#ml character analysis

Felix I would say Metal-Water, I think that largely covers a lot of his variations. Works off him largely being a loner and being slow to warm up to others, but caring deeply once that connection is made. Works off him being very analytical and cunning, and him being adaptive but still stiff/slow to change. And being the two most yin energy elements, really backs him being cold/aloof/distant. This also works off him being ambitious but also patient.

Alya I would say is Fire-Wood. Being the most yang energy, it works off her having a lot of energy to her, eager for attention, an eager leader, and is very supportive and sociable. She does have tendencies of being reckless, taking over, and getting tunnel vision which can lead to her being inconsiderate. And this can work off each element as Fire can burn too brightly and go out of control and Wood can overgrow and come to constrict it's surroundings.

Nino I would say Earth-Metal. It works off Nino being very supportive, providing, loyal, and helpful, but he can be stubborn, inconsiderate, and ambitious to a fault and go against other's feelings and needs. It also backs that promise for leadership as this pairs a diplomatic element with an ambitious one, and his desire for his sense of order but also still being open minded and can be considerate, for the most part.

Zoe I would vote Water-Wood. It works off her being easily influenced, sociable and wanting to connect with others but also still introverted, withdrawn, and quiet, and these are two very adaptive elements, working off her skill in acting and manipulating. These are also two providing, empathetic, and supportive elements, which can work off her putting others needs before her own.

Kagami.... I'd say Metal-Fire. Both work off her being ambitious, stubborn, blunt, and difficult to work with, and even taking initial command and making choices for others. Metal definitely works off her striving for precision and perfection and being aloof, and Fire works off that desire of freedom, connection, and can even work off her being a huge romantic (as Fire is the most invested in romance). Fire's also an element that struggles to thrive when contained and restricted, and has a want for freedom.

So I once heard that the Miraculous fandom on Reddit was the most horrible to Marinette, and I can't deny that because most of the time, I find a lot of comments unfairly hating on Marinette and totally misunderstanding her character. But fortunately, not all the fans on Reddit are like that, and I've recently found somoene who seems to understand and appreciate Marinette's character a lot and made a very good and accurate analysis about her.

The best part ? This fan perfectly explained why Marinette is not a stalker but a girl who feels the needs to control everything until the end of season 4.

Here is the link for this analysis :

Also for those who could have wondered why Marinette still tried to pursue a relationship with Chat Noir during Ephemeral and between Passion and Elation, this analysis opines that Marinette thought she was able to circumvent the events of Cat Blanc, she thought that by being carefull enough, she could still avoid this apocalyptic future even while being romantically involved with chat Noir. I found it interresting to mention it because myself I often wondered why Marinette's trauma didn't stop her for those instances

And I also found this comment about Zoé on Reddit :

Adrien presents himself in public as someone who is incapable of flaw and that’s the point of his civilization appearance and duality of his hero identity. I take no issue with Chat Noir being a senti yet i take issue with Adrien. But why? they are the same person! i’m going to explain why this is and i think many others feel this way too.

1. Adrien’s civilian identity of perfection makes it harder to see him as a person and not just a character. He feels flat this late into the series. (THIS IS NOT SLANDER LET ME EXPLAIN)

This may be intentional for the future for the other characters perception of Adrien in later seasons but for the audience it should not be this hard. He is technically a main character and i think we don’t hear enough from him internally. We never hear his thoughts. We hear Chat noir having his own dialogue about himself but never Adrien (i’ll get to that next). We had that heartbreaking scene in wishmaker where Adrien only wanted what his parents wanted for him but i feel that we didn’t get elaborate enough point of view from him. i wanted him to explain more of what that meant for him!! was he sad about that? happy? angry? we never hear his opinions of himself and just because he’s a senti doesn’t mean he can’t think critically of himself. (if the writers say otherwise that just feels like bad writing)

2. the gap between Adrien and Chat Noir feels too wide.

