#manipula

We start off with Marinette dropping Kagami off at her fencing class where Adrien waves to her with a smile. The next scene has Adrien looking happily at a watercolor painting Kagami made of Marinette.

Okay, so not only is this show still trying to make “She's just a friend” into a thing, it's also trying to make Adrien caring more for Marinette now than he ever did Kagami a good thing. Surely, this means he'll be a great romantic partner, right? Kagami pretty much tells Adrien to grow a pair and call Marinette already, and because the writers have no other idea what comedy is, she fumbles with the phone and struggles to hide her feelings for him that she obviously still has. The two agree to meet at Musée Grévin, the same wax statue museum from last episode.

To give the writers credit, rather than just having him change lanes for no reason, Adrien himself is confused about his new feelings for Marinette, so he tries to why he feels his perception of Marinette has changed.

Yep, this is the explanation the show is going with. Rather than have Adrien's feelings for Marinette start when the two actually had a close moment together like when they played video games (Gamer), during their impromptu movie date (Gorizilla), when Marinette outright kissed him on the cheek (Heroes' Day), or even when he supposedly realized Marinette had helped him out a lot (Multiplication), the show is deciding the moment where Adrien officially developed feelings for Marinette was the statue scene from “The Puppeteer 2”, where she tried to kiss him without his consent.

If you've been following me for a while, you remember when I made a list of what I considered to be the ten worst episodes in the show, and “The Puppeteer 2” just barely missed the top 5 at #6. It's still not a good episode, and I hate that the writers decided to make that one plot relevant. I don't care if Marinette didn't know that she wasn't kissing a wax statue, or if Adrien was just trying to play a prank on Marinette, how can you take a moment like this:

And say “This was moment where Marinette violated Adrien's personal space was what caused him to develop feelings for her” with a straight face? You had multiple choices for which moment would spark Adrien officially falling for Marinette after all these years, and you chose this one? THIS ONE? SERIOUSLY!?

Also, if this was the moment where Adrien fell for Marinette, why the hell did it take an entire season for him to officially realize it? Why did he even pursue Ladybug or Kagami romantically if he supposedly had feelings for Marinette before the events of “Heart Hunter” and “Glaciator 2”? I can't believe I'm saying this, but go back to when Adrien developed feelings for Marinette in “Multiplication” after realizing all the times she “helped him”, even if that statement isn't accurate.

On the Liberty (that was where Marinette was when Adrien called), Marinette tells Luka about the mistake she made because of Adrien, and how she isn't even sure if she loves him anymore, but Luka believes some one-on-one time with Adrien will give her the chance she needs to process her feelings. Marinette then says that she's worried all her fantasies of being with Adrien have made it hard to realize if she even knows him, but Luka pretty much tells her to take a chance. Either way, Marinette asks Luka to come along with her to the museum. Because why have an episode where Marinette doubts her feelings for Adrien when you can just have everyone else she knows hold her hand and keep telling her to never give up like in every other episode with this plot, rather than seeing how Marinette and Adrien interact on their own?

Marinette and Luka go to the museum to meet up with Adrien, only to see she's with Kagami. Of course, this leads to a hilarious (citation needed) misunderstanding.

So yeah, now Marinette believes Adrien got back together with Kagami, and Adrien believes Marinette got back together with Luka. I'm pretty sure Toshiki Inoue is taking notes on how to write pointless misunderstandings from this show. The four go in and meet Veronique, the manager of the museum and obvious Akuma victim of the episode. Once they get to the statue of Adrien, the real Adrien decides to remind Marinette and the audience of what happened with a happy look on his face. Okay, I don't want to put any of the writers in bad faith, but what kind of relationships do they have if they think that somehow counts as a romantic moment?

While Marinette stutters around Adrien like any day that ends in a “Y”, Luka and Kagami decide to have the two sit down and talk about their feelings and come to some sort of understanding... at least, that's what I wish they would do. Instead they decide to, say it with me now, try to find ways to force the two to admit their feelings for each other. In this case, Luka pretends to be Marinette's boyfriend to make Adrien jealous, when he and Kagami should know he's terrible at standing up for himself.

We then cut to Mayor Bourgeois demanding that Veronique take down the statues of the heroes because somehow, that would cause people to remember Ladybug losing all the Miraculous and the other temp heroes never appearing again. The impact of the events of the last season is a decent idea to talk about, but it falls flat because A) The temp heroes never had as big of a presence in the media as Ladybug and Cat Noir did, and B) It's later revealed that he's only doing it because Chloe told him to, so his words lose a lot of their weight. Sure, the writers try to throw in some message about hope, but it's not as fleshed out as something like Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds or Kamen Rider Wizard. Veronique tries to stand up to the Mayor, but then he threatens to close the museum down for “hygiene problems”.

Bold words coming from a show that's more dependent on the status quo than Nick Nolte is on alcohol.

After some more pointless meandering around with Marinette and Adrien, Luka and Kagami decide to be even more forceful and lock them in the room with the hero statues together.

Wow, even Luka and Kagami want out of this episode. I can totally relate.

Meanwhile, Monarch senses Veronique's negative emotions and uses Voyage to send an Akuma towards her stack of pamphlets. While Veronique resists at first, she eventually gives in and becomes Manipula under the belief that once Ladybug and Cat Noir give up their Miraculous, Monarch will give up.

Manipula's design is honestly pretty dull. The outfit isn't that special, and while I get the wax motif, it just looks like she's covered in mustard. Even her powers are just the same ones as The Puppeteer had in the exact same episode this one is mentioning, to bring wax statues to life. The only difference is now she has the Ox Miraculous' power of Determination, making her immune to magical powers, but once again, it's never explained why Monarch can't just give her that power without the Ox Miraculous.

