Les Sisters is a French slice-of-life animated series about two sisters who call themselves "The Sisters". They are best friends and mortal enemies both - in other words, they are typical sisters. Whenever they want something, they come up with outlandish schemes to get it, which usually results in property being damaged and people being injured.
The series premiered in France in September 2017.
The main characters are:
- Wendy, the older of the two Sisters. She's a 13-year old who is the most popular girl at her school, and is a typical teenager who loves her boyfriend, music, celebrities and her phone.
- Marine (also known as Marie in the English dub), Wendy's seven-year-old younger sister whose favorite hobby is annoying Wendy. Her naivete and stupidity tend to land the Sisters in trouble.
- Sandrine and William, the girls' parents. William is a manchild and a comic book artist, and Sandrine is a level-headed and responsible hospital nurse. Unlike their counterparts in the comics, they're shown in full and given larger roles.
- Maxence (or Maxwell in English), Wendy's boyfriend. He's a Nice Guy, but also not very bright.
- Sammie, Wendy's best friend who serves as the Only Sane Woman of the Sisters' friend circle.
- Nath and Loulou, Marine's best friends. Like her, they are young girls who love ponies and stuffed animals.
- Rachel, the second most popular girl in Wendy's school. She's an Alpha Bitch who utterly despises Wendy for being more popular than her and takes every opportunity to make Wendy's life difficult.
The series provides examples of:
- Affectionate Nickname:
- Wendy occasionally refers to her boyfriend Maxence as "Maxou".
- Wendy and Sandrine sometimes call Marine "Marinou".
- Rachel calls Marine "Marinette" while pretending to be nice to her. She stops once Marine finds out that Rachel is a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing.
- Age Lift: In the comics, Marine was 6 and Wendy was 12. In the animated series, they're both aged up a year, making them 7 and 13 respectively.
- All Girls Like Ponies: Marine and her friends Nath and Loulou.
- Alpha Bitch: Rachel, Wendy's rival. She's the second most popular girl in school and is a rude, snobby brat who loves making fun of people and has a group of followers who used to be Wendy's followers.
- Amnesia Episode: A variant in "Amnesique et Perils". Marine breaks Wendy's phone and pretends to get amnesia so Wendy won't ask her where the phone is. Wendy spends the whole episode trying to get Marine to remember things.
- Amusing Injuries: The cast suffer from these regularly, especially Wendy.
- Annoying Younger Sibling: Marine to Wendy.
- Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?: Happens in the Camping Episode after Marie and Wendy break their parents' vase.Wendy: Marie, there's only one solution. You'll have to stay strong.
Marie: You want to kill our parents?! Are you insane?
Wendy (disturbed): Uh, no, I meant we could camp out in the forest until they calm down. - Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Wendy and Marine. Best illustrated in "La plus pire de deux" where they spend a whole episode complaining to their parents about each other, but when their parents try to separate them from each other, they beg and plead them not to.
- Babysitter from Hell: Madame Georgette. When she has to babysit the Sisters for the weekend, she forces them to eat disgusting soup instead of ordering a pizza like they wanted, makes them go to sleep before it's even night time despite Wendy telling her she had to watch an important episode of her favorite show, and confiscates Wendy's tablet and Marine's snacks.
- Big Sister Instinct: Wendy shows this to Marine when she is in trouble or in danger.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Rachel acts kind to Wendy's parents, and even Marine is tricked into thinking Rachel is a nicer person than Wendy until she reveals her true colors.
- Book Dumb: Wendy, to the extent that her scores on tests for a hundred points are single-digit numbers.
- Brick Joke: In "La vie secrete des adonnaissants", Wendy tells Maxence that her father does not like it when people touch his trophy. When the parents get back home, Wendy's dad sees Maxence holding the trophy. Maxence drops it, breaking it.
- Butt-Monkey: Wendy and Maxence.
- Camping Episode: "Les Sisters L'Ermite", where Wendy and Marine, fearing punishment from their parents for breaking a vase which the parents actually hated, decide to camp out in the forest until their parents cool down.
