#vol 179

[2]

OH SNAP FAI KNEW

I’ll have to go back and double check this but if I remember Acid Tokyo correctly he knew about Syaoran the whole time didn’t he? He could tell??

Which means HOT DAMN, right from the FIRST MOMENT in front of Yuuko Ichihara’s he knew they were both clones and just went with it. He didn’t have much choice after all, and he knew he was going on this journey anyway, but OHHHH

OHHHHHHHH THAT LENDS SO MUCH TOWARDS THEIR RELATIONSHIP????

We already saw in Acid Tokyo that Fai put his life on the line and almost lost everything because he went to bat for Syaoran’s soul. Fai said Clone Rights and felt so strongly that Syaoran deserved the soul he had been growing on his own that he lost an eye in the effort. 

And since Fai knew about Sakura it means the same thing - that he knew she was artificially created but that he never treated her any differently, she was Important and Incredible and Worth Loving every step of the way. He swore his devotion to HER, not the real Sakura, who he has never met. It’s THIS Sakura that was his daughter. 

And how much does it speak to Fai’s trauma that he saw these two struggling clones and couldn’t help but adopt them. How much of his own brother did he see in these imperfect twins tossed away by the world, used for other people’s plans, exploited and suffering and ultimately destined to die? These people who technically shouldn’t exist, like he thought about himself at the time? 

How much did it take for Fai to see these artificial twins fated for death and pick THEM over his own twin, who he thought had died because of him? 

How much did Fai later decide that at least he could save THESE twins? At least THESE unlucky souls he could help survive? 

[5]

I CAN’T BELIEVE THEY DID THIS A SECOND TIME

X/1999 REDUX: DYING PART WAY THROUGH YOUR CONFESSION OF LOVE!

Excuse me I will be inconsolable forever about this. 

Syaoran came back RIGHT AS SHE DIED IN FRONT OF HIM, TELLING HIM SHE LOVED HIM RIGHT AS SHE FADED AWAY FOREVER

AND SHE DIDN’T EVEN GET TO FINISH THE ENTIRE SENTENCE. 

SHE DID ALL OF THIS AND SPENT SO LONG ALONE AND SUFFERING AND DYING TWICE TO BRING HIM BACK AND IT WORKED AND SHE DID IT AND SHE DIDN’T EVEN GET TO FINISH HER SENTENCE

SAME SYAORAN

I didn't notice this at all in the moment, but OOF. The PAIN of this parallel.

WHAT A MOMENT TO ECHO.

It draws quite an emotional parallel between (our) Fai and Lava Lamp Guy. Both of them ended up trapped in long, lonely, torturous situations where their fate was tied to someone else - someone they loved dearly, someone who is kind of dead, but because of their unique situation they ended up tying their entire existence around these ultra painful complex scenarios for the other person's eventual survival. Lava Lamp outright told Watanuki in the dream world that no matter how much he has to endure he will do what needs to be done to fix it. And Fai kind of had the situation happen twice - first, when both twins were alive, where they both stuck in the eternal torture pit for eternity because they refused to let each other die, and then later in life where Fai was trapped into servitude to Evil Wolverine's plan in order to try and revive his brother at the end of it all. Both Lava Lamp and Fai have good goals - they are devoted to someone they love, and will endure anything they think they need to in order to save them. But so much so that it twists their lives into constant suffering, to the point that the person they want to save actually cannot bear it anymore and wants to set them free instead.

So in both these final moments we have Sakura and (the original) Fai sacrificing themselves to save the other from endless suffering - Sakura saving Lava Lamp to free him from his plotline death and everything he is chained to, and (og) Fai making the deal with Wolverine that thematically frees Fai from the pit AND frees his future self from his commitment once he knows the truth of the situation.

It's a very beautiful, dark, and tragic act of love in both cases. They are scenarios born of desperation, where there is no safe winning outcome, and the alternative will either bring endless suffering or death for both of them. It shows that both parties are, at the end of the day, willing to sacrifice literally their entire existence to save each other - but also exploring what that means and how much suffering can come of this blind devotion. IS it truly better to live your life in constant torture in the hope that you might one day free someone you love from their predetermined death? Or is this only forcing yourself to suffer needlessly?

From a plotline perspective, both of these characters are technically already dead by the time we get these lines. Sakura kind of died in Infinity. Her fate, by her own choice, has already been tied to this outcome. It would have been impossible for Lava Lamp to stop it. (Og) Fai, too, is dead by the time Our Fai sees this scene in it's true context. He died hundreds of years ago, and even though Fai bent his entire life around trying to switch places with him, in truth that was always impossible. With that in mind, both scenarios are less about "who sacrificed themselves first to save the other" and more about the concept of trying to change a death that has already taken place - and that's an idea at the very core of Tsubasa all the way through.

What is the true nature of grief? To be in pain forever, or to accept that the person you've lost loved you, wanted the best for you, and wouldn't want you to suffer like this anymore?

Do you, like Evil Wolverine, break anything you need to break in order to bring that person back - or do you allow yourself to heal, like they would have wanted?

I WENT ACID TOKYO FISHING

I was looking for confirmation for the Fai thing I was talking about in the last post, but I found other things too!

