Making the PV Canon-Compliant

Happy belated Thanksgiving to my American readers. 

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I hope everyone enjoyed themselves while still staying safe. Hubby and I decided to stay home this weekend instead of visiting my family as we normally do. In exchange, we had a game night with my sister-in-law yesterday, I'll have a Zoom meeting with my mom later today, and Hubby and I will be spending the weekend prepping for his birthday on Wednesday.

Full disclosure, as I mentioned in my previous blog post, I was running hella long and I still wanted to talk about my one plot bunny where I try to come up with a way to make the Miraculous Ladybug PV canon-compliant. I had decided to cut everything I had written up already - which is about half of what I wanted to talk about on this subject - and paste it into a draft for this week's blog. It would stop last week's blog from getting any longer, as well as kept me from spending another 3hrs or so writing it all up instead of doing ANYTHING ELSE on my day off. Plus, bonus, it gave me a major head start for this week's post. I was excited that I'd actually be able to post before noon on Friday, as I intended, because most of the post should have been written already. I could spend the rest of the week periodically working on the blog whenever I had downtime, possibly finish it Thanksgiving evening, then just polish it up Friday before publishing.

But this is 2020, so of course none of that actually happened.

Last Friday was the last day off I had prior to Thanksgiving. Post-work was spent doing Thanksgiving prep-work: cleaning the apartment, doing laundry, grocery shopping, finding the big serving/prep-work dishes, gathering recipes, etc. No big. I have 8 solid hours of work each day, and I'm sure I could at least work on my post over lunch breaks, if not longer given the feast-or-famine way we get customers lately. Well... Thanksgiving wasn't the only feast that happened all week long! We were actually fairly bombarded with customers, and we had to retag the store for Black Friday specials, and our tag-making program crashed on us... And we received a box of fabrics I needed to sort through to make sure our collection was up-to-date... That became a day-long project. It actually became rare that I even had time to just sit and eat my lunch this past week. My "lunch breaks" were usually me at my desk shoving a bologna sandwich down my throat at 3pm as I caught up on paperwork.

Needless to say, I didn't really have any time to even bring up this blog post to work on. Same with my annual tradition to come up with a new thing I am grateful for each day throughout the month of November; a way to really focus on the Thankfulness portion of Thanksgiving, and kinda-sorta repurpose a holiday that has some really sketchy origins, to say the least.

I did come up with things I was thankful for up until November 16th. Then I kind of fell off the wagon. I've been scrambling to get back onto it, but... well... there is no concept of time left in this age of 2020. Days just whoosh by me. I am determined to get this list done by Monday though, so I can have all 30 things listed and posted before November ends. I had started to post to Twitter as well as my personal Facebook page, but trying to get the whole tweet thread thing to work properly for me (I'm so illiterate when it comes to Twitter features), and how long the thread has become is already so overwhelming. So I won't be continuing that thread. I do want to post the whole thing up on Tumblr though. If I do so, I'll link to it in my next blog post.

So, yeah, yet ANOTHER week got away from me, and not much of anything really happened aside from work, chores, and playing more Animal Crossing. That does mean, however, that I can dedicate the rest of this post to that one plot bunny.

Last week I talked about my current list of WIPs and plot bunnies. Number 6 on that list was, as I mentioned above, turning the original anime-stylized concept for Miraculous Ladybug into something canon-compliant. 

So, to start, let's talk about what I even mean when I say Miraculous Ladybug PV or "original anime-stylized concept". In short, I mean this: 

This was a sort of test video that Toei Animation did for Zagtoon; the producers of the Miraculous Ladybug series. It was a way to get more backers; a proof of concept. It was uploaded to YouTube privately "for internal use only" originally, but was accidentally switched to Public in 2012. While the original video was switched back to private two days after the leak, the above video was one of many re-uploads under the title "Ladybug PV." PV being a standard video production abbreviation for Promotional Video.

The project was scrapped in favor of the CGI we now know and love for a couple of reasons.