- Chekhov's Gun: "Sisters Soldes" exaggerates the Retail Riot trope; at the beginning of the episode, when a clothing store that is having a sale opens its doors, everyone runs inside and tramples the security guard, an act which is witnessed by Marie and Wendy. Later in the episode, Wendy and Rachel are fighting over a dress, and when Rachel is about to buy the dress, Marie goes to the intercom and makes a fake announcement about clothes being sold for extremely cheap prices to anyone who buys them within the next five minutes. Wendy, aware of what will happen now, jumps out of the way while Rachel is trampled by a crowd of people at the checkout counter. During the confusion, Wendy grabs the dress from Rachel and pays for it, making her its rightful owner.
- Clip Show: "La plus pire de deux" has clips from several other episodes, the events of which the Sisters are narrating to their parents.
- Cool Big Sis: Wendy can sometimes be one to Marine, Depending on the Writer. In these cases, she helps Marine with her problems and gives her good advice.
- Dagwood Sandwich: Marine makes one, but realizes that she can't put it in her mouth.
- Disproportionate Retribution: In "Dans la Peau de Ma Sister", Wendy promises to give her old phone to Marine but forgets and gives it to her boyfriend Maxence instead since his old phone broke. Marine proceeds to send embarrassing photos of Wendy to all her friends, steal her friends and tell them embarrassing things about her, get her grounded by sending her parents a photo as proof that Wendy lied about studying for a test and then take over her room. It's only when Wendy hangs out with Nath and Loulou and threatens to show them embarrassing pictures of Marine that Marine realizes what she did was wrong and apologizes. She is Easily Forgiven by Wendy, who gives her the old phone.
- Don't Split Us Up: Played for Laughs, whenever Marine and Wendy's parents threaten to separate them since they tend to cause trouble when they are together.
- "Double, Double" Title: "Telle Soeur, Telle Soeur".
- Dub Name Change: In India where the show broadcasts on multiple ETV Bal Bharat networks, Marie and Wendy's names are changed to either Milie and Julie, or Indu and Bindu, depending on the regional language.
- Enter Stage Window: In an episode, Maxence tries to climb through Wendy's window, but Wendy forgets to let him in and he's left dangling from the windowsill until the next day, when his panicked parents call Wendy and ask if she's seen him anywhere.
- Establishing Character Moment:
- The first scene we see in the show is Marine trying to annoy Wendy, establishing the fact that she is an Annoying Younger Sibling.
- The first episode also has an Establishing Character Moment for Wendy, where she tries to make a plan so she and Marine can avoid spending their holidays at their grandparents' house.
- Rachel's debut episode shows her telling a story to a group of her classmates about how some guy asked her out but she turned him down and cruelly mocked him just for having acne. Shortly afterwards she also makes fun of Wendy for supposedly being less popular then her.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: The Sisters. Marine is impulsive, fun-loving and somewhat naive while Wendy is more level-headed and intelligent. Somewhat justified in that Marine is only seven while Wendy is a teen.
- Guilt by Association Gag:
- Wendy is often punished for things Marie did. Marie is banned from the local swimming pool for life? Wendy is also banned because the pool authorities know that they’re sisters, even though Wendy never did anything bad. Marie painted on the walls and released snails into the house? Their parents force Wendy to help Marie clean up the mess.
- Rachel picks on Marie, who is several years younger than her, for no reason other than Marie being related to Wendy, whom Rachel hates.
- Help, I'm Stuck!: Wendy tries getting into her friend's house via the bathroom window in order to get into a Wild Teen Party she wasn't invited to, but her body gets stuck halfway through the window, leaving her unable to get into the house or climb back outside the window. Fortunately, Marine happens to be attending the party, so Wendy is able to call her for help and with a little effort, Marine manages to pull Wendy into the house.
- Hypno Fool: Wendy in "Hypno Sisters" is accidently hypnotized to act like a baby just by watching a hypnotist on television despite mocking Marie about it not being real seconds earlier. Whilst trying to help her Maxence ends up getting hypnotized too into acting like a dog. At the end of the episode, the hypnotist puts them back to normal but leaves them both with a post-hypnotic trigger to revert back to their hypnotized states whenever Marie snaps her fingers. The episode ends with Marie abusing this to humiliate Wendy in front of her friends at the pool.
- Inflating Body Gag: Famously in Marie's Imagine Spot in "Crise de Croissance" where she imagines her sister Wendy eating a cake that causes her to blow up like a balloon and floats away.
