#cuz like. she also said this but for the thousand hand guan yin like the hands arent holding anything

[astranauticus]

shoutout to the few people in the notes of my last hsy art and also, my actual irl friend who doesnt read orv who mentioned that the composition kind of looks like some depictions of hindu gods because my honest to god inspiration for that composition was the thousand hand guan yin (both the statue and the dance) but like. yeah i see it (???

[familyagrestefanblog]

Miraculous Shanghai theories and analysis

All those leaks and informations we got for the Shanghai special caught my interest BIG TIME and I wanted to post my theories and thoughts before it airs.

Just as a warning, I wrote all of this yesterday before the new promo poster got released this morning but fortunately it's doesn't disprove anything I'm about to say.

So let's go!

Let's start with my tamest theory of this post to clear the track for the batshit craziness that gonna follow: The Peacock miraculous will be involved in the Shanghai special as well.

This doesn't necessarily mean that we will see Mayura but at the very least the Peacock miraculous will be brought up.

I'm certain of this because of two things:

1. The specials logo

It's nothing wild. The yin-yang is obviously Ladybug and Chat Noir and when we cross out the other rainbow colors of the Renling promo pic we are left with two colors: Hawkmoths purple and Mayuras blue.

And 2. In a trailer we saw Gabriel in an old ruin which definitely could be the Guardian temple before Ladybug restores it in "Feast" (the special takes place somewhere in between s2 and s3 so that checks out).

Maybe he goes back to where they found their two miraculous and the Grimoire and then checks out the ruins (cuz honestly why not?) or maybe he is on his way to the creepy underground place. We will see.

Okay but now, let's start with the good stuff! :D

I'm putting it under "continue reading" because it's quite alot and it gets... specific lol

Let's continue with the Renlings and the fact that this time around we are not going to get a new Miracle Box but they are all combined into ONE Miraculous.

That may sounds incredibly overpowered and out of nowhere without context but I think I might now what we are looking at.

The Renlings were called the Kwamis "cousins" so we have to go back to the Chinese Zodiac our Miracle box is based on, because it isn't only made of 12 animals. Cause our 12 animals are also segmented under 8 guardians of the zodiac. And how many Renlings to we get? 8.

Four of these Zodiac guardians are assigned to 2 animals and the other four guard one.

They are segmented as the following:

Thousand Hands Guan Yin - Rat

Akasagarbha Bodhisattva - Ox & Tiger

Manjusri Bodhisattva- Rabbit

Samantabhadra Bodhisattva- Dragon & Snake

Mahasthamaprapta Bodhisattva- Horse

Vairochana Buddha - Goat & Monkey

Acalanatha - Rooster

Amitabha Buddha - Dog & pig

But let me get back to this later.

Unfortunately I legitimately can not explain why these particular animals were chosen to represent the guardians. All I can say is that my initial thought still holds up and the monkey, bear, tiger, dragon, mantis, snake, horse and hawk (look im calling it a hawk in this post idk) are all martial art styles. But they neither belong to one group nor is one of the groups complete.

Maybe I just missed something here (which is definitely possible) but I just can't find the reason for these animals for the guardians. Beside the Dragon as most important one of course, but that's a given.

Anyway, let's continue. A detail that can support my zodiac guardian theory is that while we can only see two animal circles in the promo pic entirely, one of the two has ONE DOT in its picture and the other one has TWO.

Signifying for how many Kwamis the one guardian is assigned to? Possibly.

The dragon in the middle is shown with 8 dots all together, that means is it fair to say that the dragon functions as the main guardian that combines them all. That explains why our new girl for the special has a 8-in-1 Miraculous, why her eyes change for each Renling and why she is trained so professionally.

We don't know yet why the Renlings are all put into one Miraculous, since they work differently from the Kwamis, but I have this thought that the Renlings (in their ONE necklace) were created because of what happened to the guardian temple almost 200 years ago.