1. The backers of the project felt the anime styling, even when done by a well-known anime studio, would be a hard sell for a French-created series.
2. While Toei was proud of the work they did, they also complained about how difficult it was to constantly animate the spots on Ladybug's costume, especially during fight scenes. Switching to a 3D model helped eliminate that concern and actually allowed MORE spots to be put on the costume.
3. The concept for the anime was supposed to be darker and aimed more towards teenagers, but production felt the show worked better with the lighter, more kid-friendly themes we now get with the canon show.
4. One of the elements of the darker concept was Felix, the original Chat Noir. He was supposed to be jaded and apathic; focusing more on the concept of yin and yang by having Chat Noir be nearly the polar opposite of Ladybug. Felix would also be both completely aware and actually quite annoyed by Marinette's fawning over him. Both the friction between the heroes and the rift between their civilian forms caused any and all romantic chemistry between the two feel entirely unrealistic. Not good when one of the core drives of the story was the romance between these two characters. On top of that, Astruc realized that Felix was becoming too much of an anime trope (which I'll get into). In the end, they realized Felix needed to go.
5. Felix was going to be like Adrien in five main ways: 1) he was going to be the son of a famous fashion designer, 2) he was going to be a renowned model due to his father's career, 3) he was going to be a rich teen both because of his father's success and his own earnings, 4) Marinette was going to be in love with him but completely inept in winning him over, and 5) he was going to be Chat Noir. However, with Felix, he was going to be snobbish because of his famous father, his wealth, and his own modeling success. He'd think himself above the likes of Marinette, and, as mentioned above, find her constant advancements annoying. Along with being snooty, he was apathetic towards the plight of the citizens of Paris. He was going to be a reluctant hero (again, I'll get into this more in a moment). He was originally going to be Ladybug's partner in saving Paris solely as a way to try to win her over. However, she would be wise to his insincere heroism, and be just as annoyed by his advancements as Felix was of Marinette's. Astruc felt Felix being "the cold and almost cruel rich boy who is a complete flirt and cuts loose while in disguise; along with a reluctant hero only in it to woo the girl" was a bit too much of an anime trope for male secondary protagonists. All reasons to scrap him and completely rework Chat Noir until we got our beloved Adrien.

Okay, now that most of the initial concept, and why it was scrapped for what we currently have, has been sorted out, there's still a couple more bits I need to further explain. Then I can FINALLY get to my plot bunny.

First is that, as part of the original "darker" concept of the show, Felix's ring would have been cursed. Plagg wouldn't be a trusted companion like he is for Adrien. Instead, he'd be a mass of chaos tasked to cause bad luck to follow whomever wore the Cat Ring; i.e. Felix. Felix would suffer through all of these bits of bad luck - such as the library books avalanching onto him in the PV - unless he was Chat Noir and Plagg was too preoccupied by powering up the ring. Felix also couldn't remove the ring ever. The only way to get the ring off his finger and end his curse would be to get a kiss from Ladybug. So he fights by her side and flirts with her to try to get her to kiss him and end his curse. However, Ladybug kinda can't stand the guy, and also realizes how valuable he is as a partner against Hawk Moth. Also, I believe the full Love Square would come into effect, and Chat Noir would fall for Ladybug. This, I think, was supposed to add to the drama because if Ladybug ever kissed Chat Noir it would end his curse, but he'd also lose his powers and could never fight beside her again. He then would be torn between ending the curse that plagued his civilian days with bad luck and keeping his powers so he could help protect his beloved.

Fun side note, I can't recall where I saw it since it's not in the PV, but there was either a shot or concept art of Felix touching an apple tree with the hand his ring is on, and an apple ends up falling on Marinette's head. This implies that he was going to find a way to semi-control his bad luck and use it as a means to distract or otherwise deter Marinette's advances. 

Anyway, as I said, the concept was scrapped as being too hard to animate, too difficult to sell to networks, too dark and mature for the audience most likely to be interested in a ladybug-themed superheroine, too unbelievable of an overarching romance subplot, and too cliché of a male lead.

However, fans still fell in love with this PV and these characters. Mostly anime-lovers and adult fans really missed this scrapped concept and hoped for some sort of revival. The best we've gotten so far is:

• an announcement that Miraculous Ladybug has done so well financially that Toei is in talks about creating a 2D OVA - an Original Video Animation; basically a movie or mini-series that is either non-canonical or finds a way to bring everything back to the status quo by the end so it doesn't effect the overall continuity of the main series.
• the PV becoming a canonical movie about Ladybug and Chat Noir within the series universe
• a revival of Felix as Adrien's identical cousin.

Before Zagtoon and Astruc gave us fans any of that, however, the fandom came up with alternate realities for the anime versions of Chat Noir and Ladybug, or where Felix and Adrien could interact and were perhaps twins; which is most likely where the show's writers got the idea of Felix being an identical cousin. Fans didn't like the concept of Anime Ladybug also being Marinette, however, so they redubbed her Bridgette. The personality between the PV Marinette and the CGI one were different enough, and the costume design was also different enough that people accepted that they were two completely different characters; much like Felix and Adrien.

