Well hello, thread! (
How did this thread sink so low on the page I never noticed other the Clubhouse threads waking up)
Did you know that this show is back?
~*~*Miraculous Ladybug, Season 2, has arrived!*~*~
*cloud of red and black confetti*
She arrived around the end of October for some countries, and I'm not even trying to keep up with which country sees which episode at what time because it's a big mess.
Tentatively tagging potentially interested folks:
Killix Carolyn Zoey @amelie
Twillie Moni downrightdude Tara Speculation time!
Some official hints have been dropped, and by official hints I mean many enormous leaks and spoilers, what even stays secret on this show anymore? xD
(Seriously, I think even the episode transcripts are out)
There will be two new school-age characters, a gal and a dude, as alternate love interests to further confuse the sorta-love-quadrangle.
Eh... I think the sorta-love-quadrangle works quite well as it is, but this show has done okay with characters so far, so I'll trust it to continue.
Other Miraculouses and heroes are coming! Bee Kwami confirmed, Bee hero confirmed - working name is "Queen B(ee)" - but not their identity. Wow, which character has a remotely bee-themed appearance and acts remotely like a queen bee? Such mystery!! =o
Turtle Hero "Carapace" has been confirmed, but the preview seems to show a young person, hinting that Master Fu won't be keeping that role and his kwami will move on to a different hero? Aaww, but I wanted a butt-kicking old master! ;_; Who could it be?
Fox Hero seems to be coming for real this time, with the name "Rena Rouge" (confirmed in press conference) rather than Volpina - will it be Lila, won't it be?
Well, the official concept art for those heroes has already given away their identities so blatantly that it's not even funny. :'D I'm not going to spoil that here because it's just too much for the beginning of the season.
So with Master Fu here as the mentor, it seems like we might slowly get a whole friendly superhero team.
Challenges for this season: delaying the reveal of Papillon/Hawk Moth's identity, and keeping up the sorta-love-quadrangle while keeping the two clueless on each other's identities.
Villain speculation because EVERYTHING gets leaked on this show:
There has been concept art of villains, including a very interesting Queen Wasp... standing in front of what looks like the Akumatised version of ...
see for yourself, at last.
(Does that mean Chloe's getting Akumatised a second time and better? o.o)
They'll be part of a trilogy of Special Episodes, oh boy!
One of the villains in concept art looks a lot like Nathalie Sancoeur, who has yet to be Akumatised despite being juicy prey - they must have been saving her for later.
Another looks exactly like the school principal, same thing goes for him.
At least the villains are a
bit more mysterious than the heroes. :/
Episode time! Yes, I'm already watching.
And I must say that I'm quite pleased so far. The show keeps exceeding my expectations. I don't know if I'll comment on every episode like this, but I was motivated this time.
Spoilers for Season 2 in all the following spoilerboxes. I'll probably be using the French names of some characters out of habit.
1 - The CollectorWe left off with the Book of Ancient Superheroes last season and it's backstory time with Master Fu.
Detail: the Fox Miraculous is safely in Master Fu's box.
Cool visual: the photo of Adrien with his mum on his big screens, forming a background behind him as he gets told off by Papapillon.
Interesting: Nathalie seems aware of her boss's secret - the safe, the book, and the secret base.
Oh goodness. Somebody's finally sort of cluing in to Papillon/Hawk Moth's identity. It only took a whole season. *wipes tears*
Now this is a tricky situation and how does the show deal with it?
Firstly, Papillon is smart enough to know they're on to him. That's at least something.
So he puts his Miraculous down for a while and Akumatises himself. He even uses the book that Gabriel Agreste was outwardly angry about, playing the game smoothly. If he's the Villain of the Week, he can't be the guy making them, right.
That is surprisingly clever for the Big Bad of a Villain-of-the-Week show. Cleverer than I expected, in any case. I don't know if any other villain-creating antagonists have ever used that gambit before - have they?
Now he's bought himself enough time to stay hidden for the rest of the season, let's hope. xD So that's done.
Papillon put on a nice show of care for Adrien, emphasising it with his hands on Chat Noir's shoulders. He had also noticed Adrien's ring last season, so it's quite likely that he knows CN's secret identity. That makes the moments between him and Adrien very creepy.
