Trivia / Miraculous Ladybug SP02 - "Miraculous World: Shanghai"

• Blooper:
  • According to Thomas Astruc, the Eagle figures were meant to be Sparrow figures as the special is supposed to take place before the "New York" special.
  • When Marinette begins to transform into Ladybug, her mask is already on her face.
  • One for the English dub, but Marinette (a French native) asks Fei whether she speaks English or not, rather than the more realistic French. Granted, this is consistent with how the same issue is handled in "Kung Food", so this might be more of a Translation Convention than an actual error.
• Out of Order: The special takes place between seasons 2 and 3 (mostly obvious because Marinette is still officially interested in Adrien) but it was released after season 3.
• Release Date Change: The air date was delayed from April 2nd, 2021 to April 4th, 2021, presumably to change Ladydragon's animation model due to criticisms of whitewashing in promotional material.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The concept of Ladybug visiting Shanghai, learning about her Chinese roots, and meeting Chinese superheroes has been around since the beginning, with ideas of making the special in 2D, having it focus on the Lunar New Year, or making a limited comic series about it.
  • One of the concepts was that Marinette would've met more of her Chinese family members, whilst in the final version, we only get to see (great-)Uncle Wang again and see photos of her grandparents and aunt.
  • Long before the special aired, concept art◊ of Ladydragon was shown; back then, she went exclusively by Ladydragon instead of Lady[whatever animal she's currently transformed into] and had dark red-orange hair and an orange and yellow costume more inspired by European dragons. She ended up going through several redesigns before appearing on the show.
    • Ladydragon's final design originally had golden hair, just like the Renlings and Ladydragon's beast forms, but it was changed to her original concept's red hair after her appearance in promos received criticism for whitewashing.
• Word of God: According to Thomas Astruc, Fei's age and family name can be deduced from the special. Most likely, her family name is Wu, as her sifu goes by Last-Name Basis.

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