We almost get an interesting moment with Marinette and Adrien, but it's ruined by Manipula, who uses her pamphlets to bring the statues of the wax heroes to life. It's totally not an excuse for the animators to reuse all the temp hero models they were forced to shelve after Season 4 ended. Not at all. Marinette and Adrien split up and transform into Ladybug and Cat Noir respectively. The two heroes try to reason with Manipula, but Monarch easily coerces her into attacking them. After Ladybug easily disposes of the Rena Rouge and Vesperia statues, it's revealed all the statues Manipula assembles were illusions to trick Ladybug and Cat Noir with, with each pamphlet giving them life containing a fraction of the Akuma.

Meanwhile, Manipula sends some of her statues to find Ladybug and Cat Noir while she threatens to destroy city hall if Mayor Bourgeois doesn't give in. Of course, even though the idea of Ladybug and Cat Noir going up against clones of their former allies with superpowers sounds awesome, a majority of them are taken down in a matter of seconds. Ladybug and Cat Noir then take on their statue doppelgangers, and easily take them down. Well, Cat Noir does, but Ladybug...

Oh, for God's sake. Really? We're really repeating Cat Noir's screwup from “Ladybug”? It doesn't even make sense, as Ladybug clearly sees the real Cat Noir telling her that's a fake, where as you could at least argue Cat Noir was confused as to who the real one was and made the wrong choice in “Ladybug”. Why is she even hesitating when she's already taken out several statues that resemble her friends? I'll tell you why.

Yeah, I didn't mention this, but earlier, there were moments where Ladybug was softer than usual around Cat Noir, and this is pretty much why. Even though she never showed any feelings for him (at most, they were implied to be second to Adrien and Luka), now she's randomly falling for him, and we don't even get any flashback showing her struggling with these feelings. She just... loves Cat Noir now because he saved her from an evil doppelganger. I’m not mad that Ladybug did something this stupid, or that Cat Noir even saved her in the first place, it’s the reason for why this happened that gets to me.

I'm not saying it's unreasonable for Ladybug to gradually develop feelings for Cat Noir, as unlike Adrien and Marinette, the two spend a lot of time together, but the problem here is that nothing has really changed in their dynamic other than the loss of the temp heroes. What exactly makes this rescue any different from all of the other times Cat Noir saved Ladybug in the past? As much as I hated the final scene of “Strikeback”, it would have made sense show a flashback of that scene where Cat Noir comforts Ladybug, as there, you would have at least had some kind of an explanation for why she suddenly has feelings for him now, or why this rescue changed her perception of him.

Ladybug summons her Lucky Charm, a bowling ball, and breaks into the Mayor's office with it, where we learn that Chloe gave her the dad the idea, and Chloe chews out Ladybug for losing the Miraculous, but because this show refuses to let any of its antagonists actually make a decent point against the heroes, it's undermined by the same old “Queen Bee is better joke”. It's ironic how the whole point of this running gag is that Chloe refuses to learn from her mistakes and move on, yet the writers themselves refuse to let it die after all these years.

Ladybug draws a blank in her mind when thinking of how to use her Lucky Charm, so Cat Noir tries to use his Cataclysm to destroy Manipula's pamphlets, but Manipula uses Resistance to stop the Cataclysm entirely. Manipula seemingly gets the upper hand, but after some words of inspiration from Cat Noir, Ladybug figures out how to use the bowling ball, rolling it over to cause a chain of events that cause a chandelier to crash on her. So even though she's immune to superpowers, blunt force is how she's beaten. Makes sense.

Ladybug de-evilizes the Akuma, uses Miraculous Ladybug to heal the damage, hands out another useless Magical Charm, vows to stop Monarch and get the Miraculous back, and Mayor Bourgeois agrees to not close down the museum, because like a majority of politicians, he's only driven by whatever opinion is the most popular at the moment.

Ladybug and Cat Noir meet up where Ladybug confesses her new feelings to her partner, but of course...

And so the episode ends with Marinette tearfully realizing she's in love with Cat Noir, who in turn, loves Marinette.

Now a lot of you are probably wondering what my feelings on this are. You're probably expecting a lot of anger at something so contrived and only thrown in to pad out the runtime because God forbid a show about romance actually write its main pairing as a couple instead of a pointless game of telephone. What do I think about this?

Yeah, this is already an overused cliche in TV shows with romantic subplots, and frankly, I'm just impressed it took the writers until Season 5 to whip it out. It's dumb, but it's more or less a problem that TV shows have in general, so I can't get too mad at this show for doing it. If anything, I'm mad at the show to resorting to this just to pad out an already padded out subplot.

Anyway, this episode was pretty bad. The scenes with Marinette and Adrien were tedious and far from funny, the Akuma was lame, the message about hope was underdeveloped, and Chloe had no reason to be the one to call out Ladybug for losing the Miraculous when the show never gets the chance to actually let her be right, much less let her words impact Ladybug for more than a few seconds. Even the romance was poorly written. The reasons both Marinette and Adrien had to develop feelings for each other made no sense at all, and didn't even follow up on what “Strikeback” and “Multiplication” were setting up.

And again, I'm pretty sure the Love Square swap was only done because after almost seven and a half years, the writers are still afraid to bite the bullet and have Marinette and Adrien start a relationship because all TV writers know how to write is characters pining for each other instead of actual relationship dynamics. It's pretty funny how the Akuma of this episode was called Manipula, because it seems like the writers love trying to emotionally manipulate the audience into staying invested even after four seasons.

THE BIGGEST IDIOT OF THE EPISODE IS... LUKA