SPOILER WARNING FOR THE EPIC MICKEY GAMES, THIS POST SHOULD BE SKIPPED IF YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT IT!
Yup it's me Tanooki. I'm back once again to give another critique on Ladybug once again. Let's take a look at the concept of trauma and relationships...oh boy this is going to be a tricky subject.
Let's just say that Ladybug... isn't very good at tackling either subject. Not very well at least.
Throughout the show, the character, Marinette, has a creepy and somewhat dangerous obsession. What is this obsession you may ask? Well... it's...
Stalking is a very serious problem and while I'm fine with media including that specific subject, this show isn't one of them. The stalking is played off as a joke. A horrible tasteless joke.
The amount of times the show makes jokes of her stalking is...quite frequent. Barely anyone even calls out her behaviour either. It just continues with stuff like
Her making a time table of what her crush gets up to
Her getting gifts for the next few years
Now I understand that the show has addressed this trauma.
There were no hints or anything. It was tacked on. I can give it props for the panic stuff but the other things? Absolutely not.
This trauma is only here to justify her stalking. She still stalks her crush even after the episode and never brings this up again. No one ever calls her out or gets her therapy. It just...happens...
What is her reasoning for her acting the way she does?
It all stems from a memory where she falls into a pool from a diving board after opening a box of spiders from her crush at the time...I have several questions.
We've had several episodes where Marinette has been in a pool (Mr Pigeon 72) so why is this being brought up? Shouldn't she be scared of water?
How in the hell does this make her stalk? I don't get it at all. I understand that trauma is different in everyone but I don't think this would make me stalk anyone. If anything, it feels too farfetched in my opinion to even qualify for it.
Why is the show justifying this behaviour at all? I'll remind you that Ladybug is a show for children... CHILDREN... PROBABLY VERY IMPRESSIONABLE CHILDREN TOO! (Side note - I'm not saying the show is causing kids to stalk or anything. This is just me saying how some kids aren't developed much and seeing this might make them think the behaviour is okay to do.)
Now as always with these posts, I usually have a comparison to go along with these sorts of things.
Is it Persona? Klonoa perhaps?
Sit your ass down because the comparison of the day is
Yes...you heard me right. Epic Mickey has a better example of trauma in its story than Miraculous. I shall now explain why.
1. The trauma is well written and fits who the characters are.
Let's start with this. The traumas written here are very well written.
We'll first start off with Oswald as he's the most interesting of the bunch. His behaviour and why he's so hostile to Mickey at the start of the game is because he used to be a star before Mickey came along. When Mickey showed up, he was forgotten by everyone else and ended up as one of the first members in the wasteland. Even worse, he can't leave even if he wanted to as without his heart, he can't leave. Forgotten toons don't have hearts.
Now imagine that years later, you seem to be...somewhat okay. Sure there's a giant mountain of things with Mickey's face on it but hey you have replicas of his friends as animatronics, your girlfriend by your side, a mad doctor who isn't that mad and a town which you helped shape. All of that now comes crashing down when you get creatures made out of both paint and thinner terrorising the world, thinner is now dropping all over the town destroying everything it touches and now a giant version of those creatures you saw is roaming around.
You fight it off but in the end, the town is now pretty much lifeless. Your mad doctor friend has turned evil. Your girlfriend is now stripped of all her paint and forced to be a stone statue. Your animatronic friends have all their parts removed and scattered all over the place. Now you spend your days atop a mountain with the face of the guy you hate, guarding a bottle that, if opened, could end the only place you can even be in.
Now let's go over to Mickey. While he hasn't got as much as Oswald, he's still an interesting case to talk about something we will discuss it. A thing to note is that Mickey isn't fully aware of what he's done until he gets faced with the consequences of his actions. That's when it hits him that he's done
During his more scrappy years, he tried to paint a statue of himself in the wasteland...but ended up with a creature which you think is gone since surely you must have erased it.
Nope. That creature has entered that world you destroyed. It has wrecked it. And even worse, now you're faced with it several years after you did it. You see how it's affected everyone including the guy you have hated. No one knows you did it but yourself. Your scrappiness lead to the world's downfall and now you feel the need to restore everything in it.
Sorry if this is long winded but now we shall move on to our next reason.
2. Their actions towards each other and what they have done are never justified but rather they are reasons.
The characters both do bad things but they are never justified.
Mickey's scrappy behaviour during his youth and his fear doesn't ever justify what he's done to the wasteland. Sure he never knew he did destroy a world full of living and breathing toons but still destroying anything no matter how miniscule is wrong. Even if wasteland was just a model of a world, you wouldn't want someone coming along and destroying it.
Despite Oswald's sad story of losing his fame and almost everything he had in his home, his asshole behaviour towards Mickey is always displayed as incorrect. Heck, it's part of the reason why the bottle containing the shadow blot broke. His behaviour is never justified no matter how bad his trauma was.
In the end, both Oswald and Mickey learn that what they both did was wrong and soon make up in the end and act like brothers to each other. They realised that their actions have consequences and so try to fix their ways. Epic Mickey does have themes of redemption in its story with the whole "choose your path" style of gameplay so this part of the game makes actual sense.
So yeah overall, somehow a Mickey Mouse game of all things happens to have better written trauma than Ladybug.
Thanks once again for coming to another ted talk.
