in Japan, SAMG Animation in South Korea, and De Agostini Editore in Italy.
Synopsis
Set in modern-day Paris, the series focuses on teenagers Marinette Dupain-Cheng and Adrien Agreste. When evil arises, Marinette transforms into her secret superhero persona Ladybug, while Adrien transforms into his superhero persona Cat Noir, using powerful objects known as the Miraculous. Oblivious to each other's true identities, the two work together to protect Paris from the mysterious villain Hawk Moth, who covets and attempts to steal their powers by using his akuma, butterflies infused with black energy, to transform everyday citizens into supervillains.
Why It's Not Miraculous Anymore
- The main problem with these seasons is that they lack the charm and cleverness that made the first two seasons memorable and awesome.
- The animation is downgraded from the previous two seasons as it feels choppier and dull-looking. Additionally, some animation errors can be spotted.
- Although the SAMG episodes look passable, the animation done by the show's other overseas studios varies:
- DQ Entertainment's episodes tend to vary in quality but most of the time look pretty bad.
- Symbiosis Studio's episodes look ugly and rough with poor rendering and sometimes freeze to hide errors. Zagtoon fired them after their only season (season 3).
- Artage studio's episodes have a very low-budget animation sometimes especially the notorious animation of Qilin.
- Assemblage (so far, have only animated a season 3 episode and some of season 4 episodes) while not as great as SAMG, shows potential in quality.
- Some shots fall under uncanny valley territory due to the bad animation.
- Although the SAMG episodes look passable, the animation done by the show's other overseas studios varies:
- The characters have been flanderized beyond recognition:
- Chloe suffers from the worst flanderization out of all as she has gone from a bully yet remorseful girl who showed slight sympathy towards a few people to a full-blown villain who treats everyone as slaves since season 3 finale.
- Gabriel Agreste went from a villain with a heart of gold to a mean-spirited dad who cares about nothing except his ring and bringing back his wife alive.
- Lila Rossi became even more mean-spirited than in the previous two seasons as she just constantly lies making her a Karma Houdini and eventually becomes Monarch’s successor. It’s also indicated that she has dissociative personality disorder (multiple personality disorder) but it’s poorly conveyed. Just like Chloe, she became a full-blown villain.
- Marinette went from a clumsy yet responsible girl to a slight stalker as evident when stalking Adrien, sometimes a butt-monkey and a Mary Sue, luckily she redeemed herself since the special Miraculous World: Paris and in late Season 4-onwards.
- There are plenty of bad episodes such as:
- "Chameleon" (a bad way to start season 3 and started the decline of the show)
- "Animaestro" (this episode was Astruc complaining about the critics insulting and judging the show, but they give him constructive criticism and advice)
- "Reflekdoll" (this episode shows that Cat Noir can't use a different miraculous making him look like a jerk but Ladybug can control all the kwamis of the Miracle Box and the fact that Ladybug and Cat Noir have switched Miraculouses is to fanservice)
- "Weredad" (like Lady Wifi from season 1, it has forced writing and Tom Dupain was out of character and starts the decline of Marinette's character)
- "Feast" (this episode ruined the lore of the show and the character of Master Fu)
- "Stormy Weather 2" (this episode is mostly just a clip-show and the akumatization for Stormy Weather is old and stale, additionally, the fighting scene is not even seen most of the time)
- "Ikari Gozen" (Marinette was at her worst and the first part of the episode was mediocre, thankfully she becomes decent in the second part)
- "Puppeteer 2" (Adrien was out of character and his relationship with Marinette was at its worst, and there were only awkward moments with them, especially the notorious one in which Marinette almost kissed Adrien believing he was a waxwork. She never got her comeuppance when she almost kissed Adrien as a statue)
- "Cat Blanc" (a fanservice episode which was only created to make happy the Marinette fans, the people who ship as a romantic couple Marinette and Adrien) and also made a big plot hole.)
- "Ladybug"
- "Félix" (this scene, has Felix wanting to kiss Ladybug!)
- Miraculous World: Shanghai (has many animation errors, like for example the bottom right spot on her left earring is smaller than it is supposed to be)
- "The Battle of the Miraculous" (a bad way to end season 3, as well as Chloé’s character derailment and Hawk Moth, both made a grave mistake only for plot convenience)
- Miraculous World: New York – United Heroez
- "Sole Crusher"
- "Queen Banana" (shows that Chloé became worse than she was in the previous two seasons, Zoe became a fully-fledged Mary Sue, Ladybug gave to her a miraculous after knowing her for only one day and keeps often giving the Bee miraculous)
- "Simpleman" (an episode with SpongeBob humor style, but this humor works with the last one, but with Miraculous doesn't)
- "Qilin" (has one of the worst animations in the show, it was a torture episode for Sabine and Roger was at his worst)
- "Penalteam"
- "Adoration"
- "Derision" (although Kim apologized, that doesn't excuse Marinette's or Kim's behavior, as Kim pranked Marinette and gave her trauma, whilst Marinette explained her actions and just expects us to sympathize with her. When she didn't even NEED to stalk Adrien in the first episode of the show, Stormy Weather, additionally it mostly comes out as a filler episode)
- "Emotion" (this episode outright shows Felix committing genocide on the entire town)
- "Confrontation"
- "Collision" (this episode shows Chloe going full villain)
- "Re-creation" (the season 5 finale, which ended the whole season on a VERY sour note and similar to the infamous series finale of Star vs. The Forces of Evil, "Cleaved" it ended on a cliffhanger. And now thanks to that dumpster fire, we can't see what happened to Lila)
- There are some unnecessary additions of new characters that are either forgettable or just bad:
- Felix Graham De Vanily (Adrien's cousin), is very rude and pushy, he wants to get whatever he wants, and he's also willing to get others into trouble by Gabriel Agreste/Hawk Moth. In his debut episode, he even goes so far as trying to kiss Ladybug, Hell, even when he was Argos he managed to kill the WHOLE TOWN! No we aren't joking! [English dub]
- Zoe Lee (Chloe's sister), while likable, is an unnecessary addition to the cast and can be a Mary Sue at times. She also comes out to Marianette as a lesbian and it feels forced.
