wrecker-radioactive - Tumblr blog

wrecker-radioactive · 2 years ago

Note

Ooooh can we hear your thoughts and opinions on Miss Bustier, her akuma, and Zombizou’s plot after your fresh rewatch of the episode? >:3c

HoKAY so I held onto this one because I still needed to do my "pause every three seconds to write notes and make dumb quips in the discord chat" rewatch, but NOW!

There is so much ugh in this episode and some of it might sound familiar because I've salted on Bustier before, but here we go, mostly chronologically. These will be both petty and detailed:

Okay I literally had to ask the French Discord if Mylene's gift is a translation error:

It is not. That's what her gift is. I've only heard of people keeping a lock of their LOVER'S hair or that of someone who's passed away. But sure, what a totally normal thing to gift your teacher.

Most of Bustier's approach to things - having fighting students hug it out, quiet time, daily affirmations - could probably work if the cast was elementary school age. Like, really young elementary school age. Like, still learning what empathy is young elementary school age. Like, literally teaching someone "hey it hurts when you're hit, right? So that means it hurts other people when you hit them, right? So you shouldn't hit them because you know it hurts to be hit" young elementary school age.

BUT AS 14 YEAR OLDS THIS COMES ACROSS AS REALLY INFANTILIZING AND TOO LITTLE TOO LATE.

They forgot Chloe's sunglasses in the "Morning Compliment" Scene and it's like she's missing her tiara, it's so wrong. Also she's supposed to be boredly looking at her phone while Rose is talking but her sight line is off:

Sabrina and Nino's Super Different from Season 1 Voice Actors really threw me in this episode, I don't know why specifically this time it did but it did. Maybe because in this episode it feels more like Sabrina's reading off her lines and maybe she's just getting comfortable and maybe Nino's dropped the "cool/surfer guy" affect on accident?

Speaking of Sabrina, me and my sister noted that even she managed to get something for Bustier which led us on a side tangent - why didn't Chloe spend some of her time ordering Bustier something? In "Dark Cupid" she orders a 24-carot Gold Frame for her poster on the walk home and by the time she arrives at the hotel, it's there! You're trying to tell me if she really wanted to she couldn't have had something express delivered for Bustier? Oh what am I saying, that would require Chloe to use her vast resources on someone ELSE and we can't have that!

Point being, despite having at least half the school day (the montage shows them having Chemistry, Lunch, Art, and Dodgeball before Bustier's class), Chloe spent more energy on sabotaging Marinette's gift instead of just easing her own guilt by buying a gift herself. In case anyone thought this episode showed Chloe in a GOOD light.

Montage of Bustier/Zombizou's weird eye/brows/browbone in this episode:

The thinner the brow, the worse the squiggles. This lighting really highlights her scary thin nose bridge and NOT in a good way

It's not as obvious on the small scale, but her eyes have a purple ring around them, her eye lashes are a blue/grey color, and her pupil is TINY, but I prefer that to not HAVING a pupil.

BLUE! LASHES!

Her browbone is clipping through her mask, lovely

Her eyebrow doesn't match up with the brow bone and she doesn't have a furrow between the brows so it looks...so off.

Here's no. 2 closer up

I appreciate the class getting mad on Marinette's behalf but I wish they'd kept their insults to facts - instead of saying she caused half the akumas in Paris or that she's worse than Hawkmoth, stick to the fact she's a bully who hates seeing other people happy. You know, things Bustier can't write off because they're true.

Though it's very telling that this Chloe's face as they call her "worse than Hawkmoth":

She feels no remorse over not JUST ruining Marinette's gift to Bustier, but ruining something that was MEANT for Bustier! But given how Bustier has the AUDACITY to praise Chloe and give her credit, it's no WONDER where Chloe gets her delusional ideas that everyone likes her or should be thanking her when she acts despicable!

