Marinette Dupain-Cheng

Marinette Dupain-Cheng is one of the main protagonists of Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir. Marinette is a student at Collège Françoise Dupont in Paris, France. She is also a budding fashion designer. With her magical earrings, inhabited by a kwami named Tikki, she has the power of good luck and can transform into the superhero Ladybug.

Appearance
Marinette is half-French and half-Chinese. She has bluebell eyes, freckles, and black hair with blue reflections that she usually wears back in two pigtails with red hair ties. In a past class photo from "Reflekta", it's shown that she used to wear her hair up in a bun.

She wears a dark gray blazer with rolled up sleeves. The inside of the blazer is lined in white with pink polka dots. The trimming is black. Underneath, Marinette wears a white t-shirt with black stitching and a design below the collar. The design itself has pink flowers and black leaves. She wears rolled up pink pants with the inside lined in white with pink polka dots as well. Light pink ballet shoes with dark red soles adorn her feet. She also wears her earrings, which are black when not holding Tikki. Often, she wears a light pink purse with a thin black strap over her right shoulder, a golden clasp, white spots, and a light pink, white, and black flower design on the outward-facing side.

As Ladybug, she wears a red, skintight suit with a black collar and black spots. She wears her yo-yo around her hips with the string. On her face is a red mask with five black spots. Her earrings become red with five black spots, and the bands holding her hair back become red ribbons.

Personality
A kind and clumsy girl, Marinette is also happy, cheerful, and generous. She loves fashion, her friends and family, and her crush Adrien. Despite her outgoing personality, she struggles with self-confidence and self-esteem. If a situation she deems dangerous, like doing something for Adrien or losing a book that will expose her secret identity, she becomes very nervous and awkward, failing to keep calm and being quick to panic. She deeply cares for other people, and she usually puts their feelings and interests before her own, in some cases being at a personal cost. Despite being genuinely kind, she does have her limits, such as in "The Evillustrator", when she gets irritated with Chloé to the point that, as Ladybug, she refuses to continue watching her to protect her. She can also act impulsively and irrationally at times, as shown when she tries to deflect the false accusation of "stealing" Chloé's bracelet onto others who are also innocent. Although she is absent-minded and acts before thinking at times, mostly if Adrien is involved or she's panicking about a dilemma, she is clever, like hiding her signature in her bowler hat design that exposes Chloé for stealing her design.

As Ladybug, she retains many of the ways she normally acts as Marinette, but she is much stronger and more confident, clever, and brave. Her quick-thinking, resourcefulness, and wit comes out a lot more, especially when she is figuring out how to utilize her Lucky Charm. Her superhero job is a very serious business to her, where she strives to rescue everyone, including the people who become akumatized supervillains. Ladybug, highly aware of how popular and loved she is and does not let the popularity go to her head, she is firm in not telling anyone her secret identity, including her partner, Cat Noir, in fear of dissatisfying everyone with her plain, less amazing alter ego. No matter how hard the tasks before her, she will do everything in her power to set things right and bring peace back to those in trouble.

Adrien/Cat Noir
Marinette has a "secret" crush on Adrien. On the walls of her room and in several photo frames are pictures of him from various magazines. She often daydreams about him and admires his appearance. She longs to win his heart, but her awkwardness around him makes it a great challenge for her. Always struggling to get enough courage to talk to him, let alone hang out with him, she is often very afraid that he might think she is a weirdo not worth a second glance. However, Marinette mainly just wants to see him happy over herself. On Adrien's birthday in "The Bubbler", she accepts that he thinks that her gift is from his father because he is so pleased to have gotten such a cool gift from him. Gradually, in later episodes such as "Kung Food" and "The Gamer", she has become more comfortable and confident around him, being able to speak normally with him and express herself.

When it comes to Cat Noir, she sees him as a worthy partner in fighting crime and cares a lot about him. While Cat Noir constantly flirts with her, Ladybug mostly sidesteps his romantic gestures, and often gets annoyed with him if the moment is inappropriate (like when they're fighting a villain); however, she does display some affectionate gestures towards him on occasion.

In "The Evillustrator", when Cat Noir comes to discuss with Marinette on how to stop the Evillustrator, she mocks him by "mouthing" words with her hands and making meow sounds while he's busy showing off, but she does smile and giggle to herself after he leaves. In a webisode, Marinette says that she would possibly give Cat Noir a chance if Adrien did not exist, though she immediately dismisses the thought because she doesn't want to think of a world without Adrien. She often teases him, but she has a lot of faith and trust in him, aware that he will always be there to help her. While aware that he wants to know her secret identity, she says it's better that nobody knows, not even him. Together, the two make an excellent team at stopping Hawk Moth from stealing their Miraculous or creating chaos with his akumatized villains.

