Back to season 1 of Miraculous Ladybug
It's the 10th anniversary! Having been here for an entire decade, I thought I'd reminisce about what the early days of ML were actually like, for fun and nostalgia and a love letter to a show that's brought me so much joy over the years.
There was no English dub for the first few months. Your choices were either French or Korean. (It started airing first in Korean, then the French episodes caught up and went ahead.)
We didn't know who Hawk Moth was yet. The main and obvious suspect was Gabriel Agreste, but some people also thought it was Alix's dad, and that his moustache was fake.
The showrunner Thomas Astruc's twitter nickname was "Hawkdaddy".
He described Dark Cupid as "the episode that would break the internet". (probably because of the Ladynoir kiss)
In the episode Gamer, Adrien kept trying in vain to eat snacks and getting them taken away from him. A movement started called "Let Adrien Eat" in response, wishing for our sunshine son to be able to eat to his heart's content. Even the official Miraculous tumblr (yes that was a thing for a while) got in on it.
It seemed like a larger proportion of the ship names were based off wordplay rather than character names at the time. The main one that's survived to this day is DJwifi (Alya x Nino), but I remember that heartrate (Alix x Kim) and tomatofox (Nathaniel x Lila) were common too. I even remember occasionally seeing bubblegoth for Rose x Juleka and speedgamer for Kim x Max.
Nathaniel was popular. Like, REALLY popular. He was also frequently referred to as a tomato, and we thought his name was spelt like "Nathanaël" like one of the people who works on the show.
The episode Jackady/Simon Says was like a nuke dropping. I can't describe it. It was the first really intense episode of the show, before plot-heavy episodes became more commonplace in later seasons.
Before Lila's first appearance, all we knew was that the fox hero "Volpina" would show up, and we had a picture of her. People thought she would be more of a big sister, friendly type. Then the episode dropped and she was incredibly divisive for obvious reasons.
The Origins two-parter was supposed to air at the end of the season, but in true Miraculous fashion, it got aired early. Some people decided not to watch it yet and there were special tags created for avoiding origins spoilers.
There was a lot of hype over seeing what all the classmates were going to be when akumatised. We were counting down and crossing each one off as it happened. Nino was the first (Bubbler), and Rose was the last (Princess Fragrance).
On the day Princess Fragrance aired, there was a problem with the TV channel's website and it didn't get uploaded until later than usual, meaning that for several hours, only the people who had watched it live knew what happened. The rest of us got akumatised while waiting.
We didn't know most of the classmates' surnames yet. It was particularly noticeable with Nino, who is otherwise a major character.
Marinette stealing phones was a meme. So was Prince Ali with the bowl on his head. And umbrellas in general.
The anime PV was still very popular, with "Brigette" (fan nickname for PV Marinette) and Felix. We were told that Felix wasn't going to become a character in the actual show, and well, that was a lie.
Ladynoir, Adrienette and Marichat all had prominent episodes early on, and there was a Ladrien prayer circle until Jackady finally aired and saved us.
Happy 10th birthday, Miraculous. It's been a blast 🐞🐈⬛
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