Miraculous Watch-through 4: "Mr. Pigeon" and "Evillustrator"

Right, time we got back to these things. As ever, I'm going by the order on the British Season One DVD, which means that our first episode today is one that has become a bit of a cult classic even within the Miraculous Ladybug fandom! Let's get to it right away. As usual, I assume readers have seen the first two seasons.

S1E06: Mr. Pigeon

This is not even in the top three silliest things in this episode

Perhaps one of the greatest cartoon episodes of all time. It takes a concept that many would find ridiculous... and makes it even more ridiculous! The titular Mr Pigeon is, on the face of it, a pretty silly villain – he can fly about on pigeons and threaten to make them poop on people en masse and, er, that's it. Okay, they can apparently hold up the infamous no. 33 bus too. Pre-akumatisation, Mr Ramier doesn't really have a leg to stand on regarding his bird-feeding, which perhaps makes him one of the less sympathetic akuma victims. In the end, he's defeated more easily than some villains, albeit by a truly ludicrous Lucky Charm trick involving popcorn.

Bowler hats (as we call "derby hats" over here) seem a strange topic for a design contest, but oh well. The whole "feather allergy" thing is pretty stupid: even someone as terminally dense as Marinette should have made a connection once Adrien started sneezing! (As an aside, Adrien winks at Marinette as she wins the contest.) Mind you, Cat Noir thinking a police cap and "La Marseillaise" will overshadow his catsuit and moonwalking is almost as dim. We get another nudge of Chloé's Ladybug obsession with the ladybird plushie in her hotel room – and a certain bear we'll see again later. Oh, and Hawk Moth says "Miraculouses". Make up your mind, man!

Quote: Mr Pigeon: "Power to the pigeons!" If only John Lennon had gone with that in the first place.

S1E07: Evillustrator

In all honesty, Cat Noir can be fairly obnoxious sometimes

Back down to Earth now with a more normal episode, at least by the standards of this show. Interesting to see someone have a crush on Marinette (rather than Ladybug) – I think Nathan is the first boy to do that. We also meet Ms Mendeleev. Unfortunately. Unlike some episodes, the akumatisation is rapid – Hawk Moth is on screen inside two minutes. Evillustrator is that nice mixture of fun, dangerous and creepy – that last especially when he decides to turn up in Marinette's bedroom; yikes! And this is our first good look at the toxic "friendship" between Chloé and Sabrina.

The Lucky Charm in this one actually makes some vague sense, as I can believe a super-agile yo-yo wielder like Ladybug being able to use a bouncy ball like that. Wish I could! A good job too, as being cut in half by whirling saw-blades seems a bit much even for Chloé, though given Evillustrator's "...she'll never forget!" line I doubt he would actually have killed her. Oh, and Hawk Moth apparently wants to "rule the world!" How disappointingly generic. I'm glad we start to discover a more interesting motivation for him later in the series!

Quote: Ladybug to Cat Noir: "Fewer puns, more action!" Aw, spoilsport. We want both!

Next time, I'll look at another cult classic in "Rogercop", while the straw-chewing of "Copycat" will also be under the spotlight.

Miraculous Watch-through 3: "Lady Wifi" and "Timebreaker"

It's been a few days, so let's get back to my watch-through of Season One of Miraculous Ladybug. Once again, I'll be looking at two episodes this time – and once again, these are not intended as full reviews, but rather some comments on things I found interesting, significant or just plain amusing. As ever, the S1 DVD from the UK is guiding my episode order, so the next episode will be...

S1E04: Lady Wifi

"But... but... I thought 'Fanfic' was just the name of an akuma victim!"

It's been a while coming, but at last we have some reasonably extensive scenes in Miss Bustier's classroom, where Alya is still obsessed with finding out who Ladybug really is. This time around, she becomes convinced it's Chloé. Oh dear;  as Plagg "helpfully" points out to Adrien, "It means you must have a crush on Chloé!" Adrien looks suitably unimpressed with this. And thanks to the student we all love to hate, we also get to meet the bizarrely-named Mr Damocles this time too, as well as Chloé's dad the city's rather bumbling Mayor.

