batteries not included

So there’s a lot that’s already been said about this chapter. The big one is of course Qifrey realizing he has become someone who can give love and support to Coco because he received it from Olly, paralleling the myth of the silverwood tree being gifted magic by the star who loved her, and she in turn passed it on to others she loved.

But I would like to briefly dig into some of the visual storytelling at play here, specifically this sequence of panels:

So for the last couple chapters before this, we’ve been in Qifrey’s POV. Both his younger self in flashbacks and his adult self reflecting on them. In the first couple of flashbacks, Young Qifrey and Olly were even younger than the girls are now, and that’s reflected in both their designs and behavior, like the argument about food in the cafeteria.

They’re mostly a two man show, so we don’t see too many shots of them next to adults, but when they are, again, very small.

Even the chapter 90 cover illustration has the child versions of themselves in their oversized adult robes.

Adorable as they are, it puts an extra layer of sorrow on the events that follow. It’s one thing to go through being buried alive, watching who knows how many people die in a natural disaster, and the silverwood scene and memory wipes, it’s another thing to experience all that before hitting puberty.

But I think some of this visual language carries over, at least a little, to when we’re back with adult Qifrey. There’s a very brief scene in chapter 92 where we cut back to him as he’s remembering the first time the silverwood sprouted. We get our iconic “radiant star” line, before a fantastic match cut of his hand that doesn’t support my point but I’m including anyway because how could I not.

Then, presumably because remembering the good times with his childhood best friend is enough to provoke the silverwood, Qifrey wades into a lake to trigger his discomfort and reduce the spread of roots.

We don’t see Qifrey without his black shirt very often. Even in his alternate outfit shepherd tunic when he taught the girls about the five trials, he still wore the black shirt underneath. And I think he looks a lot younger without it. Smaller. Frail even. The wide angle of the panels help, as does the visual of his robes hanging from the tree. Said tree is closer to the foreground than he is, creating the illusion that the clothes are much bigger, which evokes the chapter illustration of child-him wearing clothes too big for him. His body is also about as rail thin as the branch itself. The following panels also never show a straight-on view of his torso, either cutting off the full view or showing him at an angle, again making him appear thinner than he already is.

There’s a lot going on with how he fits into the environment as well. First he’s in the blackness of the mountains and lake, pretty clear sinking into darkness imagery. His robes and hat on the branch are mostly in the sky above the darkness with the stars; he is both beneath and separate from them. He feels he doesn’t live up to the ideal witch those robes represent. Then the rest of the panels on this page lack backgrounds entirely. It’s all negative space. The one on the upper left has him sandwiched by inky blackness on both sides, with the only light surrounding the scar from his Romonon injury, which is the first thing your eye is drawn to before his face. Said face leans towards the right side of the panel, where there is mostly nothing. The next two panels have him in the same black void, and even though he technically takes up most of the frame now, the silverwood roots are at the center, the focus once more. Then the last panel is another wide shot where his face is obscured. Instead of pitch black nothingness, there’s a gradient with water ripples. In the context of Qifrey, this feels worse as he hates water, and here he is surrounded by nothing but it. The massive negative space at the top creates the feeling that not only is he physically small, but also that he is helpless against the world around him and the specific problems that ail him.

The water ripples lead us into our first look at when Qifrey was almost overtaken by the silverwood, a moment where he was at his most helpless.

I’m not going to recount every shot of him looking tiny and pathetic caught up in the branches, but there are a few more void shots like this as well.

Once we’re back to adult Qifrey towards the end of chapter 93, most of his shots are still framed like the lake one: wide shots that make him look small against the environment or closeups where he’s in a darkened void. A lot where his face is cut off completely as well.

Even that medium shot on the bottom right of the panel above is from a higher angle looking down on him. But the next panel, shot from Coco’s perspective, while he’s still small, he stands evenly with the atelier in the background.

Which leads us to chapter 94, and the scene this post is actually about.

First, in the lead up, we get a couple more shots that make Qifrey look like he’s swimming in his robes, ass opposed to them making him look bigger than he is.

Then, we get more contrasting imagery of him being in a void separate from the environment, and Coco. There’s so much negative space in the panels he’s in. And that shot of Coco near the vines. In the actual scene, he’s right behind her. He should be in the shot but he’s not. He doesn’t feel like he belongs there.

But it’s cold and snowing, and his priority is Coco, so he stands over her to block the snow. And we get the first of the sequence I shared at the top:

We’re still in the void, and Coco is in it too, but she is contained entirely within Qifrey’s silhouette. Critically, we can also see his thin arm under his robe. He is shielding her, but barely.

Then here’s the full page the second image is from. Qifrey gets a few closer shots, and the environment starts to creep back in, but in that bottom right panel, he’s still containing Coco but he’s very small. It looks like a stiff breeze could blow him over.

So why am I going in so hard about Qifrey looking like a sad twig? Because the chapters these are from are all his POV. He still sees himself as the weak, pathetic child, powerless to solve the problems around him, who can’t live up to the ideals he believes in. But here, he is able to turn that perceived weakness into a strength, a way to emotionally relate to his troubled student. He admits the ideal he puts up is a front, and one that Coco shouldn’t hold herself to. It is okay to be upset, it is okay to ask for help, it is okay to let others care. And to top it off, he reminds her that even if her hurting is upsetting, it’s something he can benefit from.

All of this, both the written dialogue and the visuals, come together in this moment to make the next page, where we shoot back into Coco’s POV for the first time in several chapters, hit like fucking truck:

It’s not just that Coco is breaking down after everything that happened to her. It’s Qifrey’s arm and robe making up the whole background. No environment or void, just him protecting her. Big and strong and occupying the space like he’s the only other thing in the world.

We’ve spent all this time getting to know how Qifrey sees himself: a pathetic wisp of a failure. But Coco doesn’t know this. To her, even though she knows he might be dying, he’s still her protector. The powerful but gentle teacher who keeps her safe and is always there for her. It visually conveys the idea of being a “giver” pages before he makes the realization himself. Him casting the spell to keep the snow off her mother is a restatement of not only Coco’s love for magic and its kindness, but also his specific kindness. A kindness she we can see she already believes in. A kindness he has always had, even when he saw himself as nothing more than an empty mess.