But that's no surprise since that's the expected outcome from Bustier's enabling philosophy of "forgive and forget despite the other person truly wronging you in multiple ways, suffering no repercussions, and in fact are getting kudos for behaving poorly on top of never repenting for what they did." Why WOULD Chloe do better when there's no incentive to?!

The only way that Bustier's advice to Marinette to "let go of her anger and forgive Chloe" is if in the meantime, Bustier is punishing Chloe for what she did. Otherwise, this is letting Chloe get away scot-free to vandalize again. What good does that do anyone, including Chloe? What does Bustier think is going to happen when Chloe does the same thing in high school or as an adult but the other person presses charges instead of "forgiving her and letting go of their anger?" She's setting up Chloe for failure, on top of failing Marinette by teaching her that her feelings don't matter and that having negative emotions is shameful.

Because that is Bustier's intent. That feeling negative emotions is something to be ashamed of. When she's deakumatized, she's distraught over "giving in to her negative emotions" and says that "I'm terrible" for doing so. So I guess Bustier thinks her entire class is terrible because they've all been akumatized, good to know.

That's why her "good deeds" are forcing fighting students to hug it out. That's why she makes her students give each other "compliments" but doesn't actually care what the compliments are (since she's satisfied with Chloe's "Rose, today you seem less...annoying." compliment). That's why she'd rather convince Marinette to ignore that Chloe defaced her gift with malicious intent so that Chloe can keep gloating and getting credit - because confronting Chloe would make her feel a "negative emotion" and it's easier to convince Marinette to back down. They're just empty gestures to keep a facade of PoSiTivItY without actually getting to the root of what causes these negative emotions.

If my teacher ever dropped to their knees like this to talk to me over the age of 10, I would be absolutely feral. Get up and talk to me like an equal deserving of respect, not a fucking toddler.

Gotta love that Bustier's defense to being told "Chloe is the meanest person I've ever known" is "oh someone in Paris must be worse than Chloe." Like, oh yeah? Who? Because Marinette hasn't met them.

And honestly, if Chloe hasn't learned "the meaning of love" at age 14, that sounds like a job for therapy and not her equally aged classmates.

Really wish there were more jabs at Zombizou's power. "I'll spread compassion throughout Paris! By making everyone make out with strangers!" There's a lesson about forced, toxic positivity in here that they totally whiffed on.

I knew from reference photos that sometimes Zombizou's lip mark disappears from her chest, but I held out some hope that it meant something like that she needed to reload on lipstick or something. I am but a fool, they just messed up, since above is literally her after one cut.

Now that Zombizou has entered the ring, can we talk about her design? Because I am confused. The short skirt and puffed sleeves feel too young for Bustier and the patchwork and knitting needles aim more for Marinette - which makes sense if it was meant for Marinette. But the powers have nothing to do with Marinette - in fact, even the parts of Zombizou that remind us of Marinette don't match with what Marinette was upset about:

This should've been the first hint of Princess Justice with the way Hawkmoth sensed Marinette's anger, so where'd this patchwork Tim Burton doll come from?

And then the power and motivation - forcing everyone to feel compassion and love through forced physical contact? Again, there's something here about forced positivity and coercing people to "get along" against their will, but they completely abandoned it by the end.

She kicked Mendeleiev's door in half, she kicked the Art Club door in half, she kicked Damocles' door in half, she kicked the school's front doors in half...this woman is a menace. And she has the gall to tell Damocles "I don't like knocking, I prefer a gentler touch."

Some,

BODY!

Let's also appreciate how shiny Mendeleiev's door is.

Tragic, but between evading Mylene and Sabrina in the courtyard and revealing themselves to Ladybug in the locker room, the class lost Nathaniel and no one even noticed. RIP. Literally I didn't notice until me and my sister went backwards from the Eiffel Tower trying to think of who would and wouldn't have been captured if not for Chloe and it took us to getting to Max and Kim on the roof to think "...wait where'd Nathaniel go?"

