#when mari told alya that she was ladybug? s tier scene. when they did that at the END of the episode and i realized it was permanent

[colorful-horses]

I've only got 4 episodes left in season 4 of ML, and I'm feeling like this show is going through a bit of an identity crisis. It started as a simple monster-of-the-week superhero show with small hints at plot here and there, but now in season 4 it really feels like they're trying to focus a LOT more on the plot aspects and it's kind of collapsing in on itself lol

I understand it's not uncommon for modern cartoons to start with a simple premise and then start building up a plot later on, but with Ladybug, it feels like they want to have a big story but aren't willing to break away from the base formula of the show. Which is kind of an issue, because the base formula includes having a character press the "revert everything to the status quo" button; aka, if anything of consequence happens, it doesn't actually matter because it'll always be fixed/reversed by the end of the episode. There's essentially little to no plot development , because the forumla literally does not allow for it.

Ladybug doesnt need to have a huge overarching storyline (I honestly enjoyed it more when they weren't so focused on the plot), but it just feels kinda lame for them to dangle all of these different plot threads in front of the audience only to immediately say "just kidding!" and then pretend they never happened. It can come off as very fanfiction-y at times (Oblivio and Chat Blanc come to mind), and they've done the identity reveal fakeout so many times now that when it actually happens, I'm not sure I'm gonna have much of a reaction other than "finally lol". Their lack of dedication to letting anything change in the status quo is SUPER obvious with Chloe.

Chloe has a full redemption arc set up in seasons 2&3 (making her sympathetic, giving her a sad backstory that explains why she is the way she is, making her have moments of lucidation where she admits she's a bad person), only to have her turn evil in the season 3 finale because... she's the mean girl. I'm not even saying Chloe HAD to be redeemed; the idea of having an antagonist try to redeem themselves, only for them to fall even farther, is super enticing to me! The problem is, the show very clearly set up a normal redemption story, and then just changed its mind last second because "she's the Mean one". It's really jarring!

Its like the show has all of these ideas for dramatic storylines, but instead of picking one plotline and focusing on that, they just decided to do all of them and have none of them matter lol