Lady Wifi's powers are interesting, and had it not been for Ladybug's magic mask (yay, more lore!) she'd have unmasked Marinette fairly easily. LW even, albeit temporarily, heads off the threat of a Cataclysm. Cat Noir himself veers between awkward clumsiness when he loses his ring in the cold room and awkward curiosity about Ladybug's secret identity. The latter leads him to come oh so close to discovering the truth, and Alya's phone filters near the end could easily have blown the gaff entirely! Plenty to chew on this time round.

Quote: Ladybug to Tikki: "But you don't have any toes!" Those two are so adorable together.

S1E05: Timebreaker

Once you see Kim as an Angry Birds character, you can't unsee it

One of the more complicated of the early S1 episodes now, with things getting as confusing as they usually do when time travel is involved. An interesting little snippet: Marinette's parents have been married 20 years. As for Alix, it's her 15th birthday. Odd, given she's in Miss Bustier's class with Marinette, who at this point hasn't turned 14 yet! Not sure if this is an Annoying Dub Thing like "tenth grade" was. The Kubdel family is definitely one to watch, though, given their involvement in "The Pharaoh". I mean, come on, you can't show an ancient holographic watch like that and not mean it to return in the future, surely? As for Kim, he's a fairly dull character at this point.

Alix has serious justification for being so upset before she's akumatised, too. I quite like Timebreaker's design, and she's a pretty dangerous villain – all the more so when she teams up with, er, herself. I mean, she basically kills Cat Noir when he throws himself in front of Ladybug, though Ladybug rescues him. We also get two Ladybugs, though one of her is still Marinette at first. My brain hurts. Maybe Cat Noir has the right idea in just grinning like an idiot. Interesting that their Lucky Charms don't produce identical items. Also, there's a cake shaped like the Eiffel Tower, because clearly we don't see enough of the Eiffel Tower in this show. Oh, and Alya? You could have at least tried to fit the watch in your jeans pocket!

Quote: Hawk Moth: "Do I see double vision in my future? Or should I say double villain?" I had to stop the video for a minute because I couldn't see for laughing.

Next time, I'll be talking about the glory that is "Mr. Pigeon". Oh, and "Evillustrator".

Miraculous Watch-through 2: "The Bubbler" and "The Pharaoh"

It's time once again for me to look back at Season One of Miraculous Ladybug and see what I make of it. Now that I've established the general format, I intend to write a little less for each episode – just a couple of paragraphs for each one. That means I'll have space to talk about two eps per post, so off we go! As before, I'm using the episode order from the UK S1 DVD.

S1E02: The Bubbler

"Hey, we'll be fine if we can land in that pond, right? Right?"

This episode brings us several firsts. We have our first school scenes, though they're largely external. We see the Agrestes' mansion for the first time and start to get a sense of Gabriel's less than touchy-feely approach to his son. We meet Chloé and her own obsession with Adrien, as well as her manipulative control of Sabrina. We also see for the first – but not the last – time, a grim-faced transformation sequence, with Marinette unhappy after her parents have been bubbled. Oh, and Hawk Moth's "It won't be long before Ladybug and Cat Noir show up to meet their doom" line gets the first of its multiple S1 outings here.

Adrien himself shows quite some immaturity even for a (just) 14-year-old, starting with insulting Plagg's birthday gift to him (yes, it's Camembert, but it's still a wrapped gift) and continuing with attending the Bubbler's party instead of doing his actual job as a superhero. Marinette does something similar, and Tikki is quite right in telling her off for not using her powers for (to borrow a phrase from the show's future) the greater good. The Bubbler's rather absurd appearance aside, this is a solid episode with several interesting touches and our first good look at Nino – oh, and Hawk Moth's first use of the word "evilise"!

Quote: Ladybug: "They [adults] care for their kids! They love them." Cat Noir: "Most adults do, anyhow." Ouch.

