Why Miraculous Ladybug is a terrible show

“Miraculous Ladybug” is about two teenagers named Marinette Dupain-Cheng and Adrian Agreste that live in the city of Paris.  Anybody would think that these two are just like any other teen, but in secret, they are superheroes named Ladybug and Cat Noir. They transform into superheroes by using magical jewelry called Miraculous that was given to them by Master Fu, the guardian of the Miraculous. Cat Noir has the power to destroy anything he touches with his “Cataclysm.” Ladybug has the power to activate a “Lucky Charm” that helps them defeat the villain and restore everything back to normal. Together they work to protect the people of Paris from Hawkmoth, a supervillain that uses butterflies called “akuma” that uses people’s negative emotions to turn them into supervillains.  In exchange, Hawkmoth will grant whatever the akumatized person wants as long as he takes Ladybug and Cat Noir’s miraculous so he can grant their wish and use the Miraculous for his own desires. 

One of the biggest problems with this show is the extremely repetitive format of every episode. Every episode starts with a character that is having some kind of conflict with another character. Then Hawkmoth uses that character’s negative feelings and uses it to “akumatize” them. Whenever Hawk Moth akumatizes someone he always makes a deal with them; that he will give that character whatever they want, and in exchange, the akumatized person has to steal Ladybug & Cat Noir’s Miraculous charms. Then, Marinette and Adrian transform into Ladybug and Cat Noir and use their powers to defeat the akumatized civilian. 

With this format, there’s no room for any character development, development with the story, and ruins any kind of community between any of the characters in the show. There are hardly any changes on the show with this kind of formatting. A story is usually driven by the character’s wants and needs, and Ladybug and Cat Noir want to reveal Hawk moth’s identity and defeat him so that Parisians won’t have to worry about villains terrorizing the city. After 4 straight seasons, neither of them has gotten any close to revealing his identity. Ladybug and Cat Noir have just been caught in an endless loop of defeating the akumatized civilians.

Another main plot of this story is the love square between the two main characters. Marinette is in love with Adrian, while Adrian and his hero persona Cat Noir is in love with Ladybug. However, Marinette is Ladybug and Adrian is Cat Noir. But the two superheroes don’t know each other’s true identities. Ladybug knows that it’s dangerous to reveal her true identity to her Cat Noir because if they do they might lose their miraculous. Another reason they can’t reveal their identities to each other is so that Hawkmoth can’t find them when they are untransformed and find more information about them. Also, Ladybug just doesn’t want to mix up her personal life with superhero duties, so whenever Cat Noir is flirting with Ladybug, she’s constantly rejecting his romantic advances. 

Marinette wants to be with Adrian but she has never made any effort into having any kind of relationship with him. Marinette’s attraction to Adrian has progressively become more creepy throughout the show. From the first episode, we see that she has posters of his face plastered all over her bedroom wall and a shrine dedicated to him. She’s constantly staring at him and making weird faces when she thinks about him. And she can hardly talk to him without stuttering. Not only that, she knows his daily schedule and sometimes follows him around. 

To make things even worse, in an episode called “Chat Blanc” she transforms into Ladybug and goes into Adrien’s room to give him a gift that she was originally going to give him at school as Marinette but she never got the chance to. But as she enters his room she touches all of his things and rolls around in his bed. This is just so wrong and creepy of her to do, considering that this is a kid’s show. Marinette’s weird behavior could be a really bad influence on kids who look up to her since she’s supposed to be a hero. 

If I were to rate this show it would be a 6/10 because the show isn’t completely unbearable. There are some funny moments here and there and I like watching them defeat villains. But there are also moments that give me a ton of second-hand embarrassment, like Marinette’s creepy behavior. I really like the premise for the show but it doesn’t really do a good job at actually developing the plot and most of the characters aren’t that interesting. I feel like Adrien would have been a better main character because there’s more depth to him, like his abusive home life, his Mother’s death, being super famous at a young age, which could be really good plot points for the story. But the show hardly touches on any of these subjects at all. This show has so much potential to be something great, but the writing seems so poorly thought out. I hope that the writers actually start developing the plot and giving more insight to each character in future seasons.