Fai’s magic means that he can tell who is a clone right away. So, confirmed: he knew about Sakura right from the start. 

(It also means he won’t be able to tell anymore moving forward, since his magic is all gone, but like how likely are we to meet a brand new character at this point in the story who is secretly also a clone?)

(... statistically it’s still pretty high)

RE: Fai in the previous post

Hey remember that? When Sakura wasn’t breathing, but she was fine? 

Because her body is artificial!

Xing Huo’s magic circle is the same as Clow Reed’s - because she is a clone of Sakura, Clow Reed’s daughter, as well as it echoing the fact that it’s also Sakura’s initial magic circle in Cardcaptor Sakura. (The spoiler reason for this is also consistent with the logic here, but I’m not going to casually spoil Cardcaptor Sakura just in case)

SEE ALSO: Xing Huo’s decision to help Lava Lamp definitely makes sense considering that she’s a Sakura clone, but also her level of power! She was excluded from the ‘failed clone’ category Evil Wolverine tossed around last time, so her level of power shows that she was a much closer match to Sakura’s initial skillset - which explains why she has the strength needed to do the ‘Teleport to Yuuko Ichihara’ spell, which only the magically strongest people in the multiverse can pull off. She can also only cast it once, like some others (ie, most people who aren’t Fai)

Evil Wolverine says it’s “only natural” that she decided to help Lava Lamp. Again, most likely because she is originally a Sakura clone. 

But now that she’s betrayed him, he’s adding her to the pile of ‘failures’ who he can’t use like he wanted to. (ie, like empty puppets, which she has now proven she is not)

Evil Wolverine mentions that he can’t reliably create clones that have the same level of power as their original. In this context he means Syaoran, but it also explains why there were just so many failed Sakura clones - because he just really just can’t pull them off that well, so it’s an uncommon occasion when they turn out as perfect as our Sakura! (And also why Xing Huo was closer to success, if not all the way there)

(Do you think he had failed Syaoran clones running around at some point too?? Can I see them???) (Or was Syaoran much much easier to replicate since he’s not as hyper powerful as Sakura?)

And this is just emphasising the tragedy of the Syaorans :’D 

Where even the fact that Lava Lamp has to fight Syaoran at all is heartbreaking, because he has a deep connection to the soul Syaoran was building and DID want to be friends with him the whole time!

And now he has to watch Syaoran stab Sakura, meaning Sakura is stabbed by (a) someone who looks exactly like himself, (b) his failed attempt to help Syaoran secure his soul and become his own person, and (c) someone he desperately wanted to be friends with. 

[6]

I was about to say “WHY EVEN KEEP READING NOW?” but it does look like the leaking dream realm is coalescing back together into a feather? 

Which I’m going to guess means that Seishirou’s feather that was turning “non-reality” into “reality” has now stopped working? And the dream liquid is either coming back into THAT feather, or is actually turning back into ANOTHER feather?

In which I regret not making a chart trying to track every feather we see, because at this point they seem to be just popping up everywhere

I - OH

OK SO, Same Feather as before but currently being sucked into a PORTAL? 

An EVIL WOLVERINE PORTAL?

IN MY NIHON?

I’m amazed Evil Wolverine can pull this off. He usually doesn’t drop into the narrative so blatantly in the present timeline. Does he just want that one feather in particular or…?

… are those fingers?

Where are those fingers? What are they touching? We just don’t know!

NO!

NO!

NO!

NO!!

[4]

PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN

I cannot BELIEVE we’re in the position where we can say things like, “hey this is a strong parallel to that actual other time Sakura was stabbed and her soul disappeared”, but here we are and hey this is a strong parallel to that actual other time Sakura was stabbed and her soul disappeared! Both times she used her last moments to turn and give heart felt comfort to someone she holds dear, who was unwillingly involved in her death: last time it was Fai, this time it’s Lava Lamp. 

Last time she was sure that everything would be ok, and reassured Fai that she was still alive. 

THIS TIME IT SEEMS PRETTY FINAL, AND SHE’S TELLING LAVA LAMP TO BE FREE OF HIS OBLIGATION TO HER AND TO LOOK FORWARD TO HIS REAL SAKURA INSTEAD. 

[3]

OH! 

See I didn’t catch this in my fishing trip! I um... Wait hang on I did see that though. 

Yeah ok, so the English Translation really didn’t capture the intended wording of that conversation correctly the first time around, but they got there the second time! Oh well I guess!

Either way, Sakura remembers this with the details that the original Japanese probably conveyed a lot easier - and so she knows that Lava Lamp knew all along, which is why they had so many mismatched moments where they clearly wanted to connect with each other but were brought up short because both of them WEREN’T the real one the other wanted to connect with, they just looked like them, and Sakura KNEW he knew the entire time!

[8]

Listen 

Phoenix Wright conditioning is a hell of a thing

No-one is safe

Ok 

I gotta say

Despite everything

Lava Lamp just full on face planting from twenty feet in the air is the perfect comedic timing 

IVE could never

Oh! Did Syaoran follow them in?

Did he jump into the gaping hole to chase down Kyle Rondary? Off screen?

Will Kyle Rondary be murdered in the formless void between worlds?