About
Miraculous Ladybug (officially known as Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir in English, Lady Bug in Korea, and Miraculous overall) is a French CGI-animated action and adventure series created by Thomas Astruc. The series, which follows the exploits of Marinette Dupain-Cheng and Adrien Agreste to protect the city of Paris from evil under their alter egos, Ladybug and Cat Noir, quickly gained a fanbase after the premiere of the English version in December 2015.
Premise
Set in modern day Paris, the show centers around Marinette Dupain-Cheng and Adrien Agreste who, entrusted with the power of the magical jewelry of the Miraculous, become Ladybug and Cat Noir respectively and capture akumas, creatures responsible for turning regular people into supervillains which are created by Hawk Moth, a man who seeks the Miraculous and its powers for himself.
History
The original concept of the series was conceived by Thomas Astruc[1], who previously worked on shows such as Code Lyoko and Wakfu. The show was first made on September 5th, 2012 as a short 2D anime proof-of-concept video animated by Toei Animation[2] (shown below, left) which was made private a few days later due to a mishap that made the video public when in actuality the video was meant to be private. The video was then re-uploaded by a few fans. In October 2013, a new teaser trailer for the show was released, seeing a change from the anime art style that was used in the proof-of-concept video to CGI (shown below, right) animated by SamG Animation. In 2015, the show premiered, first in South Korea on September 6th on EBS, then in France on October 19th on TF1, and then in America on December 6th on Nickelodeon.
Reception
The show has an IMDb rating of 8.1 out of 10 from 25 users as of December 2015.[3] and a 4 star rating out of 5 from Common Sense Media.[4]
Online Relevance
The show’s official Facebook page for the show has garnered over 4,200 likes as of December 2015,[5] while the show’s official Twitter account has accumulated over 1,300 followers.[6] On March 5th, 2015, a dedicated wiki was created, gathering over 170 pages in the following months.[8] A Miraculous Ladybugsubreddit was created by user Yatalac on September 4th, 2014 which has garnered over 200 subscribers in the following months.[7] On October 18th, 2015, YouTuber headofporridge uploaded scenes from the show accompanied with the French opening as fanmade trailer, gaining over 360,000 views in the following two months. On December 21st, 2015, YouTuber Lulu uploaded a translated version of a Vocaloid promotional video featuring an alternate universe set in the 1700s, which gained over 34,000 views in the following five days.
Quickly after the release of the promotional short, the series gained a niche following, which increased since its release, mostly on the microblogging network Tumblr.[10][11] As of December 26th, 2015, the artist community deviantART leads to over 2,000 results under the keyword “miraculous ladybug”.[9]
Search Interest
External References
[1]Twitter – Thomas Astruc
[2]Crunchyroll – VIDEO: Toei Animation and French Company ZAGToon Collaborate on ‘Lady Bug’
[3]IMDb – Miraculous Ladybug
[4]Common Sense Media – Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir
[5]Facebook – Miraculous
[6]Twitter – @BeMiraculousLB
[7]Reddit – /r/miraculousladybug
[8]Miraculous Ladybug Wiki – Main page
[9]deviantART – Search for miraculous ladybug
[10]Tumblr – Search for miraculous ladybug
[11]Tumblr – Tagged as miraculous ladybug