Some more errors for you:

Max's shirt clipping through his pants

Ladybug's grey flat screen (in "Copycat" it's reflective like any other screen)

Chloe's new facial hair ie. Being Impaled by her Side Hair

And Alix's hat that blips in and out of existence but that happens in so many episodes it's basically not even worth screenshotting anymore.

And I'm at my image limit, but they got Zombified Kim's eyes wrong - the glow green, like in "Despair Bear", instead of the purple they're supposed to be.

Zombizou: "NO ONE can escape MY KISS!" and "Witness the final triumph of love!" Me: "Ma'am that is ASSAULT!"

Sorry not sorry but I don't buy Chloe's heel turn at the end. Literally being carried by Chat Noir, by themselves in an elevator as their entire class was picked off one by one she's still asserting that "only the best remain" and isn't the least bit sad about it. She only suddenly cares about "getting in the way" when Chat Noir is taken out.

Because there's no more meat shields. There's no more canon fodder. There's her and there's Ladybug and if Ladybug is taken out, then so is she. There are no other options for Chloe and Ladybug: Ladybug wins or Chloe is infected like everyone else. This doesn't prove that Chloe feels remorseful, it proves that not even Chloe is dumb enough to overlook what it would mean if Ladybug lost here.

Her putting herself between Chat Noir and Ladybug isn't a sacrifice, it's the only option. It's self preservation, it's the only way to succeed. It's not noble that Chloe only does something when the only other option is the same fate that she happily left everyone else to. You could even argue the only reason Chloe needed to interfere was because Chloe distracted Ladybug by trying to apologize NOW of all times.

What's with this show's blonde's and their bad timing?

And about that apology - what a shoehorn! I think the writers did intend for Chloe's apologies to be genuine, but they failed in the set up. Maybe if Chloe got less and less despicable as classmates were picked off, if she got less and less sure of herself, if she acted like when people sacrificed themselves for her that was something to feel GUILTY about- but she doesn't. She's not guilty or even grateful. Kim puts her before him on the baton? She mocks him for thinking that she might possibly kiss him for it, which wasn't even his goal. Rose gets attacked trying to carry her onto the bus? She snaps at her because she wasn't "fast enough" to stop her ankle from getting twisted. Alix pushes her out of the way to make herself a human barricade between Rose and the rest of the survivors on the bus? She complains about people "invading her personal space".

Her apology to Ladybug reads like her swearing to be nice when Stoneheart throws her from the Eiffel Tower - an empty promise on her "deathbed" that's heard by almost no one that she can immediately take back or pretend never happened.

And her "apology" to Bustier isn't any better. I've already pointed out that Chloe could've used her time to rush order a gift if she felt THAT BAD about forgetting Bustier's birthday. She has a butler, her best friend is basically a personal assistant, she's got a phone that she's glued to half the time - she has so many ways to set a reminder or literally get someone else to do her work for her to ensure she got something for Bustier's birthday. There's no excuse, she flat out didn't care enough, that's all there is to it.

And somehow this and her getting her a gift a day later are supposed to be what clues us in that Chloe "has a heart, she just doesn't know how to use it?" Uh, if they really wanted to prove that, maybe she should've actually taken Alya's suggestion about apologizing to the class seriously instead of gloating over "saving Ladybug?" Chloe didn't change, Chloe didn't learn anything!

All that happened was that Marinette was taught by someone in authority over her to ignore Chloe being awful, leaving her open to give Chloe a chance in "Maledictator", leading to even more entitlement on Chloe's part, eventually leading to "Miracle Queen" and "PenalTeam" with Chloe feeling so entitled to everything being handed to her that she opts to side with the BAD GUY.

THAT'S what the lesson in "Zombizou" leads to. THAT is what this starts. This episode has no re-watch value whatsoever thanks to Seasons 3 and 4 and it is rage inducing with hindsight.

951 notes · View notes