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

• Les Yay: Marinette immediately takes a liking to Fei after meeting her. She constantly compliments her, and even rubs her face on her back while riding on a bike. She also gives Fei You Are Better Than You Think You Are speech which allows her to unlock the dragon Renling.
• Special Effects Failure: The zoom-in of Ladybug holding the Miracle Box at the start of the intro sequence evidently never made it past the animatic sequence, being an unrendered pose of Ladybug standing still with the box in hand as it glows.
• Tainted by the Preview: The previews for the special made the fans wary, between the reveal that Marinette's reasons for visiting Shanghai would be largely motivated by her crush on Adrien (with any potential in her learning about her heritage seemingly ignored) and Renren's design being hit with accusations of whitewashing. While the special was received fairly positively (and the issues with Renren's design were cleared up), the fans were still annoyed with the reasons given for Marinette visiting Shanghai in the first place.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • The Renlings only really exist to explain to Fei how to use their powers and don't really do anything other than that due to appearing at the climax of the special. Three of them (being Ying Ying, Ma Ma, and Hu Hu) we don't even get to hear speak.
  • The special also shows us the rest of Sabine's family that being her parents and sister. However, the picture and Wang shortly telling Marinette about them is all we really get. We are never told where they are or shown how they might look now. Which is disappointing since it would have been nice to see Marinette interact with her far-away grandparents and aunt.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Marinette's initial reason for wanting to visit Shanghai is to follow Adrien there, while using her uncle's birthday as a means to that end. While she does come around, fans were annoyed that the idea of Marinette going to China was just used to have her stalk Adrien rather than having it serve as an example of a heroine, especially a biracial one, actively wanting to connect with her ancestry.
  • Additionally, Adrien and Uncle Wang remark that Marinette being in Shanghai at the same time as Adrien is a beautiful coincidence, which would've been more impactful if it really was a coincidence, especially given the theme of luck and miracles.
  • Despite Word of God stating that the Renlings are the Kwamis cousins nothing comes of this. We don't get to see Tikki, and Plagg interacts with them and Nooroo only talks about the Prodigious for one scene.

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