Countless Miracle Boxes were lost that day and Fu's Box with the Ladybug and Cat were thought so as well. Possibly the Renlings were an attempt to recreate the powers of at the very least the lost zodiac Kwamis. The Dragon was made into the main guardian and is supposed to step in place for the LB and Cat as we can see on its different color coding echoing the yin-yang, but It obviously didn't work and the Renlings neither possess the same powers or can they be put in separate Miraculous nor is the Dragon a healthy replacement for the yin-yang.

But is was a desperate attempt in a situation that was believed to be lost and I find that thought exciting!

(Btw i have a similar theory for the Superheros from the New York special but that's a theory for another day)

Where to continue, where to continue?

Alright let's stay with the 8 Dragon dots because THOSE caught my interest in more than one way.

As I already said, I think the 4 white dots and 4 block ones stand for the 2 types of zodiac guardians, but now let's take a look at the animal circles surrounding the dragon.

We can see the Bear, the Hawk and a bit of another one between the Bear and Chat Noir in addition to the Dragon. These four circles have animal pictures that are completely colored in (just like the dragon brighter dots)

And now look closely at the animal circles around Chats head. Those are not colored in! Just like the other four Dragon dots. So isn't in interesting that they had our two leads basically hide those four particular animal circles? Almost as if there is a reason for this, huh?

And you know, I looked further and maybe I found something here. And for this let's take another look at the Renlings, shall we?

Four of these Renlings have something in common with our two main characters, can you guess what?

I'll give a hint: The eyes.

I compared all the promo picks we got from the Renlings and noticed that:

1. The snake and the horse have blue eyes like Marinette

2. The monkey has green eyes like Adrien

And 3. The Mantis is the only Renling with special eyes like Chat

The other 4 Renlings have brown eyes in different shades.

But this on it own isn't too exciting. So what if some Renlings share the same eyes as our leads? Well, would you believe it? When I filled in the placements of the other animals circles, through a shot we got in the leaks, I noticed that those 4 Renlings that shear their eyes with Marinette and Adrien are ALSO the 4 animal circles our leads just so happen to hide from us.

How interesting

But that not all I got. Not even CLOSE, I'm just getting started here!

Because not only do Marinettes Snake & Horse and Adriens Monkey & Mantis stand out here, oh no, it gets BETTER!

Now let's take the two promo pics from the Renlings we got where they are finished and colorized.

Did you know that both times they are put in the same formation, just with slightly swapped placement among the Renlings?

And once again here one could say "So what? They were lazy while designing the pics, that's it" but NAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH hear me out!

Not only are the Renlings put both times into the same formation, the way they switched their placements isn't random at all:

1. Marinettes Snake and Horse stay both times on exactly the same spot.

2. The tiger and the bear switch places

3. So do the dragon and monkey

4. And the mantis and hawk.

The way the Renlings are shown to us on the promo pics is anything BUT random and that is something that will always get me interested! :D

But you know what? I'm still not done yet. Let's continue with this creepy ass stone door we see Gabriel at

Because as I mentioned, while Marinettes Snake and Horse stay unchanged in their formations, Adriens Monkey and Mantis not only do change places but they aren't paired with another either. So does that mean that Adriens guardian Renlings are just inconsistent? No, not at all. They just have a different meaning and place then Marinettes.

First of all: the Renlings special hair is bright green, just like the color of the tiger (a CAT) on the rainbow scale we got and Adriens/Chats + Monkey & Mantis eyes. And second: in the other promo pic the Renlings have a pink background, just like the rainbow scale color or the Mantis!

Coincidence? I don't care anymore, next point! :D

Because not only THAT but when we take a closer look at the creepy stone door we can make out the placement of every guardian animal as well. And MY, is this fascinating:

As the colors make it clear when you compare these guardian animal door placements to the rainbow scale from the promo pic, here Adriens Monkey & Mantis are in the right places but Marinettes animals are a bit off.

In fact. Everything about the placements of the animals (besides Adriens) are just a bit off.

- Marinettes animals and the bear are almost in the right place just mirror-reversed.

- The Tiger and the Hawk are one place too left.

- And the Dragon shouldn't be in the middle, it should take the place between Adriens animals but it was forced out of position to replace the yin-yang.