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Now that ALL of that fandom history is out of the way, what about my story concept? Well, I thought of following Felix back to London. He'd keep the prim and proper rich boy attitude shown in the PV and also showcased in the canonical episode "Felix." I might age him up a bit too in order to better fit the look of Felix in the PV. Make him about 16. He looks about 16 in the PV. 

The Miraculous and the superheroes of Ladybug and Chat Noir have been known world-wide for some time now. Felix has also been bothered by his overly enamored classmate Bridgette. The art styling for Bridgette compared to Marinette is different enough that they don't necessarily have to look identical, and therefore it wouldn't be as much of a stretch that Bridgette and Marinette co-exist within the same universe.

I might even have Felix make some sort of passing comment about the similarities. Especially when Bridgette is fawning for Felix, he could note the video of Marinette's love confession to Adrien.

I'll have to do some more research on how the fandom views Bridgette's and Felix's personalities, but I believe Bridgette is seen as more perky and outgoing than Marinette. Probably more akin to Rose within the canon show. Bridgette seems to wear her heart on her sleeves, as opposed to Marinette bashfully hiding hers, as poor of a job as she may do with that. I also don't know if - whether canonically or within the fandom - Bridgette also aspires to be a fashion designer, but if not, then all the better. It will make her more distinct from Marinette. Same with figuring out if Bridgette's parents are also bakers.

So, I'll need to do more research on Bridgette, but I think I can make her work. 

Another character I need to do fandom research on, or come up with something myself, is the main villain of the PV. He's still Hawk Moth, but he decidedly has more of a Mafioso-Crime-Boss feel than Gabriel Agreste.

TOP LEFT: Ladybug PV Hawk Moth; TOP RIGHT: CGI Hawk Moth
BOTTOM: Gabriel Agreste

PV Hawk Moth having a secret meeting with The Mime

He has an older look to him in the PV than in the CGI. He also has that more subtle Mob Boss like feel to him. He's more Marvel's Kingpin or DC's Lex Luthor, or Disney Gargoyles' Xanatos. The Hawk Moth we ended up with is more akin to a standard supervillain with an anime flare to it, like Queen Beryl from Sailor Moon or Rita Repulsa from Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, or an 80s/90s American cartoony supervillain that threw a Villain-of-the-Week at the heroes, like Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget. 

This is clearly not the same man as the Gabriel Agreste/Hawk Moth we got in the canonical CGI series. I'd need to really research and/or ponder who this PV version of Hawky is though....

Now for one of the main sparks with regards to how I could make the PV version of Ladybug and Chat Noir somehow work within the same universe as the canon show: the kwamis.

Here are Plagg and Tikki in the PV versus the CGI show we ended up getting as canon.

L: "Plagg" mocking Felix after mischievously knocking library books onto him.
R: Plagg getting scratches from Adrien while discussing their close friendship.

L: "Tikki" getting a snuggle from Bridgette.
R: Tikki getting a cheek kiss from Marinette to reassure the kwami that trust was never lost.

While the size difference and overall character design is most prominent in the images of Tikki, you can still kind of see it in Plagg as well. The kwamis are clearly much bigger in the PV version, and Tikki's ladybug spots used to be a single 4-leaf clover birthmark on her forehead. Plagg also shrank in the CGI version, his tail became much shorter, and he lost the little hair antenna off the top of his head. 

Okay, so the kwamis also went through a character re-design, so what? Well, if Felix could become a separate character from Adrien, and the fandom made PV Marinette the separate character Bridgette, why couldn't the same treatment be given to the PV kwamis? 

Also, as I pointed out last week when I first brought up this plot bunny, I was partially inspired by the concept of Smile Fruit in the One Piece universe. 

This is going to need some explaining as well, especially if you don't know the manga/anime One Piece. So forgive me as I try to run through this quickly.

In the world of One Piece there are these things called Devil Fruits. They have a god-awful taste to them, dangerous to eat, deadly if someone eats two of them, and has the ill-effect of paralyzing and removing all natural buoyancy from anyone who ate a Devil Fruit when they come in contact with sea water. On the flipside though, these fruits grant insane powers to any who eat them. The main character Luffy is made entirely out of rubber after eating a Devil Fruit and can manipulate his body at will within the confines of the property of real-world rubber. His adoptive brother can control flame. His one crewmate is an anthropomorphic reindeer. Another can reproduce any of her body parts - usually her arms - as many times as she wants and just about anywhere she wants. Another is a living skeleton. There are people that can turn into and/or control different natural elements, others turn into a species of animal - the reindeer can become human, and others still can manipulate gravity or straight up matter. These powers are insane, but they are balanced out with those aforementioned ill-effects and danger. Plus, it's a trial just to get a devil fruit in the first place. They aren't grown; they're magically formed, but I won't get into that.

