Starting in late 2022, Jade Armor (L'armure de Jade in France) is a French superhero show made by TeamTO based on Chinese mythology and legends, featuring a young teenage heroine who uses the powers of the elements of nature to save her town of Ban Tang from the villainous Crimson Lord and his armor's Shards from utter chaos.
On her birthday, young Lan Jun Ye finds herself on a clocktower between the clock's hands, with four animals (a baby tiger, a dragon, a bird and a turtle) joining her and explaining that she's meant to be the new Jade, defender of her hometown, and that they're her Beasticons, magic creatures from the stories she heard as a child. Right as she falls down, she wakes up in her room believing the whole thing is a dream... only to meet those animals again and discover she now has to wear the Jade Armor and purify the city from red shards of the Crimson Lord's (the previous Jade's nemesis) own mystical armor.
The show consists of 26 episodes of 26 minutes and takes heavy inspiration from Miraculous Ladybug, another French show about a teenage superhero girl who uses the power of magic animal creatures to protect her hometown and juggle daily life and superheroing. It's airing on Okoo and most episodes can be found in English on ABC iView
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Jade Armor contains the following tropes:
- Alternate Universe: Lan Jun gets hit by a Shard-infected pomegranate in episode 18. She wakes up in a world where she's dating Kai, her mother is still around and still Jade thanks to Chenwu using his powers at an opportune time (making him much chirpier in the present), Theo is a master magician, and Alisha hates boba teas and finds him funny.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Alisha in episode 10 asks Xinyan what he plans to do once he's become giant. Which makes him realize he can't hear the humans scream and can hardly achieve his actual goal of liberating animals and Beasticons in that state.
- A True Story in My Universe: In-universe, there are comics and movies based on Jade Armor and the Crimson Lord, though only Jade Armor retains her name and looks in the comics, too.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: In episode 14, Lan Jun and Kai use a skeleton key powered by a shard to open all their schools' locks. Unfortunately, the key responds to whatever the users expect or want to appear, even subconsciously. Which leads not only Lan Jun to face her mother, but Kai to face his abusive father and be vulnerable to Crimson Lord's manipulations.
- In episode 10, Xinyan makes use of a shard to make himself bigger and try and take over Ban Tang. Upon realizing that becoming giant is actually more of a curse than a blessing, he harshly regrets his decision, to the point even Alisha starts to feel for him.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: This is what some of the objects containing Shards do to unexpecting victims of their powers. Notable examples are the perfume bottle and the singing bowl.
- Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs:
- Lan Jun: So, what's the plan today? Bungee jumping? Skydiving? BungeeSkydiving!
- By the Power of Grayskull!: "Beasticons, Bond! Elements of all that's made, be my armor! Make me Jade!" is what Lan Jun has to say to become Jade.
- Crimson Lord says "Shard of Power, Reunite! Rise my armor for the fight!" whenever he gets his hand on a Shard.
- Calling Your Attacks: Jade and as revealed later, the Crimson Lord as well. Justified as they need to say them to summon their Beasticons' powers (which does slow Lan Jun down after a shard takes away her voice, before she has to resort of recordings of herself).
- Card-Carrying Villain: Except for Xinyan, the villains are fully aware they are villains and proud of it.
- Cliffhanger: Lan Jun in the finale is relieved after finally completing her quest. Zuchue worries about getting bored without shards to purify, before Chinlon points out that things may not be over while the town begins to sparkle. Lan Jun reassures them those are just fireflies... but their silence makes her doubt that statement as she begins staring as well. The season ends there.
- Color Character: This show has 4 examples: The titular hero Jade Armor, the Crimson Lord, the thief Black Tiger and her daughter Blue Lynx.
- Cursed with Awesome: The Shards often have this effect. Special mention to the one hidden inside a light projector in episode 11, that can turn even the stiffest of actors into a talented performer (as shown by Pearl instantly mastering a martial art technique that took Lan Jun months to perfect, or Chenwu going from a cacophonic singer to a melodious one). Lan Jun is so impressed she considers waiting until the play is over to purify the shard.