But taking the dragon out broke the balance of the animal circle. Everything here is slightly off by one point and that is much more significant than you would initially think. Because when you now turn the whole circle one quarter to the left (there is a reason for it, trust me) and put the dragon back in place then you will get a good part of the picture I've been looking for a long while.

What I'm showing you here are the 4 Chinese creatures of the cardinal directions and they are basically what I would expect to be on the upper layer of a Chinese Miracle box (I'll get to this on another day). And as you can see here, we are basically almost there aren't we?

The tiger of the West and Dragon of the east are in place and while the creature of the North is normally the turtle it is always accompanied by a snake, which is now on the upper place.

"but what about the bear? And a snake is NOT a turtle!" I'm getting to it, my goodness :/

Regarding the bear one thing needs to be said: it is definitely true, the bear is in the wrong place. I don't even know why there is a bear in this formation in the first place and it stuck out to me since day one. The creature of the south is a bird, the HAWK should be here.

But there is a difference between "this thing is in the wrong place and completely random wtf??" and "This thing is in the wrong place but I can see a pattern continuing from other formations that are off as well".

The bear is not only here, it's also:

- alongside the tiger (who is btw suspicious af as well) covering the center points from the Renlings formation that should belong to Adriens animals.

- is with Marinettes animals the only other one that is basically on it right place on the creepy stone door, just mirror-reversed.

-is the new "peak" of the zodiac guardian animal circles because moving the dragon out to the middle left the other ones off-balance and now its kinda tilted to the left. But when we look at the creepy door with not corrected animal placements we see that this was indeed the hawks place. And remember as well, the bear and the hawk are the only two animal circles we see in the promo pic besides the dragon

Meaning in short: That damn bear stole the hawks place and I need it to stop.

Which brings me to the turtle and a whole new can of worms (miraculous should pay me for this omfg...).

Because what if I tell you that the snake, who is normally just accompanying the turtle, being the creature of the north here instead of the turtle is not only "okay enough" it is actually the needed puzzle piece to connect this zodiac Renlings circle with the Chinese Miracle box in the design master Fu had it?

Let me explain

Do you remember when I started talking about the Renlings I said I would come back to the way the rl zodiac guardians are paired with the zodiac animals "later"? Well, later is NOW, because there is one more way those 8 dots from that damn dragon caught my interest and it also explains why I just turned the guardian stone circle one quarter to the left.

Because believe and behold, this is not the only place where things are "slightly off".

A while I started taking closer looks and research on the original miracle box design and the Kwami spirit circle we saw in "Sandboy".

I will try to not go into unnecessary details with this now because all of that needs its own post. I'm already going off the hooks with this one. But just like here I noticed with these two things rather quickly that "things are slightly off, but in a suspiciously systematic way".

Going straight ahead to the example I'm talking about, the order the 12 zodiac animals follow on the side of the box is straight up upside-down. The first zodiac animal is the rat (or mouse) and the last one the pig and YET in the box the rat is right at the bottom and the pig on the top.

This upside down arrangement of the animals results in the wrong animals being the 4 who have a guardian assigned for themselves

The four single miraculous in between the 4 directions are obviously the ones I'm talking about. Here they are Tiger, Snake, Pig, Monkey (I hope you are making a connection here) but that's wrong, as are the other 4x2 ones.

BUT

When we now flip it upside down again, having the rat start on the pigs place and the pig end on the rats, then things suddenly are correct.

Here the rl guardian pairings again:

Thousand Hands Guan Yin - Rat

Akasagarbha Bodhisattva - Ox & Tiger

Manjusri Bodhisattva- Rabbit

Samantabhadra Bodhisattva- Dragon & Snake

Mahasthamaprapta Bodhisattva- Horse

Vairochana Buddha - Goat & Monkey

Acalanatha - Rooster

Amitabha Buddha - Dog & pig

As you can see, now it's correct.

You may wonder what this has to do with the Dragon dots, so lets look at the Kwami spirit circle next.

I've been analyzing and taking this thing apart now for MONTHS now. And while I'm certainly having a blast, the fact that I now officially have an entire FOLDER at home dedicated to this thing alone is quite...

