Tuesday, May 17, 2022

Superhero Media: Miraculous - Season 2

True to my last review of this series, as soon as more Miraculous - The Adventures of Ladybug and Cat Noir popped up on Netflix, I dove right into it. The second season builds more on the mythology of the Miraculous, with Marinette working with Master Wang Fu, holder of the Turtle Miraculous, an 184 year old man and last of the Guardians. There is more information on what the Miraculous are and how they work, plus the Fox Miraculous gets a new champion for one episode in Alya, Marinette's best friend and emotional support lesbian. In the first episode (other than the Xmas special), Adrien's father is revealed to be Hawkmoth (not that it wasn't pretty obvious), but conceals this from Ladybug and Cat Noir through an elaborate ruse; it's a bit silly, but done pretty well considering the intended audience. Actually, for a "kids' show", Miraculous does a lot of things really well, especially the love quadrangle[?] between Marinette, Adrien and their superhero identities; with Marinette being into Adrien and Cat Noir being into Ladybug. As silly as that sounds, the pair do actually progress a little in their attraction[s], with Cat Noir being on the receiving end of a "Let's be friends" speech and taking it well, not acting like an entitled child. 


Marinette, pushed by Alya and her other friends, gets to spend more time with Adrien and there does seem to be a growing attraction, but neither is able to push it forward in any way; as a youth mental health worker, this is pretty much bang-on for a lot of 14 year olds that I've worked with, especially in affluent areas. If the repetitive nature of the "monster of the week" stories and the recycled transformations of Miraculous annoy you, sorry to say that it continues, and I'll admit it grates if I'm binging the programme, but it's there and is part of the genre and complaining won't help it. What bugged me was more down to the translation from the French, in that Cat Noir often calls Ladybug "milady", which has creeper tones in English, but is clearly just trying to match the lip-sync of "mademoiselle". I'm not sure what this choice was made, as many characters refer to "Chat Noir", keeping the French noun; having Chat Noir use "milady" all the time makes me think he has a sword and fedora collection at home. Given that cultural diversity is a big part of Miraculous, with characters from a range of backgrounds, it seems more like an oversight than a real decision. 


I said in the last review that I was probably not interested in miniature versions of Ladybug and Chat Noir, but I happened to stumble across some Kinder Surprise toys of the series and I figured that they should be about the right size to scale with Heroclix, given the restrictions of the capsules. However, my Chat Noir came in four pieces and was close to 1/35th scale put together, so that was disappointing. I'm not keen on building an entire Miraculous set, but having Ladybug and Chat Noir would be nice for my Ultimate Alliance: Annihilation campaign, as I'd like more non-American superheroes when I finally get around to starting. There is quite a fan-following for Miraculous online, and most of it seems to be pretty good; sure, I found some gross slash fic and fan art when I was researching this, but for the most part people just seem to love the programme. There is a lot of charm to Miraculous, I'll be at least checking out the next season when it pops up on Netflix.

3 comments:

  1. I actually did a miniature set for my children based on, if I recall well, a spidergirl miniature for ladybug and a catwoman figure for ChatNoir, plus a few villains (ladywifi, the kisser and the policeman, if I recall well). They were a blast! I haven't any photos online, but I can try to put them somewhere if you're interested.

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    1. That would be awesome! How did the kids go with the game?

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  2. Well, they had a lot of fun back in the day. I devised some simple rules [Six markers were scattered on the table, they had to uncover them (on a 5+) to find the one with the akuma and then destroy it to win the game. They had four markers each wich gave them four actions, and if the villain hurt them they would lose a marker and have less options. I devised some simple rules for the villains as well (goridzilla could capture civilians or the heros, the kisser could infect them with a kiss, etc). It was all very tematic and simple, as they had maybe four or five years old at the time, so of course rigged so they'd always win XD].

    I've made some photos of the models and found some photos of the table we used (not an actual game being played, mind you, only my kid moving figures around and going pew pew I think). Here in this link you can see them: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1A8B8-WzyyIYmZTEvcQ0k3ws6REv0ZYmF?usp=sharing All were converted from heroclix except for the gorilla which is a Mantic Dreadball figure. Ladybug and Antibug were from spidergirl, ChatNoir from catwoman, the policeman from juggernaut and Ladywifi from a Sue Storm figure if I recall well. I can't remember what the original figure for Zombizou was, but I think the lipstick was a Syringe originally.

    Hope you find them interesting :)

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