Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir () is a French animated superhero television series created by Thomas Astruc and developed by Jeremy Zag. The series is produced by the French company Miraculous Corp. (a joint venture of Mediawan and ZAG Entertainment), and co-produced with Japanese studio Toei Animation's European division, as well as several international companies.
The series focuses on two Parisian teenagers, Marinette Dupain-Cheng and Adrien Agreste, who transform into the superheroes Ladybug and Cat Noir, respectively, to protect the city from supervillains created by their main antagonist, Hawk Moth.
Before its debut in France on 19 October 2015, on TF1/TFX's TFOU block, the series was first shown in South Korea on 1 September 2015, on EBS1. Internationally, it is mainly broadcast on Disney-owned channels or on Disney+, with exceptions in some countries.
The series spawned a media franchise with several products tied to it, including various comic books, novels, and video games. A film adaptation, Ladybug & Cat Noir: The Movie, was released theatrically in 2023, premiering in France.
Synopsis
The series takes place in modern-day Paris and revolves around the adventures of two teenagers, Marinette Dupain-Cheng and Adrien Agreste. When evil arises, they transform into their superhero personas, respectively Ladybug and Cat Noir, using magical jewelry known as the "Miraculouses": the miraculous of the Ladybug, with the power of creation, and of the Black Cat, which grants the power of destruction. Marinette and Adrien struggle with their feelings for each other, not knowing each other's secret identities: Marinette is in love with Adrien, but not Cat Noir, while Adrien is in love with Ladybug, but not Marinette.
In seasons 1 through 5, their main enemy is the supervillain Hawk Moth, whose real identity, unknown to the heroes, is Adrien's father, Gabriel Agreste. Using the Butterfly Miraculous, he creates akumas, butterflies infused with negative energy, to "akumatize" ordinary Parisians when they experience negative emotions. This grants him control over them and turns them into supervillains. His goal is to steal Ladybug's and Cat Noir's Miraculous, intending to use their combined power to wish his wife, Emilie, back to life, who fell into a coma by using the damaged Peacock Miraculous before the events of the series. He is sometimes aided by his assistant Nathalie Sancoeur, who uses the Peacock Miraculous to create sentimonsters, magical lifeforms with a seemingly endless variety of forms and abilities.
As Hawk Moth's villains grow stronger, Master Fu, the Guardian of the Miraculous, permits Marinette to borrow additional Miraculous and enlist her classmates and friends as superheroes. Hawk Moth eventually exposes Master Fu, forcing the latter to make Marinette the new Guardian. Nathalie falls ill from using the damaged Peacock Miraculous, but Hawk Moth repairs it and uses it together with the Butterfly Miraculous to become "Shadow Moth", able to create both akumas and sentimonsters.
At the end of the fourth season, Gabriel, adopting the new supervillain name "Monarch", gains control of almost all of the Miraculous, leaving Ladybug and Cat Noir once again as the only two heroes. A battle with the heroes leaves Gabriel with magical damage that slowly spreads through his body. Adrien eventually lets go of his crush on Ladybug and instead falls in love with Marinette, leading to them starting a romantic relationship (still ignorant of each other's secret identities). After a final battle with Marinette at the end of season 5, Gabriel seizes the Ladybug and Cat Miraculous and makes his wish; having had a change of heart, he wishes to revive Nathalie at the cost of his own life and asks Marinette not to let Adrien find out that he was a villain. Marinette recovers most of the Miraculous and gives them into the custody of her friends, unaware that Lila Rossi, a former classmate who became her nemesis, has claimed the Butterfly Miraculous for herself.
In the sixth season, Marinette struggles with the morality of hiding the truth of Gabriel's villainy from Adrien and the world. Lila, adopting the supervillain name "Chrysalis", is aiming to discover Ladybug's true identity and begins to direct akuma-powered villains of her own against Ladybug, Cat Noir, and their team of superheroes – the Miraculers. Together, the Miraculers continue their search to find the real identity of Chrysalis.
Episodes
Production Conception and creation The series is based on an original concept created by French writer and storyboarder Thomas Astruc. He was inspired by a meeting with a certain lady and "decades of comics binge reading". In an interview with Nolife, Astruc said he was working as an animator on the show W.I.T.C.H. when he met a woman wearing a T-shirt with a ladybug on it. They began to share drawings, some of which were ladybug-themed. Astruc also noted that Marinette's signature pigtail hairstyle was fashioned after the woman. They also worked on the cartoon A.T.O.M. around 2004–05. Astruc first drew Ladybug on sticky notes and remarked about how strong the Ladybug character was. He had no memories of seeing ladybug-themed superheroes in comics.
Astruc had intended to make Ladybug a comic book series until he met Jeremy Zag, who loved the project and wanted to produce it as a cartoon; Zag was 25 at the time and not originally from the cartoon industry.