So, Smile Fruit. These are introduced fairly late into the series. They are artificially produced Devil Fruit: a way to mass-produce these Devil Fruit to eliminate the need to track them down. A way to also try to make them without the ill-effects kicking in. In the story these fruit are still largely experimental, but the fact that characters are trying to recreate and artificially make a magical item got me thinking about the PV versions of Plagg and Tikki.

It also made me think of the PV versions of the Miraculous.

TOP LEFT: Felix wearing the Cat Ring; TOP RIGHT: Adrien holding the disguised Cat Ring;
BOTTOM: Marinette holding the Cat Ring while it's in the default look.

TOP LEFT: Bridgette wearing Ladybug Earrings; TOP RIGHT: Marinette wearing disguised Ladybug Earrings; BOTTOM: Marinette wearing activated Ladybug Earrings (when they go to default)

The Ladybug earrings didn't change too much by way of activated design, but there IS still differences there. Obviously the Cat Ring got a major design overhaul. The big takeaway, however, is that the Miraculous in the CGI version - the canon version - all disguise themselves when inactive and possessed by a wielder. The Miraculous in the PV didn't change at all between everyday wear and when activated by a kwami. Kind of makes the whole "try to find the Miraculous" a bit easier in the PV version, but I'll think about that more later.

Okay, so the Miraculous act differently and look differently, the kwamis appear different, at least Plagg's personality and dynamic with his holder was different in the PV, and there's the whole idea of the Cat Ring being cursed in the PV. The earlier versions of Ladybug and Chat Noir also have a different set of potential powers. In a video showcasing early CGI character models of powers being used, Ladybug is seen using some sort of light bo staff created from her yoyo, and a shield created by magical ladybug wings flapping quickly.

In an artbook for the series, we were also shown concept art for the two powers Chat Noir started off with: Black Hole and Black Storm.

Black Storm seems to have received a canonical semi-revival in the episode "Chat Blanc" where the character could flick and throw his Cataclysm instead of needing to physically touch the target. Black Hole also unofficially got a revival by way of Chat Noir using Cataclysm on the ground below Gorizilla to make the villain fall through and get stuck.

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My point is that the Miraculous, the powers, the kwamis, and the dynamics between the kwamis and their bearers were all reworked so much that they became different enough to be able to coexist within the same universe. Even the villain appears different enough.

So now, finally, here's my concept:

Felix, probably through some shenanigans similar to what we saw him pull in the canon episode "Felix", ends up in possession of a black ring with an embellished black cat face on it.

He puts the ring on, and is greeted by a little magical being that resembles a black cat. This creature has the ability to hide from view so it is never discovered, and proceeds to follow Felix around EVERYWHERE, causing continuous havoc for the teen. The creature gets quite the amusement from this torment. Felix tries to get rid of the cursed creature by removing the ring, only to discover he can't. This is when the creature laughs that Felix put on a cursed ring and that the curse clearly has to be broken before the ring can be removed. The being will gladly keep Felix company in the meantime though, and proceeds to cause more bad luck for the teen.

Meanwhile, somehow Bridgette ends up with the Ladybug earrings. She meets a little red magical creature with a clover birthmark on its forehead, and the two quickly bond, after Bridgette is done freaking out about HOLY HECK, A MAGICAL CREATURE CAME OUT OF MY EARRINGS WHAT EVEN IS THIS!?

The butterfly-themed villain - whose villain name I'll have to either research or come up with, because there can't be two Hawk Moths in the world, can there? - sends out his first villain into the city of London. I'm not entirely sure yet what instigates the attack and if it is before or after the teens get their jewels, but I'll sort that out later. The red kwami instructs Bridgette how to activate her earrings to become a superhero herself. Her powers are quickly described, and she's told how to de-activate the transformation once done. Bridgette transforms and is surprised that she resembles the Parisian superhero Ladybug, whom she's seen news reports about. Specifically, her costume largely resembles that from the Ladybug and Chat Noir movie despite it not matching the real life Ladybug's. She goes out to battle the villain.

