very much logical reasons for marinette to go to shanghai: visiting her extended family, which is hinted to be largely based in china, getting to know her culture more
what the summary of the shanghai episode suggests: marinette is chasing adrien, a crush she supposedly let go of in the s3 finale, somehow obtaining a travel visa n all the documents necessary, gets to china and gets her bag stolen
technically she’s visiting her uncle. but it’s “in order to join adrien” LIKE what?? shouldn’t it be the other way around?????
i really am not a fan of salt and i really didn’t have high expectations for the shanghai episode, but i’m still disappointed. theres also a chance that what we were given as a summary isnt 100% accurate, but from what i’m taking from it, marinette’s whole shanghai trip is to supposedly chase adrien.
i love ml. i love the characters. but one of the things that has been handled terribly is the representation of asian culture—namely chinese. given that marinette’s the main character and has been very clearly put as the main focus, even over adrien, one would’ve expected a whole HALF of her culture to be handled better? instead we got thrown the dog bone that is kung food—which i could complain about as well—and the incorrect, stereotypical shirt sabine wears. that’s kind of it. the only nods to marinette’s chinese side, both of which are painfully inaccurate.
so you’d think that a shanghai episode could focus a little bit more on that half of marinette’s heritage. i’m still hoping that it will, because for goodness sake, master fu literally says that the miraculous are an “ancient chinese secret” and we could get lore AND some chinese culture in the shanghai episode, but...from the way it currently seems to be going, i don’t think i’ll be holding out for anything better.
i get that it might be more appealing for the audience when the plot is “marinette’s chasing after the love of her life and then ends up in china”, but for her character’s sake and for the sake of the cultures you’re borrowing from, i think “marinette visits china in order to keep in touch with a whole half of her heritage because she’s already SO OUT OF IT” would’ve been much better.
and my gosh, if she’s going to bow to the people she greets bc that’s as much research as the team is willing to do on chinese culture, i’m going to throw my phone.