In developing Cat Noir, Astruc said that ladybugs represented good luck, so it was natural to partner her with a black cat character with bad luck powers. Cat Noir was a tribute to comic characters like Catwoman, so it was like having Catwoman and Spider-Man in the same show, but reversed genders and roles.
A character named Félix was originally going to have the role of Cat Noir, as the holder of the Black Cat Miraculous, with Plagg as his owner. but he was later scrapped in favour of Adrien Agreste who is the current holder of the Black Cat Miraculous alongside Plagg, because the creative team felt that Félix was a cliché of a male anime protagonist and that Adrien would allow them to tell more interesting stories. In September 2015, Astruc indicated that he was open to revisiting the character of Félix, but he abandoned it by February 2016, writing that the character was a poor idea. In 2019, Félix was remade as Adrien's cousin and was renamed Félix Fathom, and became holder of the Peacock Miraculous with Dusuu as his owner.
Production companies In 2010, the show was announced at Cannes' MIPCOM with French production companies Univergroup Pictures and Onyx Films heading the project and working with Method Animation and Zagtoon. Aton Soumache of Onyx and Method said that they want "to create a glamorous superhero character with a real European flair with Paris as [the] backdrop." The producers had also planned to animate it in stereoscopic 3D (currently, the show is produced using CGI animation).
In June 2012, Toei Animation, an animation studio owned by the Japanese film company, Toei Company, was announced as a co-producer, alongside its European division. Two years earlier, Toei had released a Pretty Cure film set in Paris, France, and the studio was interested in expanding its international audience. Even after the production moved to CGI animation, Toei remained a co-producer and partner, with executive producers from the company remaining credited until Seasons 1-5, and the manga.
On 21 November 2012, a memorandum of understanding between Zagtoon, Method Animation, SAMG Animation and SK Broadband was announced: together, the companies would invest US$50 million through 2017 into five projects. The first of these projects was developed into Miraculous, which received an investment of $10 million. As a part of the deal, SK Broadband would have exclusive rights in South Korea for video on demand release, available to the subscribers of the company's IPTV platform B TV.
In 2019, Zag and Gloob signed an agreement where the Brazilian company would start to co-produce the next seasons of Miraculous, in addition to having exclusivity of exhibition in Brazil and the addition of a Brazilian character.
Animation When Toei Animation and its European division joined as co-producers in the summer of June 2012, it was also announced that the show would be drawn in a colourful manga-like style. Later in September, Zagtoon, Method, & Toei released a traditionally-animated promotional video for Miraculous Ladybug. The video featured Marinette (in different clothes similar to the clothes in the current series) as the current holder of the Ladybug Miraculous, Ladybug, and a (now-scrapped, later Adrien's cousin) different character named Félix the holder of the Black Cat Miraculous as Cat Noir, Marinette and Félix's Kwamis, Tikki and Plagg, Hawk Moth/Gabriel (without the mask and with a different outfit, look, and lair compared to the current series), and also two akumatized villains from season 1 in the current show – The Mime and Mr. Pigeon. Their Miraculouses and their transformation sequences had different designs compared to the Miraculouses and the transformations in the current series. The demo song from the promotional music video was performed & composed by Noam, who would later compose, produce music and perform songs for the current series.
The whole anime concept was a complete success, but there were concerns about the marketability of traditional 2D animation and the difficulty in animating Ladybug's costume of red with black spots, as it caused some strobing effects. Executive producer Jared Wolfson said that Zag wanted the animation to be cinematic and epic, unique and different, and said that they are continuing to partner with Toei as it brings in the Asian inspiration and that a 2D version of the show might be a potential product for future purposes, but later, the anime concept was reused in the current series that exists as a movie in the main universe.
The aforementioned problem with 2D animation was resolved by moving to CGI animation; the switch also allowed for easier implementation of mobile camera angles. SAMG Animation (later SAMG Entertainment), a CGI animation studio located in South Korea, which officially joined the production in the fall of November 2012, produced modelling and animation. Zag later recalled that SAMG was chosen for quality reasons in a video message he sent to a South Korean press conference held in 2015 by the Seoul-based company. Astruc and assistant director, Wilfried Pain, instructed the animators not to improvise scenes so that they could keep things consistent and understandable. Pain estimated about 350–400 shots are used in a typical 20-minute episode; with 10 panels per shot, that makes up to 4000 panels per episode. Wolfson said that the show's animation brings dynamic camera angles and texturing. A trailer with the new, current CGI-animated style was released in October 2013, a year later.
On 22 January 2018, Zag posted on Instagram that the crew was working on season 4 and season 5. In September 2019, it was confirmed by Zag that the air date for season 4 was slated for late 2020, but this was pushed to 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
On 18 April 2021, it was confirmed that in addition to seasons 4 and 5, the show will have two more seasons (season 6 and 7). Season 6, which was confirmed to switch the series from Autodesk Maya to Unreal Engine 5, was initially expected to launch sometime between fall or winter 2024.
In July 2022, an eighth season was greenlit.
Themes, writing, and process