- Insane Troll Logic: In the Camping Episode, Marie and Wendy are being attacked by swarms of mosquitoes. Marie picks up a fairy-themed handheld video game which she brought along with her, and the game says "lemongrass can repel trolls". Marie decides that if it works on trolls, it must also work on mosquitoes. As if that wasn't bad enough, there's no lemongrass around, but there is a bottle of orange juice. Since "lemongrass" starts with "lemon" and lemons and oranges look somewhat similar, Marie reasons that orange juice and lemongrass are the same thing.
- Ironic Echo: In one episode, Rachel comes to stay at the Sisters' house while her parents are out of town. When the adults go out, leaving Wendy, Marine and Rachel alone, Rachel locks Wendy and Marine out of the house and throws a Wild Teen Party. When the Sisters try to get back in, the bouncer Rachel employed tells them their names aren't on the guest list and refuses to allow them in. The Sisters manage to sneak in and drive Rachel and her guests out. When it starts to rain, Rachel begs them to let her back inside, but they sarcastically reply that "her name isn't on the guest list" and refuse to let her in.
- Landslide Election: When Rachel and Wendy hold an election to find out which one of them is more popular, Rachel has several more votes than Wendy. Subverted as it turns out Rachel forged a bunch of votes for herself, and Wendy wins.
- Laser-Guided Karma:
- Wendy often gets this when she is mean to Marine for no good reason.
- Sometimes it happens to both of the Sisters when they cause trouble for fun.
- Rachel always ends up getting subjected to pain and humiliation when she tries to mess with Wendy.
- Mischief for Punishment: In the first episode, the Sisters' parents decide to send them to spend their holidays with their grandparents. The Sisters decide to cause trouble and annoy their parents so they can get grounded and stay home so that they can hang out with their friends. It works, but Marine and Wendy flood the house by accident. When Marine accidentally reveals their true intentions, the parents punish them by taking them to stay with their grandparents for the holidays.
- Mood Whiplash: In "Les Sisters L'Ermite", Wendy and Marine's parents threaten to send them to summer camp. The Sisters cheer until their parents threaten to send them to different summer camps, and the girls are horrified at the prospect of being separated.
- Naked People Are Funny: After Marine just finish her bath she smells Pizza and runs straight downstairs into the living room with out her towel on to her mother surprise.
- Naked People Trapped Outside: A downplayed example. Wendy goes to the mall to buy a dress and ends up being followed by Marine. Wendy, who at the moment is in her underwear in a changing room, orders her sister to go back home, and Marine complies, but accidentally ends up taking Wendy's clothes with her, leaving Wendy at the mall (which is on the other side of town from their house) in just her underwear and training bra. Wendy ends up having to wrap a curtain from the changing room around herself and walk all the way home like that.
- Negative Continuity: While there usually is continuity, in "Telle Soeur, Telle Soeur", Marine gets herself, Wendy, and all Wendy's friends banned from the town pool "for life", but in "Wendyphobie", which takes place after that episode, they are all there at the same pool and the Sisters get banned for life again.
- Never Bareheaded: Sammie is never seen without her yellow hat.
- Only Sane Woman: Sammie. She normally hangs out with Wendy, who tends to overreact to everything and come up with dumb, over-the-top solutions to problems, Marine, an annoying and naive brat, and Maxence, who's not very intelligent.
- Out-of-Character Moment: While Wendy is usually a Cool Big Sis and Marie is an Annoying Younger Sibling, in the fourth episode Marie does nothing wrong while Wendy acts like a Big Sister Bully, ruins Marie's sleepover and tells her to "go play in traffic".
- Persona Non Grata: Marie’s antics at the local swimming pool have gotten her and Wendy banned from the pool for life.
- Person of Mass Destruction: Wendy and Marine normally end up causing large amounts of property damage. In some episodes, they even manage to cause damage to their entire neighborhood.
- Phoneaholic Teenager: Wendy and all her friends.
- Popular Is Dumb:
- Averted with Rachel, who is quite intelligent when she needs to be.
- Zigzagged with Wendy; she's Book Dumb and occasionally does rather idiotic things, but is smarter than some of the other characters and comes up with plans which work fairly well.
