#marinette is a whole separate category in itself

[chattybugette]

Neurotypical son (Adrien) versus neurodivergent dad and assistant (Gabriel and Nathalie)

[halfcape]

stuff I like:

- it’s a magical girl/super hero- hybrid that doesn’t talk down to the target audience. - it’s got decent storytelling and generally fun characters. - lots of veteran voice actors in the English dub who mostly give good performances. - representation is … decent (more on this in a bit). It’s nice that the main lead is a biracial young woman, though being a probably white-passing Eurasian woman is still pretty comfortably under the Acceptable POC in Media category. - I don’t watch too much of this stuff, but gender-wise, it’s probably better than most. There’s a male and female hero for YA viewers to root for, and they both rely on each other. Neither of them can Save the Day on their own, which is good. - They don’t hold back on the terrible cat puns. - it’s a Sailor Moon-type serial, so it’s pretty comfy. - it’s set in Paris, which is different and nice to see as an American viewer.

stuff I do not like:

- Vee as Marinette and Whathisname Norange as the Mostly Competent Tuxedo Mask Cat guy. I really don’t like Vee’s voice in anything, though, so. - M I L A D Y - I'm gonna guess that this show was made by people around my age who probably grew up with stuff like Sailor Moon, CCS, and popular shonen at the time. That’s not necessarily bad by itself, but it can get really grating when I’m watching Ladybug’s transformation (for the nth time) looking almost like a shot-for-shot reproduction of Sailor Moon’s transformation sequence and hearing ‘AKUMATISED’ ever. - the “representation” is sort of all over the place. While it’s nice to see more young adults of color and as heroes in YA shows, again, the main female lead is still Eurasian and probably white-passing, which isn’t groundbreaking at all (Why couldn’t she be mixed Chinese and South Asian? Or Chinese and Moroccan or something? Oh, because then she’d be visibly brown and wouldn’t be “cute”). Also, I’m getting the whole shitty ‘mixed people are Inherently Cool’ vibe here that I guess is unfortunately becoming more popular in other countries (but, you know, as long as we’re not the scary brown kind). - the writing is kind of hit-or-miss when it comes to character-centric eps. The writers probably think they’re being subversive by using a lot of the usual racialized tropes in this, but tweaking them to make them less shitty. For example, Marinette has her Black (coded) Friend Alya, BUT it’s different and okay because her black friend is lightskinned with ~green eyes (as if that’s not some tired colorist crap) and she’s TOUGH AND COOL and also she likes technology!!!11 Marinette, the biracial main female lead, likes the popular, rich, blond white model guy BUT that’s okay because he’s sort of awkward and his dad doesn’t pay attention to him and his alter-ego … wears a catsuit or something. It’s just not impressive. - I am raising an eyebrow at the choice to put such young characters in skin-tight costumes. In the current year (well, the last decade, really) of comics movies everywhere, it’s almost impossible to separate or remove any type of sexualization from that kind of costume. Anyway, it’s already been sexualized for very iconic, very sexual (mostly) comics characters in Western culture (Catwoman … any popular comics hero that wears a skintight costume tbh). So the idea that the creators could expect an audience — who they must know are already familiar with the amount of anime and pop-culture references they’ve packed into this show — would just suddenly not get that Other comics reference is just not believable. - the fact that none of the dub actors, who’ve had plenty of roles in other anime dubs, can’t seem to pronounce ‘akuma’ correctly. YES I am aware that this is a French and Japanese collaboration, but tbh that's part of why I don’t understand how they keep mispronouncing it. - still really not a fan of the CGI. I know it’s a YA show, but it looks choppy and ugly at times, especially during fight scenes, which can get distracting.

also, for anyone interested in interacting with this post, please do not @ me about the following:

- characters not being sexualized/seen as inappropriate in some way/etc, because you personally as a viewer think the character design choices are totally fine, or because you personally don’t have a problem with them. Everyone comes to the media they consume with a different experience. If your knee-jerk reaction to someone else’s criticism of the media they consume is to act like a douche, consider staying in your lane and leaving them alone. - the whole ‘a character designed their sexy costume in the universe, so it CAN’T be bad’ meme. Just don't. - assuming that I think I know everything about European/French TV, or that watching a certain amount of it is nececessary for criticizing this show. - the ‘France/Europe in general is a magical, racism-free utopia’ meme or any argument related to that, including racism not Being The Same as it is in America. I know. Still sticking with my comments.