As the show progressed i hoped that we would begin to see how Adrien and Chat Noir and Marinette and Ladybug’s personas would blend together. My favorite scene was in risk was Adrien FINALLY speaking his mind (in front of someone he cares about!!) that’s huge!! i loved that!! i wish they kept this up in season 5 more and we had more scenes where adrien tries to wrestle for control. i feel that would have greatly benefitted his character. I wish we had more personality overlap. and example of this is as him and marinette started getting closer in season 5 he’d start letting his guard down around her and letting more of the chat noir side of his personality through. i’ve talked about Adrien being the embodiment of perfection and that is intentional from a writing perspective. his counterbalance is being chat noir and chat noir feels very human, real and tangible. He feels like a teenage boy who is in love, and that’s why the chat noir persona is a fan favorite. he feels very real and that’s why I’m ok with Chat being a senti.  if I had learned, Adrien was senti in season one i would have been a lot more on board.

moving away from the story and on to some technical gripes starting with my biggest and most polarizing opinion… 

3. I think that Adrien being a senti was added retroactively and it was intended to be a plot twist.

now this is just a theory but listen to where I’m coming from. this isn’t a bad thing necessarily I just feel like when they executed this idea, season one was already being aired on tv. if you take a look at Adrien’s character in s1 vs s4, you can see that Adrien‘s general demeanor is looser and more fluid between both of his identities compared to when we get in the later seasons. Adrien with other people, Chat Noir, and Adrien alone, fit pretty cohesively in my opinion in s1. in s5, Adrien very much feels like a husk of the person we knew before. The fear of fighting back has now fully taken over him, but where did it come from? You can push all you want that it was Gabriel taking more control over Adrien in later seasons and sure, but why didn’t we see that as an audience sooner?

Now let’s play devils advocate and suggest that Adrien being a senti was not a retroactive decision: if it was, I wish we saw Adrien pushing Gabriel more. somewhere in the season 3-4 timeframe, Adrien begin to get scared of fighting back. and in season five you can see this fully as he is now completely scared to fight back when, in the very first episode, the idea of fighting back against his father seemed more of an annoyance than a full-blown fear. I wish we saw what made Adrien so scared because it feels like it appeared out of nowhere.  we don’t get much room to work with him as a character and see his perspective.

And now the plot twist point. we’ve definitely been getting clues because this theory is not a new one by far however, in the fandom a couple years ago, it was definitely a far-fetched theory at the time. for a characterization point for the main character, such a crucial piece of information about his very existence, should not have been held for that long.  That should’ve been something maybe revealed to the audience in season three. and revealed to the characters at the end of season five or something like that. 

Adrien losing that fluid dynamic essence from season one really made it feel like we lost him as a character  somewhere along the way and that is what I don’t like about it. I don’t like that Adrien‘s whole personality has been reduced to him being senti. all of his character arcs and progression is only expressed through chat noir, and none of it through Adrien himself.  

One last thing I wanted to add was Mayra didn’t sense that Chat Noir was a senti when she was active. That’s been a little thing that’s been bugging me because Felix clearly picked up on the fact that Kagami’s a senti. and you could counter that by saying oh, it’s because the miraculous was broken! and sure we could say that but from a writing standpoint, I don’t like it. it doesn’t fit cleanly with everything else we have.

I think you have missed my point.

I agree that forcing two people to be friends is not a good thing. And Alya's pushiness is an established flaw in her character.

This is not about approving anyone's actions. It's about understanding what they know that informs those actions.

My read of @flightfoot's comment was that to her view all Alya is trying to do is stop them from being enemies. Whether or not this is true is actually beside the point for what I was trying to say.

MY point is that while we, the audience, know that Lila is an enthusiastic Junior Supervillain and major bad news. No one in the Class knows that. Adrien has the experience most relevant to recognizing Lila's true threat level and he is only getting a clue now.

Alya is not betraying her best friend to that friends nemesis.

She's trying to cool off the war between the two most popular girls in class. A war that, from her point of view, is being caried out by Marinette. As far as anyone but Chloe knows at the start of the episode Lila has already buried the hatchet.

