Marinette Dupain-Cheng

**Marinette Dupain-Cheng** is one of the main protagonists of *Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir*. Marinette is a student in Miss Bustier's class at Collège Françoise Dupont in Paris, France. She is also a budding fashion designer. With the Ladybug Miraculous, when inhabited by Tikki, Marinette transforms into the superheroine **Ladybug**, gaining the power of good luck and creation.[11][12]

## Appearance

### Physical appearance

Marinette is half French and half Chinese. She has bluebell eyes and medium-length black hair with blue reflections.[13][14] She usually wears her hair back in two pigtails with red hair ties.

### Civilian attire

She wears a dark gray blazer with rolled up sleeves. The inside of the blazer is lined in white with pink polka dots, and it has black trimming. 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 inhabited by Tikki. Often, she wears a light pink purse with a thin black strap over her right shoulder.

### As Ladybug

Ladybug wears a red skintight bodysuit covered in black spots and with a black collar. She keeps her yo-yo around her hips with its string. On her face is a red mask with five black spots that are in a symmetrical design. Her earrings are red with five black spots in a quincunx pattern and the bands holding her hair back become red ribbons, resembling a ladybug's wings when it's flying.

## Personality

Marinette is sweet, outgoing, joyful, and a bit awkward and clumsy. She loves fashion, her friends, family, and her crush Adrien, being some of her motives to complement herself. Despite her outgoing and empathetic personality, Marinette struggles with self-confidence and self-esteem: In a situation she deems urgent, like doing something for Adrien or losing something that will expose her secret identity, she becomes very nervous, awkward, and quick to panic. Marinette cares deeply for other people, usually putting their feelings and interests even before her own, in some cases at a personal cost. Despite being genuinely kind, she has her limits, such as in "The Evillustrator" when she gets irritated with Chloé to the point that she refuses to continue watching her in order to protect her as Ladybug.

Marinette can act impulsively and irrationally at times, as shown when she tried to deflect the false accusation of "stealing" Chloé's bracelet onto others who are also innocent. She also expresses jealousy whenever other girls such as Chloé or Lila flirt with Adrien, sometimes causing her to act irrationally, even abusing her powers as Ladybug to keep them away. However, she tends to learn from her mistakes and become a more open-minded, understanding person. Although she is absent-minded and acts before thinking at times, Marinette is clever, showing when she hid her signature in her when Chloé stole her design, thus exposing her. Furthermore, she is willing to do a number of risky tasks in order to protect her identity and image, like stealing Adrien's phone in "Copycat" to erase an embarrassing message she accidentally left on it.

As Ladybug, Marinette retains many of her alter ego's characteristics, but she is much stronger and her confidence and bravery are more prominent, in part by Cat Noir's encouragement.[15][16] Her quick-thinking, resourcefulness, and wits are more obvious, especially when she is figuring out how to utilize her Lucky Charm. As Ladybug, Marinette strives to rescue everyone, including those akumatized by Hawk Moth. No matter the difficulty of her tasks, she does everything in her power to set things right while keeping up with her everyday responsibilities, like designing something, or working in the bakery. Like Cat Noir, Ladybug is clever with her words and occasionally enjoys making puns.

## Abilities

### As a civilian

Marinette has talent in fashion design, being able to sketch ideas in a notebook after getting inspired by certain surroundings or topics,[17] and sewing by hand or with a machine. Using computer software to create graphic designs is also an ability she possesses for creating things, such as albums covers. She wears her own creations like her little purse, and also makes things for others, such as the bakery's logo, Adrien's scarf and Jagged Stone's glasses. Her skills in this field are exceptional for an amateur, such as when her pigeon-styled derby hat that she made was good enough to be recognized by the famous professional designer Gabriel. Despite she has never made one before. Marinette is also very skilled at video games, easily beating Max at Ultimate Mecha Strike III and getting the highest score in the entire school.

Marinette has high stamina, endurance, and agility, even in her civilian form, as displayed in "Timebreaker". Marinette can also run long distances without stopping in several episodes. She is also quite stealthy, as she frequently sneaks up on Adrien, and other people without being noticed.

### As Ladybug

Ladybug has much more enhanced skills, such as speed, agility, and strength, and she is almost invulnerable to physical damage.[18] She has remarkable talent with wielding her yo-yo, like using it as a grappling hook, a rope to restrain others, a projectile, and even a shield if she spins it fast enough. After an evil akuma is released from its corrupted object, she can open her yo-yo, throw it to grab it, and remove the energy charged it with, releasing it as a normal butterfly. She is skilled in hand to hand combat when fighting villains or Cat Noir when he ends being controlled by one.

Her special power, Lucky Charm, helps her by summoning an object that she uses to achieve her objective, it often being to stop a villain. Though usually confused at first, her powers also enable her to perceive where the object can be used to help her achieve her goal as they "flash" with the ladybug symbol. This perhaps is a type of "Domino Effect" power or a variation of "Causality Manipulation". However, this drains her power and reverts her back to Marinette shortly afterward, so she has to use it wisely. 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.

## TMNT X Pokemon

She and Adrien have been captured the Krang until April and her friends save then. Marinette is best friends with April as they both struggle to keep the secret life, well, a secret from everyone. She also helps Rarity in her Carousal Boutique to make fashion for the store.

## Trivia

* Ladybugs are known to be symbols of good luck, especially in regards to love, according to Alya.
* Thomas Astruc created Ladybug around 2005 when he was exchanging drawings on post-it notes with another worker and made one with the superheroine.[19][20]
* 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 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 wearing a ladybug-themed bag instead of having the yo-yo. PV Ladybug's hair and hair ribbons are also significantly longer than the current version of Ladybug, and she has an ahoge, which means "foolish hair" in Japanese.
* The yo-yo didn't exist; PV Ladybug fought using hand-to-hand combat.
* Her anime version was 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 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.[21]
* 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.[22]
* Marinette is right-handed, but this changes depending on animation errors.[23]
* 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 webisode "Cat Noir as seen by Marinette", Marinette reveals that she's aware he may 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 5,000 years old, as revealed in "The Pharaoh".
* Marinette is naturally flexible, being even more flexible as Ladybug because of her enhanced physical abilities.[24]
* Marinette's hair color is an homage to old comic books that would use blue highlights on black hair.[25]
* Marinette has stolen both Adrien's and Alya's phones during the series. Ironically, however, both thefts were unintentional and involved her trying to hide a fact from the respective owners.
	+ She has also stolen and returned Chloé's phone.
* Marinette sleeps with her pigtails on, as seen in the opening of "The Bubbler" and the ending of "The Pharaoh".
* Thomas noted that Marinette would be hard to akumatize, as she is an optimistic person.[26]
* She is partially responsible for Théo's and Manon's vulnerability to getting akumatized, and she is responsible for Max's, Chloé's, Lila, and Santa's akumatizations. This ironically makes her the second person who caused the most akumatizations in Season 1, the first being Chloé.
* More of Marinette's Chinese heritage will be seen in the future.[27]
* Thomas Astruc revealed on Twitter that Marinette and Adrien will be seen as a "real couple" at some point in the show.[28]
* Marinette is the third known person of French origin to wield the Ladybug Miraculous, succeeding her predecessors Jeanne d'Arc and La Coccinelle.