- Damned by Faint Praise: Crimson Lord gets hit by this hard in episode 23. Jade is absolutely willing to let bygones be bygones and assume that her predecessors were wrong to try and stop him, thanks to her Shard-tinted sunglasses making her see everything through rose-tinted glasses. She's even about to give him more shards to bring him back to full power. The moment he calls the previous Jade, AKA Lan Jun's mother, selfish and egotistical, she realizes it doesn't add up and purifies the shard inside her glasses, realizing that she wasn't thinking rationally during the whole episode because of them.
- Early-Bird Cameo: About every plot-relevant character (save for the Crimson Lord himself) shows up while Jade runs to purify the clocktower's Shard in the first episode.
- Elemental Powers: The Beasticons go as follows:
- Chinlon, the water dragon, has water and ice powers.
- Chenwu, the air tortoise, has power over wind currents and wind-based attacks.
- Baihu, the terra tiger, can control the earth and cause earthquakes.
- Zuchue, the firebird, can make fire waves and little projecting sparks (that Jade can use to propel herself to higher places).
- Xinyan, the wood monkey, can make bamboo trees grow and affect vegetation among other things.
- Pi Xiu (remaining unseen), the winged lion, can create make metal bars and manipulate metal.
- Tiangou (remaining unseen), the celestial dog can control lightning.
- Jiu Wei Hu (remaining unseen but mentioned), the nine-tailed fox, can create psychic waves that can block attacks and levitate things.
- Embarrassing Nickname: In the French dub, Crimson Lord calls Jade "Jadounette" (AKA "Little Jade") in a faux-affectionate tone to demean her. She doesn't care.
- Enemy Mine: Against both Black Tiger and Crimson Lord, Xinyan often half-heartedly ends up asking for Jade's help (with a lot of complaining that he has to rely on a human for help).
- Expy: Lan Jun and Kai are ones for Ladybug and Cat Noir. Lan Jun has many similarities with Marinette (downright to merging with the Beasticons to transform as Marinette unifies Kwamis to use their powers) and Kai himself is the son of a rich yet corrupt family, to the point of even being related to the main villain. Her friends Alisha and Theo also take some cues from Alya and Nino.
- Failed a Spot Check: Theo mistakes Baihu the tiger cub for a stray cat!
- Fantastically Indifferent: The citizens of Ban Tang got used to the weird rather quickly. As long as it doesn't impact them, they treat it as a mundane occurrence such as when Lan Jun was shrunk by a shard and no one raised an eyebrow at it.
- Foil: Lan Jun and Kai. Both originate from wildly different families and have a secret linked to the mystical armors and Beasticons. Except Lan Jun eventually becomes a superhero, while Kai temporarily joins Crimson Lord because of it.
- Lan Jun once she's become Jade and Crimson Lord as well. She herself notes that aside from his evil, they have much in common.
- Lan Jun and Pearl. Both have family secrets as well, with Pearl's relationship with her mother being quite strained, and Pearl later becomes Blue Lynx to foil Jade.
- Four-Temperament Ensemble: The Beasticons. Baihu as the Sanguine, Zuchue as the Phlegmatic, Chenwu as the Melancholic, and Chinlon as the Eclectic. On times where he's around, Xinyan could be seen as the Choleric.
- "Groundhog Day" Loop: In the first episode, Lan Jun gets stuck in a temporal loop until she can seperate the first emergent crimson shard from a clock and purify it.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Xin Qi, Lan Jun's mother and the seventh Jade, before the show began as she destroyed the Crimson Lord's armor.
- Xinyan in the last episode, letting Jade purify his shard to stop Crimson Lord from using it. Fortunately, Lan Jun salvages it once purified and gives it back to him, even letting him roam free rather than force him to become her Beasticon.
- Hypno Trinket: A harmless variant. A number of shard-infused objects have the power to make others obey the one using them. For example, in episode 20, Pearl makes friendship bracelets with a Shard-infected thread, which turn her and Lan Jun into 'besties' once they wear it, finding themselves many things in common and bonding whilst having them. Their other friends' annoyance with this friendship make them cut the threads, bringing both girls back to normal once they're broken.