Introduction

After a long break, I'm finally back to making these posts and I'm glad. In case you are new to this series, here I look at the perspectives of different characters in every individual episode of season 4 in order to show people that why these characters act the way they do and today it's episode 23.

Finally we are at this episode. I been waiting to do this ever since I first started this series. It was the entire reason I wanted to do this series in the first place. 99 % of people who watch this episode either ignore Ladybug's POV, ignore Cat Noir's POV or just look at the episode at surface level and it broke my heart to see the hate on these characters. Then the remaining 1 % of people such as gentil-minou here on Tumblr and u/Faulan1 on r/miraculousladybug inspired me to start my own series of posts explaining why the characters behaviours are only humane when I saw they're takes on this episode. So let's get started with explaining why Marinette and Adrien's behaviours are humane in this episode as well.

Character POVs

Adrien/Cat Noir

"But does that mean Cat Noir is who I really am? Deep down inside?"

Well since this episode is mainly about Cat Noir feeling left out of battles, we're going to start with him. From the starting of the episode we know that he has been skipping out on battles and a lot of people have given him hate for this but I believe that they have forgotten about the continuity. For the entire second half of the season, we've been building towards this about how Cat Noir has been feeling useless and "Ephemeral" was the last blow when Ladybug called upon a team of superheroes when he didn't show up. This is what happens to someone who suffers from clinical depression.

As he was suffering from clinical depression he assumed that Ladybug didn't need him, focusing on the fact that he was being left out than focusing on why more heroes would be useful and believing that he is useless whenever Ladybug and her team win a fight without him. So when Plagg encouraged him to go out there and talk to Ladybug, he assumed that she would know his problem without him telling her and tried to get the answer he wants to hear out of her but since Ladybug isn't a mindreader and Cat Noir is an expert at masking his emotions it doesn't go so well and ended in Cat Noir giving up his miraculous when Ladybug told him that he was wasting her time because according to him all his beliefs about what Ladybug thought of him was confirmed and she didn't need him at all.

After this he goes into a depressive episode but when Plagg returns he gives him the idea that if he acts like the person he believes Ladybug wants as a partner, then Ladybug will like him but when that epicly fails his distorted thoughts about what Ladybug wants of him was proven wrong and he learns that Ladybug doesn't want the perfect Cat Miraculous holder, she just wants Cat Noir and we're going to get to her in a minute.

The reason Cat Noir never told Ladybug about how useless he feels is due to his abusive father who never listened to what his problems to her so Adrien only knows what it's like to listen but not to be heard and also feels that his emotions are invalid due to Gabriel always making him feel that way. Now let's move on to Ladybug's side of the problem.

2. Marinette/Ladybug

"It's useless. The problem is that Cat Noir is in love with me and since I can't do anything about that I'll keep on breaking his heart over and over again. Maybe Cat Noir is right. We should split."

I've seen a lot of hate on Ladybug for being "unnecessarily mean" to Cat Noir this episode and "not caring" about him and I want to end that now. We see that Ladybug has been fighting akumatized villains with a team of superheroes rather than Cat Noir and this is due to her need for control. When Cat Noir is with her, he's always whatever Ladybug needs him to be and makes her feel confident in her abilities and in control but when you remove Cat Noir from the equation she no longer has him to fall back to so she needs another way to feel in control and that's by getting a team of Miraculous holders so that she can feel that she can do it now that she has a team of superheroes under her command.

Her behaviour this episode towards Cat Noir was not due to her not understanding his problem, it was about her not being aware of his problem due to Cat Noir never telling her about it. She even asked Cat Noir in "Rocketear" if everything was fine and he said that it was so when he was not showing up for battles she projected her need for a break onto him and decided to get a team of heroes to make up for his absence because Cat Noir is just means that much to her. She also has to put up a confident front to the public so that Shadow Moth can't see that she is afraid and use that to his advantage but didn't mention this to Cat Noir due to her believing that leaving him in the dark would avoid another Cat Blanc scenario.