- Tomoe (Kagami's mom) is incredibly mean-spirited and strict towards her daughter Kagami.
- Quantity Over Quality: Similar to Cartoon Network constantly airing Johnny Test (2005) (in 2009-2014) & Teen Titans Go! (in 2013-2017) and Nickelodeon constantly airing SpongeBob SquarePants and The Loud House, this show became Disney's biggest cash-cow as it constantly airs on Disney Channel and takes up the whole schedule.
- There are a huge number of plot holes that have more questions than answers:
- How and when did Chloe (a teenager) become the mayor in season 5?
- Lila Rossi in season 5 as a whole: How is Lila able to pull off multiple identities without raising suspicion? How does Lila have multiple mothers and how does she get these women to go along with it? (Assuming she brainwashed them is even crueler given that one of her mothers is a deaf woman, making Lila even more insulting for manipulating the disabled)
- Why are Gabriel and Tomoe so deadset on Kagami and Adrien getting together? Do they want to marry them off despite them being teenagers?
- The humor in these seasons is almost non-existent, and some that are here fall flat, most notably in "Simpleman"
- Season 3 has Lila Rossi taking over her "mean girl" role, Chloé seemingly started to undergo some character development and grow to be a better person.... but the season 3 finale throws it all out the window having her turn evil once more just because Ladybug refused to give her the Queen Bee Miraculous and denied her offer to aid them in defeating her Akumatized parents, becoming an antagonist once again... So much for a good redemption arc.
- Season 3 is arguably the worst season out of all due to the overload of fanservice only to make the fans slow a lot the plot, ruin the lore, and the characters sometimes out of character for plot convenience.
- The main villain's name keeps getting changed for no reason:
- In the first three seasons, the name was: Hawk Moth
- In the fourth season, his name was changed to Shadow Moth
- In the last season, it was changed again to Monarch.
- Half of the villains are reused which comes across as lazy such as Puppeteer, Sole Crusher, Stormy Weather, Gamer, and Glaciator (despite the last two being good episodes).
- The writing has been downgraded from being fun and comedic, yet sometimes serious at the same time to being nonsensical, catastrophic, and lame.
- The new character designs are atrocious: Mainly, Miraculous unifications, such as the first Monarch, PegaBug, and PennyBug.
- Ms. Bustier being revealed to be a lesbian (who has a wife) and Zoe coming out as a lesbian in season 5 feels forced and feels like a poor attempt at appealing to the LGBTQ community.
- The flash hits from the previous seasons became even more overused than before, making some of the fighting scenes dull and not satisfying to look at.
Redeeming Qualities
- The theatrical film: "Ladybug & Cat Noir: The Movie" released in 2023 is a huge improvement over these seasons.
- Season 6 might redeem the show, but that's not saying much
- As mentioned, the animation in the SAMG episodes is passable although it still doesn't look as good as in the first two seasons.
- As such, the Miraculous World specials have better animation and are possibly even better than the first two seasons.
- The new theme remix in the fourth and fifth seasons are nice to listen to, along with the intro sequence being better animated.
- Some of the characters such as Adrien, Natalie, Nino, Luka, Alex, Kagami, and Alya are still likable.
- As of season 5, starting with the Miraculous World: Paris, Marinette redeemed herself.
- Additionally, some of the new characters such as Zoe Lee (despite being a Mary-Sue sometimes), Marinette's grandfather are likable.
- There are still a handful of good episodes such as:
- "Bakerix"
- "Silencer"
- "Miraculer"
- "Oblivio"
- Miraculous World: Paris (We can see Ladybug and Cat Noir's evil counterparts, along with Monarch's good counterpart: Betterfly, who is a much better character than Monarch)
- "Startrain"
- "Gamer 2.0"
- "Timetagger"
- "Party Crasher"
- "Truth"
- "Lies"
- "Gang of Secrets"
- "Furious Fu"
- "Gabriel Agreste"
- "Guiltrip"
- "Crocoduel"
- "Optigami"
- "Sentibubbler"
- "Glaciator 2"
- "Psycomedian"
- "Wishmaker"
- "Kuro Neko"
- "Shadow Moth's Final Attack" (an extraordinary way to end the fourth season and arguably the best episode of this season)
- "Evolution" (despite Monarch getting away, which started season 5 on a high note)
- "Transmission and Deflagration" (despite the unneeded hate for Kitty Noire, at least she did a good job as the temporary holder of the Black Cat miraculous, and we get to see Scarabella again in this episode and Revelation, and despite Lila/Hoaxer being a karma houdini in the episode. Both Transmission and Deflagration and Revelation are good episodes)
- "Migration"
- The voice acting is still great, especially the English Dub.
- The fighting scenes are still nice to look at, at least when a flash hit is not used.
- Out of all three seasons, Season 4 is arguably the least bad as it has more good episodes.
- Dragonbug's design looks pretty cool.
Trivia
- Season 5 is the only season to have actual title cards.
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