- Internal Reveal:
- In episode 3, Lan Jun reveals to her father that she is the new Jade Armor.
- In episode 25, the Crimson Lord learns that Xi Qi is still alive but stuck in the city's power grid.
- In the Blood: Lan Jun's family and Crimson Lord seem to believe this. Lan Jun herself assumes she can be a good Jade like her mother out of believing she was chosen to be like her, while her family and Crimson Lord suspect Kai of being as corruptible as his parents are.
- Jade-Colored Glasses: Inverted quite literally. Jade gets rose-colored glasses that, due to a shard, make her unable to see anything wrong in the world, even assuming she could just become friends with the Crimson Lord instead of needlessly fighting.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: The memory-erasing shard in episode 8 does this, whether by entering in direct contact with someone or by infecting the town's water. Thankfully, the Beasticons were able to jog Jade's memories enough to get her back into battling Black Tiger.
- Limited Wardrobe: The characters rarely change their street clothes usually wearing the same thing in every instance.
- While Lan Yun has the most outfits out of everyone, those being her pajamas, her training clothes, her street clothes and of course the Jade Armor, she is hardly ever seen wearing anything other than one of those 4 outfits.
- Love Across Battlelines: One of the previous Jades in history apparently had a mutual (albeit complicated) relationship with the Crimson Lord (though whether it's the current one or a previous version isn't elaborated on). Lan Jun quickly draws parallels with no other than her school crush Kai Zhu, the descendant of the Crimson bloodline that Crimson Lord belongs to.
- Magitek:
- Black Tiger knows how to combine her gadgets with Shards increasing their power and giving them the magic of the Shards.
- Will has created a drone that can integreate with the Crimson Lord and nearly perfectly replicate all the magical powers of his missing Beasticons.
- Multigenerational Household: Lan Jun lives with her father as well as mother starting with episode 25, her grandmother and her great-grandmother in the same household.
- Mystical Jade: In this Chinese myth-influenced show, the titular Jade Armor allows the teenage heroine to become the superhero Jade.
- No-Sell: Jade and Blue Lynx's attempts to attack each other in episode 20. Due to their friendship bracelets made with a Shard-infected spool of thread, it prevents them from harming each other until the threads are broken.
- "Not So Different" Remark: A strange heroic and weaponized variant. As she fights Crimson Lord after swapping bodies with several people over town, she starts listing off the things they both have in common, be it regarding their duties, families and troubles, so as to get in his head and anticipate what move he does next.
- Obliviously Evil: Most people whose minds are affected by Shards don't genuinely mean to cause harm. It later turns out that Crimson Lord himself never truly saw himself as evil and is horrified once he's shown the wrongness of his actions.
- Parental Title Characterization: In contrast to every other kid in the show, Kai calls his dad "Father" on the phone, reinforcing how strained his relationship with his father is. Comes to no surprise given that he's an Expy of Adrien Agreste.
- Pinned to the Ground: After the Crimson Lord traps Xin Qi in a lightbulb, Lan Jun furiously attacks him pinning him to the ground demanding to know what he did to her.
- Plot Allergy: Alisha's allergy to cat fur. She's all too happy to lose it when she swaps bodies with Pearl (while Lan Jun in her body suffers from it as she chases down a Shard-infected cat).
- Reality Warper: The shards of the Crimson Lord can change reality in all kinds of forms, including but not limited to creating an endless time loop, rearranging rooms into what the one opening the doors to them expects to find or altering the laws of physics.
- Really 700 Years Old: The Beasticons may look like regular animals, but they're a couple thousands years old.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Zig-zagged with many people in the cast. Lan Jun has purple eyes (orange eyes as Jade) and is quite nice, Kai has orange eyes that become red when the Crimson Lord is making him do evil, and anyone gets red eyes when under the influence of a Shard. However, as the shard's effects are usually unpredictable, getting red eyes only means the victim is affected by it rather than outright meaning they've become hostile.
- Played straight with the Crimson Lord, albeit eventually subverted once the rest of his body becomes blue-green as he surrenders in the last episode. His eyes are still red, but he's no longer a threat.