Going back to Felix, he's arguing with his kwami about the curse, researching everything he can to try to find out how to break the curse. He stumbles upon "Fake Miraculous." I haven't decided yet if it was ancients creating them to try to recreate the power of the Miraculous for themselves after failed attempts to literally steal them - ya know, because... magic - or if this is a modern thing in which the London Hawk Moth knows of the Miraculous via news reports and the Ladyblog posts, and tries to use SCIENCE! to recreate the magical jewels. This could also be why the costumes resemble that of the movie (aka the PV), because the creators used the movie for reference instead of the Miraculous forming a costume that the wielder envisions, as the real ones do. I'm leaning a bit more towards Modern Technology, but the fact that the ring is cursed also makes me think "flubbed magic" is the way to go? I'm still debating it.

Anyway, Felix discovers that he has a forgery of Chat Noir's ring and that the curse locks the ring onto his hand until he can convince the artificial Ladybug to fall in love with him and kiss him. He may even make a snide comment about how "storybook" the curse breaking is and asks how he's ever supposed to even find this supposed Ladybug. On cue, he sees Bridgette's Ladybug, either because she swings by, or busts through the room he's in during her fight, or because of a news alert. Either way, he realizes he has to find a way to win her affection and demands to know how to turn into Chat Noir. I'm not entirely sure if he chances into figuring it out, if it's listed in the research revealing the Miraculous forgeries, or if he manages to convince his kwami to tell him. Either way, he's Chat Noir now, and rushes to get to Ladybug.

She's a bit preoccupied with the whole FIGHTING A FLIPPIN' SUPERVILLAIN IN LONDON thing, and does NOT appreciate getting distracted by this random cat superhero. She was excited at first to see a Chat Noir, but quickly switches to demanding he help her. The battle awkwardly won - no akuma to be cleansed this go; it might be more akin to a Batman Rogue's Gallery or something to go with PV Hawky's mafioso look - Ladybug reams out her partner and races off. Felix realizes that he's actually quite smitten with this woman, and that he'll gladly accept a kiss from her; curse or no.

Shenanigans continue as presented in the concepts leaked about the PV, but with the caveat that the "Miraculous" in this story are actually forgeries of the ones Marinette and Adrien possess; artificial magical jewels to try to harness the power of superheroes and a means to control them. Kind of like the idea of the Super Soldier Serum and Captain America vs... well... a BUNCH of other superpowered characters in Marvel comics.

There is A LOT to try to figure out for this before I can even fathom starting writing it. I need to figure out who this supervillain is. Is he also Hawk Moth? Would a grown man within an hour train ride of a supervillain bother to pick up the same mantle? Bridgette could easily go with the UK term for the beetle and call herself Ladybird instead of Ladybug to differentiate from Marinette's superheroine, but what about Felix? Would he just go with Black Cat instead of Chat Noir? Would he do the Americanized thing and go with Cat Noir? What about simply The Cat? Are the artificial kwamis still Plagg and Tikki? Should I rename them? If so, any ideas on what good names for them should be? Canonically Felix's dad passed away, so the Big Bad in this story won't be Felix's father, but who should he be? I could lean hard into the whole Wilson Fisk/Lex Luthor/David Xanatos feel and make him a prominent wealthy figure within London; someone the media paints as a humanitarian and philanthropist. I also need to figure out who created these fake Miraculous, how, why, and why they look the way they do. Why don't they resemble the real ones more? Why don't they have the same powers? What was the point if they are so different compared to the real ones? Were they considered a failed experiment because of those vast differences? Are the teens still restricted to a 5-minute power-up after using one of their main powers? Are there other restrictions to make sure these powers aren't OP? Can this Ladybug restore damage caused by the supervillain like Marinette's powers can do? 

It's fair to assume Gabriel doesn't bother with the superheroes in London because he discovers the powers are artificial and knows he can't make the wish on those earrings and ring that he could on the ones Marinette and Adrien bear. Still, what stops him from reaching out to London Hawky, or try to find a way of still stealing the jewels from Bridgette and Felix in order to soup up his own lackies? Likewise, what stops London Baddie from trying to overreach and attack Paris? What is his endgame goal vs. Gabriel's?

Like I said, there's a LOT to still flesh out, but I still love the starting seeds of this concept.

What do you guys think? Any ideas on the world build here? Should I bother? Is there already a plethora of stories with a similar concept? Let me know what you think in the comments.

Before I head out, just an FYI that I'm still all sorts of screwy with the work schedule between me asking off for Hubby's birthday, and my manager trying to get through more of her vacation time before she loses it. I SHOULD be back to having Tuesdays off by the 15th, but I'm also continually getting Fridays off. For right now I'll keep my blog updates as close to Friday as possible, but keep an eye out for me switching back to Tuesdays. I'll be sure to give you a heads up when that happens.

Until next week!

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