- Relative Error: In "La Blonde, Ma Sister et Moi", Marine sees Maxence with a blonde girl and thinks he is either cheating on Wendy or dumped her for the new girl; in reality, the other girl was his cousin.
- The Runaway: When Wendy and Marine's antics get out of hand during summer vacation, their parents threaten that if they continue to do things like that, they'll send them both to summer camp in different places, separating them from each other. The parents go shopping, leaving the girls in the house alone. The sisters goof around as usual and end up breaking a vase. The parents come home to find a note saying that their daughters have run away. Fortunately, the girls are camping out in a nearby forest and are perfectly safe. They were intending to come back after their parents had calmed down, but they didn't mention this on their note.
- Scary Stinging Swarm: In the episode "En manque de Max", Marine and Wendy get stung by bees and covered in welts.
- Secret Diary: Wendy has one of these. Marine is constantly trying to read it.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: In "Crise de Croissance", Wendy finds out that she has gotten too fat to fit into her favorte jeans. She tries to lose enough weight to wear the jeans to a concert in two days, while Marine tries to make Wendy eat cake and other fattening foods so she will have to pass the jeans down to Marine as a hand-me-down. Marine succeeds in making Wendy eat the cake. However, Wendy has still lost enough weight to fit the jeans around her waist... but discovers that she has grown too tall for the jeans. Marine is excited to get them as hand-me-downs, but since she's about 6 years younger than Wendy, it turns out that the jeans are way too big for her.
- Shaking the Rump: In one episode, Wendy talks to a picture of Max while deciding what to wear on their next date. She settles for a pair of tight jeans and [[ suggestively shakes her butt]] in the direction of the picture.
- Straying Baby: Marine once believes, due to a misunderstanding, that her parents are having a baby. She finds her friend (who is the same age as her, seven years old) in the park with his baby brother and asks if she can borrow the baby so she can "practice" taking care of a baby. He happily allows her to take the baby home with her. Worse still, the baby escapes the house while Marine isn't paying attention.
- Strong Family Resemblance: In-universe, Marine is described as looking like a shorter, blonde version of Wendy. Even though the show averts the Only Six Faces trope, the two look exactly identical apart from hair and height.
- Stripping Snag: In the episode "Jamais Sans Mes Poux" Marine has an embarrassing fantasy nightmare where she loses her bikini bottoms on a diving board during her swimming lessons in front of all her friends.
- Sudden Downer Ending: The first episode, "Ah non! Pas les Vacances!". Marine and Wendy's parents tell them that they are going to be spending their holidays at their grandparents' house. The Sisters try to get in trouble so they can get grounded and stay home, so that they can hang out with their friends. It works, but Marine and Wendy flood the house by accident. When Marine accidentally reveals their true intentions, the parents punish them by taking them to stay with their grandparents for the holidays.
- The Talk: In "La Grande Lessive", the Sisters come up with a plan where Marine distracts their dad while Wendy hides some clothes which were meant to be washed; Marine distracts him by asking how babies are made. He has no idea what to tell her.
- Tempting Fate: In the episode "Amnesique et Perils", Sandrine and William go out, leaving Marine and Wendy alone at home. They return at the end of the episode and Sandrine remarks that for once the girls didn't damage the house in any way. Almost immediately, Wendy breaks a window.
- Wild Teen Party:
- In "L'Ennemie Interieure", Rachel holds one of these in Wendy and Marine's house after locking them out. Later, Wendy and Marine invite all their friends and have another party.
- Wendy's friend Sammie holds one in "Quelle Soiree!" After hearing that Wendy tried to prevent Marine from going to the party and claimed that it was Sammie's fault, Sammie uninvites Wendy and invites Marine in her place. Wendy sneaks into the party to prevent Sammie from kissing Maxence while Marine discovers that Sammie only invited her to be a waitress. The Sisters ruin the party to get revenge.
- With Friends Like These...: Wendy and Sammie in "Quelle Soiree". Wendy makes Sammie look like the bad guy in front of Marine. Sammie uninvites Wendy from her party and invites her sister instead, and she tries to kiss Wendy's boyfriend. Fortunately, they reconcile at the end of the episode.
