What Happened to the Theme of Grief?
We’ve definitely talked before about how Tsubasa is largely about grief - the ways it can shape your life, the different ways people struggle with it, and sometimes even the ways people manage to accept it and take it with them moving forward.
We can see it very clearly in some of the worlds we visit - Chu’nyan struggling with the death of her mother in Koryo, Ashura struggling with the death of Yasha in Shura, a community struggling with the grief of a collective tragedy in Jade, the survivors in Acid Tokyo struggling with the death of the world, and so on. It's laced through a good deal of the scenarios we visit, though not all of them!
And we can't forget that our main characters themselves act as our biggest examples of the various stages of grief. Kurogane’s backstory is the most literal expression of Anger possible, with his murder rage after the death of his parents.
Fai’s entire life is one big slice of the Bargaining stage, with him hoping to trade his life for his brother’s - and I’d add that his attitude (especially in Outo) is laced with the Depression stage as well, since his dedication to his grief makes him forget that his life might be worth anything else.
Sakura herself has to grapple with her own death in Infinity, and we see her go through a few stages of Bargaining, Depression, and finally comes through with Acceptance - though I think in reality hers is more about trying to prevent Lava Lamp’s death, it still does have a nice arc to it and comes with an acceptance of her own end.
And the Syaorans! The plot opens (both times) with the “death” of Sakura, with both of the Syaorans struggling to try prevent it, and going through some very literal Bargaining to try and stop it from happening with the wishes they make. And their arcs are so fascinating to me - Syaoran (the clone) ends up losing himself entirely in the process of trying to save Sakura, fails to save her (he ends up killing her by his own hand in Nihon), and then dies himself in the confrontation with Evil Wolverine. The Autopilot state acts as a sort of metaphor for the Depression stage of grief, where nothing matters anymore (except saving Sakura) even if it’s slightly displaced in time, and the fact that it takes full control of him ends up making his loss entirely real.
We should also touch on the beginning of the manga giving us two examples of a much more natural and accepted grief with the passing of Fujitaka and Clow Reed. Both have passed on by the time of the manga’s opening, but the thoughts surrounding their memory are much more grounded and positive. Syaoran keeps a photo of Fujitaka on his desk to keep his memory alive, which he looks on fondly.
By contrast Evil Wolverine himself is maladjusted grief come to life. He is a living wish made from grief, and his entire existence is bent around trying to reverse a death. This grief IS all he has - unlike other naturally occurring clones he never expands his horizons into living a full life or making other bonds. He is an endlessly destructive force, a metaphor for what unchecked grief can lead to, and permanently cracks the universe in his refusal to accept someone’s death.
And then we get Lava Lamp, who Evil Wolverine finds kinship with.
It’s very interesting looking back, since his arc really is so similar to Evil Wolverine’s goal AND to Syaoran’s failed attempt to save Sakura, except his one kind of works?
Before the flashback arc in the Reservoir I had guessed that Lava Lamp’s whole arc would culminate him having to learn how to accept Not!Sakura’s death - that the entire journey has been him trying to force a kind of resurrection that wasn’t entirely possible, since he literally turns back time itself to make it happen. Since this is the trigger point for almost everything that happens afterwards, it seemed like a logical step for his arc to end in Acceptance - that he would have to finally learn to accept the reality of losing Sakura and move on.
I WAS WRONG. I WAS THE MOST WRONG.
Lava Lamp gets what he wants and through several complication technicalities absolutely does manage to bring Not!Sakura back from the brink of death.
Not only that, but everyone else in the Clow Kingdom comes back too! No-one is dead, not even Nadeshiko or Fujitaka. Full resurrection is back on the table just in time for the happy ending!
WHICH, as you might be able to guess, was slightly confusing to me in terms of the themes we’ve been tracing so far. It seemed odd that the universe could seemingly punish him for making his wish to turn back time, but at the same time actually go through with it and save not just Not!Sakura but also both her dead parents.
On the universe side it makes sense - the universe is confused and broken and struggling to flatten out a timeloop, so it’s made some choices and has to pick something to go with.
But in terms of theme? I was a little fascinating that it kind of reversed the way it seemed to be going. Evil Wolverine was incorrect for trying to resurrect Yuuko but Lava Lamp manages to squeeze his through just fine. Sure, they have to pay some prices to escape the Time Loop Punishment Void, but that’s more about the fact that they were time anomalies rather than anything to do with the resurrecting.
But in going back over the last five volumes I do think there’s a turning point in the story where we actually DO see the theme naturally evolve in real time. When we get Lava Lamp’s backstory in the reservoir there is a moment where Lava Lamp explains how he blames himself for everything that has happened (which Evil Wolverine agrees with), and he presents it all to Fai and Kurogane expecting them to agree. He gives them the space to blame him for all their tragedies and abandon him forever.
Instead Fai presents the opposite viewpoint - that there’s no way to actually tell what will happen and all we can do is what we honestly want.
And THAT'S the point where the theme evolves out of the narrative Lava Lamp thought he was living. Instead of everything being Lava Lamp's fault forever (ie, being consumed with grief for your entire existence) Lava Lamp's grief meets open love and acceptance and the question of his existence changes into "How do we move forward from here?"
At this point The Big Grief shifts from any individual person's backstory to being at a universal level - grief is represented by the broken universe itself instead of any single death. The core concept we fight against becomes the Idea of Never Moving On, which is represented by a few things. The endless loop of the Clow Kingdom for one, but also the timeline itself getting stuck on repeat, and the biggest symbol of them all is Evil Wolverine, who will repeat everything forever (or destroy everything) in his effort to stay in this impossible grief. He will never get over Yuuko’s death - he IS a living grief. But it's in the previous two examples that it becomes the most clear.
Not Moving Forward is described as being the same as dying yourself. You never have any growth or really ever live again. You HAVE to move forward to be alive.
And so the universe itself, stuck in an endless time loop, is also stuck in this state of being the same as dead. The grief has consumed everything.
Also, interestingly, this is never presented as easy. Ending the timeloop in the Clow Kingdom is an emotionally heavy moment as we watch all the people there die. And fixing the universe can only be done with a very heavy cost.
But it IS presented as worth doing.
Even if it's hard and painful and costly, living is worth it every time in these ending chapters. The Tsubasa family become the agents of completing the cycle of grief - not "fixing" the grief but accepting what can’t be changed and finding a way to move forward, to carry it with you and continue to live.
And I think they pull that theme off quite well! It's a MUCH harder idea to convey compared to the more straight forward "accept it and move on" that I had initially been expecting, but the shift of the idea from the personal level to the cosmic level really sells it for me.
(Does it get a little messy since the clones die and our immediate new goal is to bring them back again? Maybe! But shh it's close enough. We're in a shounen after all)
TLDR: it evolve into the idea of Moving Forward
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