When Cat Noir shows up to talk to her, she had no idea what was wrong with him and was just doing her job. She tried to be nice to him by telling him that he could leave now and that she had to urgently go and collect the Miraculous back from their respective holders but when Cat Noir kept insisting that he help even when she told her that it would take up too much time to tell him about all the rendezvous points she lost her temper which was understandable because I could feel her urgency when she said that she was in a hurry. When she realized that Cat Noir was actually going to give up his Miraculous it was already too late and she broke down and being overwhelmed by all the holders urging her to get their Miraculous and since Marinette is a logical person, she pushes aside her feelings to do her job.

Instead of looking at what she's afraid of she blames it on Cat Noir's feelings for him due to her trauma when Cat Blanc said that it was their love that got him akumatized. She tries to find a new Cat Miraculous holder who is not in love with her because that's what she believes is the problem. When Cat Walker is going to show up, she tries to do everything in her power to make sure it's doesn't go wrong like with Cat Noir and when she sees Kuro Neko her trauma comes back into play again when she believes that it was Cat Noir who got akumatized because of her and when she tries to fight Kuro Neko with Cat Walker she realizes how much she misses him and how much she wants him back and by the end of the episode Cat Noir returns and they finally communicate to some degree with partly solved the problem and Ladybug came to the conclusion that she needs to make Cat Noir feel like he's needed and we'll see her apply that in the remainder of season 4.

3. Plagg

"You're not Cat Noir but you're not Adrien either. You're both. You're the perfect son who's extremely successful in everything he does but you're also Cat Noir who just wants to enjoy life and have fun. One can't exist without the other and I sure am glad to have both of you back."

And Finally we end off with Plagg, the hero of this episode who got back Cat Noir by convincing Ladybug that he knows another holder who is not in love with her. When Plagg came back to Adrien, he used a real life therapeutic technique called behavioural activation to make Adrien start participating in life by giving him the idea that if he acts like someone he's not, Ladybug will like her when in reality that's not the case.

When the plan didn't go as well as Adrien thought it would, Plagg revealed that the plan actually worked better than he thought and by this he means that Adrien's distorted thoughts about what Ladybug wants from him were proven wrong when he put them to the test and it made Adrien realize that Ladybug doesn't want the perfect Cat Miraculous holder, she just wants him as Cat Noir. Plagg also made him realize that both his Adrien side and Cat Noir side are a part of him and helped him progress in his arc of figuring out who is.

Conclusion

I wrote too much about her, but I'll try to sum it up:

Chloé started off as a mirror of my childhood bullies and I didn't like her nor I thought she would be so important to the plot like she turned put to be

I feel sorry for Sabrina a lot

She obviously became a hero just for her own advantage, to show that she's good enough and cool enough to do it without taking all the risk of everyone knowing her identity in consideration

Yes, I am aware that she is abuse victim but hurting people who didn't hurt her is not ok

When her redemption started off I didn't mind it, I didn't even think she would turn full good and she didn't, but I was like "oh so she's one of those "half-good half-bad characters" ok"

I liked Queen Bee and her design a lot. It was interesting seeing sassy Chloé in the team next to lovey-dovey Nino and Alya

Miracle Queen made me dislike her because she changed teams so fast when one thing didn't go her way

Also I'm glad that she suffered the consequences mostly because she needed to see that not everything turns out your way in life, and kids like her need to trip like that sometimes

I wish her Zoe would be friends, because Zoe is a good kid and she didn't do anything wrong to her. It's not her fault their mom is a bastard

Now I wouldn't mind her redemption happening, even though I think it's also important for kids to know that some people can't/don't want to change, but I like it more now because she is on her own, not on Marinette's back, because I made the same decision with my original character in one of my original stories. And people often blame bully victims for what their bullies did to them. That happened to me and I feel sorry for Marinette for being dragged for this because Marinette already suffered enough from Chloé

That Strikeback scene made me believe she would actually get redemption slowly. It's still early and she's still a kid. But SHE needs to step up and SHE needs to change. It's not enough for her to wear a supersuit. I want to see her now when she got to see a catastrophy she could've caused if Hawk Moth won back when she betrayed Ladybug.