Thoughts on Miraculous Ladybug, Totally Spies, French Anime Politics (Sample)
Kanban musume for a tier 1 ko-fi subs article focusing on Miraculous Ladybug and other french anime.
Asalam aleikoum how's it going. You should watch Cat's Eye if you haven't yet, the first anime adaptation. And read the manga. There are official uploads on YouTube with English subs btw, but I think it's region-locked to USA.
Apparently there's a new Totally Spies season that started this 2026. Totally Spies is definitely one of the most popular french anime ever, so I'm not particularly surprised to hear that. But I wonder if it's good or if it's just a sequel cashgrab for newer kids and the nostalgic adults.
I really like the first seasons and probably saw nearly all the episodes aired in france up till the late 2000s. I'm not sure how it went from there. The studio behind the series, Marathon, used to do a lot of really good stuff story-wise, charadesign-wise, etc. Another series they used to do called Martin Mystère was excellent as well.
But then in the early 2010s they started this idol x mahou shoujo series called Lolirock, which was a huge downgrade writing-wise from their past stuff. It followed super sentai writing but in a really bad way. It was like the "that's not it..." feeling you get when spotting a "how to draw Japanese anime" coloring book at the supermarket, but for storywriting instead of visuals.
Then again I also believe Lolirock looked bad. Totally Spies and Martin Mystère gracefully avoided the "how to draw a japanese anime" look but Lolirock definitely gives off that vibe.
It's been over ten years now so I assume Lolirock isn't as popular anymore among the newer generation of kids.
I don't know how Marathon is doing nowadays. And the people making the new Totally Spies series are probably different from those who made the series over 25 years ago.