Bruh...

But thankfully we will really only need the basics for this theory here.

Through zooming in and watching the "Sandboy" Kwami spirit World scenes over and over again I was able to figure out the placement of each Kwami.

When you now follow the moons in the middle towards the Kwamis you will notice that only the moon at the top alignes with one and that's DUUSU. The other 4 miss the Kwamis just by a bit.

But remember what I said the entire time. Everything is just slightly off by ONE little factor but when we "fixed" that factor for the stone wall there was still something left that didn't fit. That's because not only are the Shanghai zodiac guardians structures off, it was built on top of a structure that is ALREADY slightly off by another factor!

Something is fundamentally WRONG with Kwami balance in the current ml universe and what I think happened to throw everything off is NOOROO.

Keeping this point short for everybodys sanity, in the french version of "Sandboy" we find out that Nooroo is having his 3500 cycle birthday and him being the Kwami which gets its birthday pointed out is no coincidence. (Guys please just go with me here, I really dont have the strenght to elaborate on this now as well)

So when Nooroo is the factor that brought imbalance to the Kwami system then how does the spirit circle look like WITHOUT Nooroo?

Now THIS is more like it!

Without Nooroo the size of the circle changes slightly all around and now the other 4 moons align with the Dragon, rat, chicken and horse.

And believe it or not, but take a guess what it looks like when we now highlight these 4 Kwamis in the arrangement of the 12 zodiac Kwamis both upside down and correct?

It's the 2 types of Dragon dots.

And let's take this further. When the 12 Zodiac Kwamis are upside down then so is obviously the entire upper layer of the Miracle box as well, which explains why, although the 5 Miraculous places around the yin-yang are based on the 5 chinese elements, the way they are arranged here is once again upside down.

Meaning the yin-yang is upside down as well, but not only that. I always found it weird that the yin-yang here is placed SIDEWAYS when this is not exactly the normal way of showing it.

So when we now turn the yin-yang a quarter to the left and take the 5 Miraculous surrounding it along, we might be closer to the puzzles solution. Because when we now take Nooroo out (as he wouldn't be there when things had gone right) then Fu's miracle box should have looked like this:

Notice 2 things here in particular:

1. Now the Turtle is at the top, which completes the connection between the Renlings Snake and the Kwamis Turtle to create the only creature of the 4 directions that is portrayed with one accompanied: the Turtle of the North.

And while I'm already at it, this is also the reason why Fu's/Ninos Miraculous is the only one that doesn't fit the hero color scheme when activated.

The Turtle of the North is colored BLACK and sometimes with additional white, just like the activated Miraculous.

And 2. Now after being mirror reversed and turned one quarter to the left the Ladybugs and Cats yin-yang isn't sideways anymore and looks EXACTLY like the yin-yang used in the Shanghai promo pictures. Almost like this is the way it is supposed to be or something.

Alright. Ive told you ALOT now but this is precisely the reason why I wanted to post this before the special airs. I'm definitely not entirely right with all of this, there is alot I haven't figured out about these things yet or simply haven't seen yet. What I just showed to you is not anywhere close to done so some questions are still left open.

I wanted to make another point about how the zodiac monkey, mantis and horse are the only 3 Renlings that do not have any symbol on their bodies and how this could connect to the object Hawkmoth has in that one leak

But even i think this is going to far now and I should wait until I watched the special xD

But my point in all of this (and everything I haven't even touched upon here but will in the future) is that everything in s1-s3 was influenced by this fundamental off-balance of the Kwami system that I think was caused with Nooroos creation. Which is very fitting for the Kwami of our main villain I may say. And the fact that these 4 miraculous are also somehow linked to the peacock out of all miraculous gives us an explanation for its villainous usage as well.

I think the Shanghai special will start the exploration of what happened by at least laying down and introducing the most important aspects of this particular topic.

To say that I am TRILLED for this special is quite the understatement and I'm gonna have a BLAST analysing the hell out of its lore!

So I guess there is only one thing left for me to say:

Yo

Miraculous crew