While in civilian form, Gabriel is alarmingly polite to Marinette...
He's getting more and more interesting and I wonder how redeemable he might be in the end.
2 - Despair BearOho! Adrien isn't blind to Chloe's... Chloe-ness! Oho! Chloe at least cares about Adrien!
So she's trying, she just... has no idea what it's like to be nice. xD
You gotta give props to the butler for trying so hard and using the bear as a kind of child therapy tool.
Pay close attention to the little doodles that appear when Chloe remembers her teddy bear being Nice to her in her childhood. You'll see a very elegant lady walking away with a suitcase, leaving tiny Chloe behind, Chloe crying, and Chloe sharing her teddy bear with a smol blonde boy. Who could they be? =o
Nice shot of Chloe skipping in the background as Adrien walks into the party, just before she glomps him in the foreground.
The partygoers are terrible dancers. =/
Thanks Alya for pointing out that flaw of Marinette's - doing anything for Adrien, too.
Oh boy. For watchers not familiar with french greetings, I hope you enjoy the magnificent, supreme awkwardness that can only be caused by La Bise!
That poor Akuma just didn't know where to go. xD
Cool heroic instinct from Chloe. Wonder what it could foreshadow. =o
DAT SLOW DANCE!!!
Adrinette aren't even my kind of 'ship, but this is really touching because we've already seen just how strongly Marinette feels about him, so you can imagine just how much she'd be exploding on the inside while she's right against him. ;w; What exactly does Adrien think of that, though, hnngh.
3 - Audimatrix (Prime Queen)Or: A Great Excuse For Shiptease, the episode.
I KNEW Nadja had to get Akumatised at some point.
The awkwardness of balancing hero life with civilian life as Marinette rushes to get to the TV studio is nothing new. Alya's phonecall and Nadja seeing her daughter on screen with no Marinette in sight added a whole new level of awkward to it, though!
This episode is quite meta. I can imagine the creators of the show feeling a similar pressure of needing to get enough viewers, having to include 'ship-tease and fanservice without rushing the plot or moving the 'ship along too fast.
Lol at the smooth cut to the car commercial which looks and sounds so familiar.
The moment when Audimatrix's hand, then the whole of her slowly comes out of Chloe's giant TV screen is a very good dramatic entrance. Something coming at you right through your screen is actually scary, and they took advantage of that fear.
If you pay attention, you can see that she's already at the museum when they're pretending to be a couple in the subway, and it's just her hand through a screen that stops the train.
Whyyy is there a TV screen in a freezer?
Nice little fight scene though, in which Ladybug performs a perfect cross armbar!
Hehe, Chat's face when Ladybug takes his hand.
Lol at Ladybug's deadpan kiss-rejection. x2.
You know, despite all the 'ship-tease, the LadyChat moment that really caught my attention was just before they dived into Audimatrix's first portal. Ladybug thought it was a trap, Chat was testing the portal and knew they had no time or choice. They turned it into reassuring banter, he understood that she was nervous but didn't poke her about it. That's an example of their good chemistry as heroes.
Y'know, seeing as the main characters are 13-14 years old, I really hope they look older in their hero forms. >_>
Awesome Cool Italian Biker Granny Episode!!!
Omw I love Gina. It's good to see a more modern grandparent.
I don't know what her dub voice sounds like but she has a great voice in the french version. She looks amazing as Befana too.
Marinette-dad will you please stop dumping an entire huge cake in the trash when you get nervous, that gag is painful to watch! xD
But now we know where Marinette got her tendency to drop stuff and send it flying when Adrien-senpai Notices her.
"Character expects surprise party and doesn't get one" plot is... totally subverted! Marinette does know her friends. c:
Marinette's favourite song is the one from the slowdance from episode 2 when she danced with Adrien.
Seriously though... Marinette, why didn't you just make Gina bring you to the party. She would have loved being invited and you would have made an amazing biking entrance! Really I don't see why they couldn't have done it like that.
