Psycomedian is nice

[trainsinanime]

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One thing I noticed in Psycomedian again is a classic foundation of the show: Marinette is sometimes embarrassed, but not really humiliated. And when she’s humiliated, it’s never played as a joke. When Marinette completely fails to make Adrien laugh at her jokes, yes, that is partly a joke. But when it finally goes wrong and she runs away crying, that is portrayed as a tragedy. And the show makes sure that before it’s over, Adrien specifically tells her that they’re okay and that he absolutely respects her.

This is a common part of how the show works, and has been shown plenty of times before. The most obvious example is the statue scene in Puppeteer 2.0, which has all the hallmarks of classic cringe comedy, but when the cringe moment happens, that’s not the punchline, that transforms the scene into a serious one. And it brings our two heroes closer together.

Really, the show has been doing that from the start. The whole thing where the girl makes a gift for her crush, and then encounters adversity and he never learns that she made it? That’s perfectly normal for normal american teen comedies. But here, with the scarf, they do it in a way that is heartwarming and nice. Even Marinette herself is happy that he liked the gift and that he thinks (sadly mistakenly) that his father cares for him.

When I first got into this show, that’s something I was really struggling with. I don’t like cringe stuff all that much, and Miraculous Ladybug (and specifically Marinette) steps with both feet first into classic cringe situations. That can be tough. But it always resolves them in a way that is nice and heartwarming. That’s something I really appreciate and enjoy.

Of course I also enjoy the humour, and the love square, and sometimes even the CGI fights. But a key component is this: It’s a show that in the end always chooses to be nice to its characters and its audience.

Comments

[type_wild]

I can't compare MLB to other shows simply because I watch so little western animation, but I never got why the fandom though The Statue Scene was so horrible. I have a supremely low tolerance for second hand embarassement, but that scene never bothered me at all. My go-to explanation for that was always that we know that Adrien would never laugh at Marinette, that it is completely on-brand for him to just think that she's a bit weird and to take the blame for the situation. Reading this though, I wonder if it wasn't just the previous experience with how the show has gone about those moments where other shows would absolutely aim for humiliation. MLB instead turns that into sympathy, like Kim in "Dark Cupid".

[soc_puppet]

Oh yeah, hard same here! While there are occasional moments of embarrassment squick, there are not nearly as many as in a lot of other shows out there. Overall, the characters themselves are rarely the butt of the joke, and are instead treated very warmly. It's very refreshing!