- The Reveal:
- Episode 2 reveals that the previous Jade Armor was Lan Jun's mother.
- Episode 3 reveals that Liam knew his wife was the 7th Jade Armor
- Episode 5 reveals that the Crimson Lord had his own set of Beasticons.
- Episode 16 reveals that all but Xinyan are missing.
- Episode 7 reveals that Xin Qi is alive but in a non-corporeal form trapped in the city's power grid.
- Episode 11 reveals that Kai's family is related to the Crimson Lord.
- Episode 2 reveals that the previous Jade Armor was Lan Jun's mother.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: The Beasticons. Exploited and defied in episode 7, as Lan Jun asks all the Beasticons to look their cutest in a picture (including Chenwu) so that Alisha forgives her for leaving her and Theo hanging. Aside from getting Lan Jun in trouble for sharing that picture in class, the baby eyes and huge smiles had no effect whatsoever on Alisha.
- Right Behind Me: Zuchue is a repeating offender of this trope. First, she sarcastically suggests to the other Beasticons in the second episode telling Lan Jun that her mom is the previous Jade, right as Lan Jun enters her bedroom and hears her say it aloud. The exact same setup happens at the end of the show, as Lan Jun overhears Zuchue explain that she was chosen to be Jade purely because the Beasticons were out of option. Lan Jun's reaction both times is different.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Putting on the Jade Bracelet causes Lan Jun to gain this ability.
- Secret-Keeper: Lan Jun's family for her mom, quite to her frustration. Theo and Alisha later do the same with her as the new Jade.
- Both Lan Jun and Pearl keep their identities as Blue Lynx and Jade secret, even after making it apparent to each other that they know who the other is.
- Shapeshifter Default Form: The Beasticons have "regular animal" forms they use while around Lan Jun and "mythical creature" forms once Lan Jun becomes Jade. Xinyan doesn't seem to have such a thing thanks to being powered by a Shard he stole from Crimson Lord's armor, meaning he's almost always powered up until the finale where he temporarily returns to being a regular monkey.
- Shout-Out: In Black Tiger's lair, there is a Yoshi egg.
- Status Quo Is God: Downplayed. While Crimson Armor always loses his body returning to his fluid form at the end of the episode, progression still happens and events from past episodes are mentioned from time to time, usually either by something happening or a character learning some sort of new information that is picked up again in a later episode.
- Sympathy for the Devil: Jade feels this way towards Crimson Lord at times (and Xinyan a lot more often), even having a dream implying she wishes they weren't enemies and could just hang out as casually as she does with her Beasticons and friends. As stated by the news' narration in the finale, her sympathy for her enemies actually proves to be a strength, as she can often not only reason with some of them against a problem in common, or end the entire conflict without causing harm to anyone.
- Talking Animal: The Beasticons. Baihu subverts it, as she's still considered a baby by Beasticon standards.
- The Four Gods: Jade Armor's 4 Beasticons alludes to them.
- The Pollyanna: The effect of the rose-tinted glasses that Lan Jun wears in episode 23. The summary even says that "the effect makes her so Pollyanna, she can see no evil."
- Then Let Me Be Evil: Subverted with Kai. He doesn't want to be like his ancestor... but upon being suggested the possibility that the Jades have been misinterpreting Crimson Lord's actions as falsely evil, he openly helps him against her, believing CL to be a kindred misunderstood soul as he can relate with his father's abuse of him.
- Transformation Sequence: Jade Armor, the Crimson Lord and Black Tiger have one whenever they transform, regain their body or change into their outfit.
- Visual Pun: Jade Armor wears a jade-colored costume and isn't as talented as her predecessors due to being a newbie. She's figuratively and literally "green" (lacking in experience).
- Wham Episode: In episode 25 Xi Qi returns into a form that allows her to communicate with her family, Kai finally realizes the Crimson Lord has tricked him and the Crimson Lord gains 2 shards regaining physical form without losing it at the end of the episode.
- World of Pun: Everyone, even the villains, can't help but make puns any chance they get. Especially Black Tiger does a lot of cat-related puns.