Tikki
Marinette's kwami, Tikki, helps her transform into Ladybug. They have a good relationship as partners and friends, and Marinette appreciates whenever Tikki helps her or cheers her up about things, including her failures to win Adrien or her occasional incompetence as Ladybug. She thinks Tikki is very adorable, and she learns a lot from her.

Hawk Moth
Marinette is fully aware that Hawk Moth is the culprit for the akumas and supervillains, but it's unknown if she has ever met him. She always works hard to stop him, not wanting him to win by taking her Miraculous.



Alya
Marinette enjoys spending time with Alya, her best friend. Although often frozen with fear whenever Alya assists her with doing something with or for Adrien, Marinette is thankful for her pushing her forward. Alya's desire to find out more about Ladybug and her secret identity has caused many problems for Marinette, who wants to let Alya know but realizes it's not the best idea. She panics when Alya discovers a history book that she dropped as Ladybug in one episode, and she is utterly astounded when Alya leaves her a note saying she believes Chloé is Ladybug in another episode. Alya's adventure for the truth about Ladybug can be exasperating for Marinette, but she does her best to conceal her identity from her. Both find Chloé awful, and both support each other in any way that they can.

Tom Dupain and Sabine Cheng
Whenever she is with her parents, Marinette is shown to love them and support them, just like they do. When the Bubbler's bubbles take her parents away, Marinette deeply desires to save them and all of the parents. She often plays video games with her father.

Chloé Bourgeois
Marinette strongly despises Chloé. She hates how Chloé mistreats everyone, including her "best friend" Sabrina. As Chloé's main target, she constantly deals with Chloé's despicable attitude towards her. Chloé's love for Ladybug doesn't change Marinette's attitude, either -- it only makes watching or protecting her more annoying. Considering Chloé to be her rival for Adrien's affection, she doesn't like how she is always throwing herself at him, at one time using her Lucky Charm out of jealousy to prevent her from kissing Adrien while slow dancing. Marinette especially dislikes it when people accuse her of being just like Chloé, yet she is sadly aware sometimes that it might be true to some extent. Nevertheless, Marinette reluctantly deals with Chloé with occasional thrilling success, like when she reveals that Chloé stole her bowler hat design by revealing a special design on that hat that is actually hers.

Sabrina
Marinette isn't close to Sabrina, but she feels bad that Chloé abuses her so unfairly. In "The Evillustrator", when she stands up for Sabrina, she is surprised that Sabrina immediately tries to befriend her, including doing her geography homework for her, much to her discomfort. Because she agrees to go to a party with the Evillustrator in order to defeat him, she sadly tells Sabrina that working on the presentation later at night won't work, which greatly upsets Sabrina, and she is hurt when Sabrina accuses her of being just like Chloé.

Nathanaël
Marinette likes Nathanaël and thinks he is an excellent artist, but she never expected him to have a crush on her until Chloé reveals it to everyone in "The Evillustrator". She agrees with him (while he is Evillustrator) that Chloé is egotistical and nasty, and she gets frustrated when he, similar to Sabrina earlier, accuses her of being just like Chloé after she reveals that she is teamed up with Cat Noir to stop him.

Manon
Manon, being a child with an energetic personality and is tiring for Marinette, who doesn't have experience with having siblings or skill with bonding with younger children. No matter how exhausting it is to take care of Manon, Marinette does care for her and her safety, promising to her as Ladybug that she'll save her and Alya from the ice shield they're trapped in.

Abilities
Marinette has talent in fashion design. She sketches ideas in a notebook, and she can sew by hand or with a machine. She wears her own creations, such as her purse and her schoolbag, and she also makes things for others, like Adrien's scarf and the bakery's logo. Her skills in this field are exceptional for an amateur, such as when it her pigeon-styled derby hat that she made is good enough to be recognized by a professional designer, Gabriel, despite the fact that she has never made one before. Marinette appears to have high stamina and endurance even in her civilian form, as she runs long distances without stopping in several episodes.