The moment when Befana makes Papillon say "please" made me laugh out loud. His... his face. Excellent comedic timing. It cuts through a menacing moment that we've seen many times before - Papillon reminding the villain to grab the Preciouses right when the heroes are in trouble - and it's just so typically grandma-like.
Chat dropping onto Befana's bike and asking her to drop him off was a good funny too.
Why is it always the Eiffel tower. The vertical chase between Befana and Lady looked great, though, especially when her gun's blasts started falling back down.
Aaww Chat is so relieved when he opens a broom closet and doesn't find Marinette hiding in it.
5 - RiposteMarinette is way too good at fencing for a newb. Well, she is used to learning to fight quickly, and she watches Adrien a lot.
At this point I think Adrien is cluing in to her crush, I mean... he can't not notice, right. They can't be that clueless.
We have a relatively amiable villain this time.
*CinemaSins guy voice* Adrien is still alive after falling out of his sliced-in-half car. *sins counter boop*
Good to know that the museum has a special Akuma Alert evacuation system. It shows that the city can do something and helps a little bit with the suspension of disbelief that the police can't do anything about the villains. >.>
Whyyy do they keep using that sarcophagus? Is it the entire town's go-to hiding place / hostage container? One day, they're going to open the sarcophagus in a rush to hide someone, but there will already be a person inside, like "oops, this spot is taken".
Last episode we had MariChat, this time we have AdriBug and they are so cute. Adrien all worried when Ladybug is fighting, and their little squee at each other every time she grabs him to go roof-hopping. Omw.
Sooo, Kagami seems like someone who'll come back for further episodes and further blurring of the love quadrangle, but... Lila was said to come back too, and that hasn't happened yet.
6 - RobostusExtra suspension of disbelief required for this episode.
Markov's voice is so overly innocently plaintively cute omw.
This episode is quite a shoutout to Code Lyoko, the show that Thomas Astruc used to worked on.
We've got, in the same room: Max, the nerdlet who is seeming more and more like Jérémie; the awkward, slighty goofy bearded principal who looks a lot like the principal from Code Lyoko; and they're in the strict science teacher's class, just like Code Lyoko was most often in Madame Hertz's class. With Max also trying to fix technology that he knows better and adults not understanding just how sentient it can get.
Marinette struggles with the Lyokowarriors' eternal problem of How to Get Out of Class, and succeeds with sass that Odd Della Robbia would be proud of.
And of course, Chloe is the show's own Sissi - even though she's also inspired by Totally Spies' Clover.
Such nostalgia. ;w;
Kim commenting that Max has added an arm since "last time" is a nice little touch that shows they do have a friendship in the background of the show, and Markov wasn't 100% secret.
Markov so polite to Papillon, I can't.
The machine revolution is one of the scariest things that have been unleashed upon the city in this show and brings back memories of XANA.
I believe Markov's pile-o-cars form is a nice shoutout to Transformers. (but he's NOT a toy)
In-between the debates on what makes one human, Plagg's focus on important things like cheese is refreshing.
Mayor Lamp. Is. The best thing.
The spotlight that chases Nadja out of the frame and turns towards the screen just before the video is cut looks like a Pixar reference to me. x3
So, Chat Noir has enough strength to smash vending machines and refrigerators cleanly in two.
Heroes. Why would you land right in the middle of the open space in the stadium. I know you're chasing a large opponent, but. A tiny bit of sneaking first, maybe? Just a tiny bit?
Finally, a villain manages to grab Ladybug's Lucky item before her. c: I love how this show keeps twisting its own pattern.
We rarely see Chat use his Cataclysm to that extent. Boy, is it actually powerful.
The minor classmate characters on this show can be quite touching; Max was particularly sweet in this episode.
Aha. So we've had villains-of-the-week disagree with Papillon before. He's had to impose his will, he's been sassed... but this is the first time one has completely rebelled and attacked him so directly in his private little base! And we got a glimpse of how he actually fights. And of what would happen to someone sneaking into his base.
This ends on a very interesting note for Papillon. He seems a bit out of his depth. I am wondering what he'll do next, and worrying in a way I've never worried about a monster-of-the-week show's Big Bad before. xD