S1E03: The Pharaoh

That symbol between Tikki and Ladybug means "baguette" in Ancient Egyptian

This is where we get our first significant bit of lore! In the course of the episode, we discover that Marinette is "the chosen one", that there have been Ladybugs for millennia and that Tikki has watched over them "since the very beginning". What's even more interesting, in the light of later Gabriel-related show revelations we didn't know about at this point, is that she was intervening to prevent the pharaoh magically bringing his wife Nefertiti back to life! The name of Nefertiti's husband is Tutankhamen in English, but the more historically accurate Akhenaten in French. A particularly annoying change by the English dub team...

...as is the whole "tenth-grade" thing, which makes Marinette appear too old. In the original French, Marinette is in the troisième, which fits better with her being 14 during S2. Anyway, I can't help feeling Jalil Kubdel's ideas about that sceptre will have relevance later in the series, but for now The Pharaoh is the most dangerous akumatised villain so far, thanks to his ability to call on ancient gods' powers. He comes quite close to getting rid of Alya, Ladybug and Cat Noir ("Enjoy your coffin!") at various points. Alya is glorious in this ep, such as with her annoyance at not being considered prime sacrifice material. The best episode of the first three? I'd say so.

Quote: Alya: "Hi, everyone! Alya here, liveblogging from the shoulder of the terrifying villain! Huge scoop to come; stay tuned!" Like I said, glorious.

Next time, I'll be talking about "Lady Wifi" and "Timebreaker".

Miraculous Watch-through 1: "Stormy Weather"

Among the first of approximately eight billion variations on this theme

Okay, here goes. As most Miraculous Ladybug fans will know, there are any number of possible episode orders for Season One depending on where you watch, but I will be sticking with that used on the British S1 DVD. For many of these posts, I'll be reviewing more than one episode each time, but for this first instalment I'll keep things nice and simple. As such, "Stormy Weather" will be the only episode discussed here. Bear in mind that these posts are not intended as complete reviews, just things I found interesting enough to pick out.

Spoiler policy for watch-through posts: I am assuming that everyone reading these is up to date for the first two seasons, including the Christmas special. That means there will sometimes be unmarked spoilers for those episodes. For example, I'll assume all readers know Hawk Moth's identity. However, I will not refer to spoilers about later episodes, whether leaked, rumoured or official. I deliberately don't follow Thomas Astruc's Twitter, for example. Please respect other fans by avoiding mention of those too if you leave any comments. Thank you. :)

So, on to "Stormy Weather" itself. This is a solid enough start to the series, with most of the important elements in place, with Alya getting things done and the ship teasing off to a roaring start. There is a little Early Instalment Weirdness, for example Hawk Moth's failure to say his "evilise her!" line and Cat Noir addressing his partner as "M'Ladybug", plus CN having very useful night vision we've never seen since. His intonation of "Cataclysm!" is a bit strange, too. I'm not sure Ladybug's yo-yo would have deflected a falling bus later on, either.

Straight away in episode one, we see that the peril to good characters is real

The first voice we hear, and indeed the first on-screen regular, turns out to be Alec, and (barring a blurry glimpse through a window) we also see Manon before Marinette appears. We're told later on that it's the "first day of summer", but we can't take that too seriously as S1 chronology is a bit weird. Still, we get our first mention of Marinette's infamous hamster dreams, so it's not all bad. Stormy Weather herself is a reasonable villain, and one who really keeps our heroes on their toes. She has a point, too: losing the TV final 82-18 and being teased about it by Alec isn't very nice.

All in all, then, Miraculous is off to a decent start. We haven't yet seen the characters at school, and we don't know much at all yet about the wider picture, at least not unless we're clever and work things out from the opening credits. These do, after all, feature Tikki, Plagg, Wayzz, Nooroo and the Miracle Box. Nor do we have a clue about Hawk Moth's identity, still less his motivation. The show is what it largely remains for some time: a villain-of-the-week action adventure. A good one, though.

Quote: Marinette: "Nah, forget the cat." – in her dream about a future with Adrien. It's surely no coincidence she has ambivalent feelings about cats!

Next time, I'll be rewatching "The Bubbler" and "The Pharaoh".