As Ladybug, she has enhanced skills, such as speed, agility, strength, and observation. She has remarkable talent with wielding her yo-yo, like using it as a grappling hook, rope, and weapon. Her special power, Lucky Charm, helps her by summoning an object that she uses achieve her objective, it often being to stop a villain. However, it drains her power and reverts her back to Marinette shortly afterwards, so she has to use it wisely. After the akuma is released from its corrupted object, she can open her yo-yo and throw it to grab it, remove the energy that Hawk Moth charged it with, and release it as a normal butterfly. Once the villain is dealt with, Ladybug can throw her Lucky Charm object into the air and use the Miraculous Ladybug, which will make it revert back to energy and fix all of the damage done since the villain was created.

Sightings

 * Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir Theme Song

Season 1

 * Every episode of season 1

Miraculous Secrets

 * Marinette in Paris
 * Marinette and Fashion

Other media

 * Ladybug PV
 * Miraculous Ladybug OVA

Trivia

 * Ladybugs are known as symbols of good luck.
 * Thomas Astruc created Ladybug around 2005 when he was exchanging drawings on post-it notes with another worker and made one with the superheroine.
 * In the fake comic book covers of The Mini Menace Ladybug, Marinette's name was Marietta.
 * Marinette's design changed from the Ladybug PV version. Her anime design included jean shorts, and as Ladybug, she had a red-orange face mask without black spots and two long red-orange ribbons attached to each pigtail. She also had longer hair and lacked freckles.
 * In the PV, Marinette's earrings were always red with five spots, no matter if she was Ladybug or Marinette. She also only wore them as a civilian when needing to transform, not having them in public.
 * PV Ladybug's costume differs from the CGI Ladybug as well, with PV Ladybug's spots being found only on her torso (her legs and feet were completely red) and with the yo-yo having a beaded chain. PV Ladybug's hair and hair ribbons are also significantly longer than the current version of Ladybug.
 * Her anime version is less shy around her crush, as she's able to be very close to Félix without panicking or being nervous. She even asks him out while slightly blushing and looking right at him, although Félix coldly refuses.
 * Marinette's CGI design seems to have gone through a change as well. Earlier footage and images of Marinette included dark blueish-black hair, red tips of hair at the end of her pigtails, and blueish-gray eyes.
 * In a placeholder animation, Ladybug was seen wielding a sword. Whether or not this is to be used as a new weapon or a Lucky Charm object is unknown.
 * During the earlier stages of development, Ladybug wasn't allowed to abuse her powers of good luck, or else something bad would happen to her. As of now, it is unknown if Ladybug still has this issue, since, as seen in "The Bubbler", all that happens when she selfishly uses Lucky Charm is that she runs out of power and loses her transformation.
 * In the English version, the pronunciation of the name Marinette with "mar" as in "marinade" is used, and in French, and other countries, the pronunciation with "mar" as in "market" is used.
 * The first part of her last name, "Dupain", comes from the French words "du pain", which mean "of the bread" or "some bread". This is a reference to her father's job as a baker.
 * "Marinette" translates as "the one who rises."
 * "Cheng," the second part of her last name, translates as "to make."
 * Literally, Marinette's name is "the one who rises to make bread."
 * Her responsibilities as a superhero not only include fighting akumatized villains but also patrolling and many other things.
 * Marinette is right-handed, but this changes depending on animation errors.
 * In "Stormy Weather", Marinette's infatuation with Adrien is revealed to even include plans for a family. The names of their supposed children are Hugo, Emma, and Louis—all traditional French names. Aside from these, she also appears fond of dogs and especially hamsters.
 * She briefly considers a black cat as well, but rejects it for some reason, likely because of Cat Noir.
 * Although not having any romantic feelings towards Cat Noir, in the first French webisode Marinette reveals that she's aware he might have a crush on her, and she admits she might have given him a chance if Adrien hadn't been around.
 * In the Korean and French dubs of "The Pharaoh", Alya says that Ladybug might be a 9th grader, while in the English dub of the episode she says she might be a 10th grader.
 * Ladybug's legacy is over 5000 years old, as revealed in "The Pharaoh".
 * Marinette is naturally flexible, and even more as Ladybug because of her enhanced physical abilities.
 * Marinette's hair color is a homage to old comic books that would use blue highlights on black hair.
 * Marinette has stolen both Adrien's and Alya's phones during the series. Ironically, both thefts were unintentional and involved her trying to hide a fact from the respective owners.


 * She is partially responsible for Theo's vulnerability to getting akumatized.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng Маринет Дюпэн-Чэн