#*mlpost

chat noir, watching bunnix fight timetagger: she doesn’t have to detransform after using her power?

soft gray sky??

deep muted greens???

marinette’s blue hair looks almost completely natural, she and tikki fit the environment perfectly

this shot is so aesthetic

i don’t know how i didn’t realize ikari gozen was already officially released, but i just watched it and i have thoughts (TM). is this actual diasporic asian representation????

!!!!!!!!!

the part where marinette checks kagami’s contacts and sees the character 母 in the japanese contact name, notices the same character in chinese means “mother” and deduces who the contact is !! it’s exactly the type of simple character marinette could know from seeing in a children’s book or beginning to study chinese!! i swooned

(i know there was a picture of tomoe next to the contact and someone on the ml staff probably just google translated “mother” to japanese because they thought it would “ look cool” but there’s a nonzero chance this was intentional, let me beliEVE)

we have zodiacs!!! marinette snake (2001), kagami dragon (2000). is kagami in their grade? the grade above? the mystery continues?? anyway, this means in befana when marinette turned 14, it was probably 2015, the same year that miraculous started airing!

this also means the marinette/dragon/dragonbug and adrien/snake/aspik theory was wrong and i’m devastated

this also rules out luka being year of the snake

hoWEVER knowing alix turned 15 in timebreaker while marinette turned 14 in befana, alix could have been born in 1999, the year OF THE RABBIT

(i’m aware the miraculous ladybug creator has lately said marinette is 15 on his twitter, which is inconsistent to canon, and i fully expect them to have no plan for a timeline)

are we not going to address the driverless car. was it always driverless. is it really 2015

i didn’t know kagami’s voice actress in the english dub was asian american! her name is faye mata and i’m happy to see the staff cast someone who’s asian (or at least poc, @master fu’s casting what the heck zag??)

complaints

we only got half the transformation scene and this is supposedly the last time we see kagami as a hero? it’s been confirmed that the transformation sequences are just for show (aka don’t happen exactly as they’re shown) so i don’t see why they couldn’t have just animated a full one and showed her still tied up afterward. especially since kagami and luka are supposed to have similar importance in the story and he got a full transformation sequence

i thought i would have the energy to discuss how kagami’s social awkwardness was too exaggerated for comedic effect at the expense of consistency with the rest of her character (she spoke and smiled easily in every episode until now) and how in the bridge scene, when the camera was cutting directly between marinette and kagami, the viewer was supposed to see humor but what some people may have seen was a breakdown in communication between a “normal,” half-asian, “westernized” french youth and an “abnormal,” ethnically fully asian, robot-like youth who only seems to talk about culture in the context of the east (the japanese blood type motif) despite (we assume) growing up in france for much of her life. the way the camera cut back and forth in that scene overlaid marinette and kagami’s faces almost on top of each other, and we know kagami was purposefully designed to look almost exactly like marinette, so when it was flashing back and forth, aside from the drastic (comedic) change in expressions it was almost emphasizing the difference in their faces (ex. large blue eyes versus slanted (sighs) brown eyes). i’m definitely reading too much into this, but it was... jarring. and kinda uncomfortable. i really don’t think they intended anything here, and while exaggerated the blood type thing was an interesting way to connect to the end of the episode but still, that scene.... yeah, defintely reading too much into this

there’s probably more stuff but it’s 4:30 am sO anyway i enjoyed this episode, miraculous has big flaws as always but this episode didn’t tear a new rift in the plot, sorry rip your dash

stormy weather was a perfect introduction to the miraculous characters, dynamics and akuma system. its animation was stunning. so either they’re trying to draw old viewers (who loved stormy weather) back into the show or they plan on somehow putting an engaging/wildly creative spin on the episode.

anyway i’m expecting either !!!! or a disappointment.