Okay, here's the important question to end all questions: what is the best Tomoyo moment in TRC?
Oh man. Oh man. This is an impossible question if ever there was one.
Due to my eternal bias every single Tomoyo moment is the best possible Tomoyo moment in TRC. But that’s also a boring answer, so let’s find some good examples.
JUST TO BE CLEAR, DO I GET TO PICK A DIFFERENT ONE FOR EACH TOMOYO? I’m going to say yes. Those are the rules now.
HERE WE GO.
TOMOYO #1: NIHON TOMOYO
The OG Tsubasa version of Tomoyo has only been onscreen for seven pages so far. I’m expecting she’ll have much greater moments in the future, but as of right now? ENTER SASS MASTER TOMOYO
Nihon Tomoyo is here to prove that even being the high priestess isn’t going to dull her dramatic sense of humour. She has maximum marks in showmanship, easily demonstrating that she can be tearfully gazing off into the distance (in delight) one moment and casually cast a complete life altering curse the next. No big deal. This is pancakes for Tomoyo. Sorry Kurogane you never stood a chance.
TOMOYO #2: BIRDCAGE TOMOYO
Another Tomoyo who was severely under represented on screen, but was incredible nonetheless. Like Nihon Tomoyo, she plays a major part in running the country because hot damn, this is Tomoyo, and every instance of Tomoyo is an absolute pro at everything she touches and easily deserves the unwavering trust of the entire country that she obviously has.
And then we have THIS MOMENT
Which is only about half a second long, but guys. This is a Tomoyo that has had everything taken from her. We see through Sakura that Villain Guy’s coup was a horrible violent affair that killed her parents and sent her running for her life. Her country and her family were stolen from her in one fell swoop, as well as her bird and her voice. By all rights she should have given up, BUT TOMOYO? NEVER. Despite having nothing but the trust of the people (because hello, this is Tomoyo) she ran the resistance against an all powerful ego maniac for who knows how long - but in this moment she’s lost that as well. She’s in a cage with no ability to move or even communicate. She can’t do a single thing. But what does she do?
SHE STARES THE DICK DOWN.
Ain’t nobody going to make Tomoyo appear powerless, because Tomoyo is powerful in and of herself. She doesn’t need anything else to back her up. She will go down fighting if it’s the last thing she does.
It doesn’t go so great, but that only amplifies the fact that Tomoyo stuck to her guns until the very end. She knew exactly what Villain Guy was going to do. She knew she couldn’t stop it.
SHE STILL GLARED AT HIM ANYWAY.
TOMOYO #3: PIFFLE TOMOYO
Piffle finally gave us the heavenly gift of a Tomoyo that gets plenty of screentime. Piffle’s Tomoyo is just as powerful as the others; she singlehandedly runs the most powerful and influential company in the country, if not the world. Am I elaborating slightly? Yes. But does she deserve it?
Damn right she does. Piffle’s Tomoyo is massively talented in her own right, but is also willing and able to wield both her company’s assets and it’s reputation to maximum effect, taking complete control of all situations with ease and grace.
She’s also very very gay.
How could it possibly get any better, you ask?
BUCKLE UP IT’S TIME TO FIND OUT.
ENTER TOMOYO WITH A GUN
In which all of my dreams come true.
Because Tomoyo with a Gun takes every single instance of Tomoyo’s power structure and inverts it.
Tomoyo has guards. Tomoyo always has guards. Thus, Tomoyo is always The Protected One, and Piffle’s Tomoyo is visibly shown with more guards than every other Tomoyo combined. She is the most protected of all Tomoyos.
And here she is, in a single instant, leaping into combat faster than an entire room full of trained fighters and becoming The Protector instead.
Tomoyo has a LOT of good moments. Tomoyo has a lot of GREAT moments. But THIS moment put me into tears with how much it meant. Not only did it empower Tomoyo more than anything else I’ve ever seen, but it slapped every trope into the ground and set them all on fire.
Because Tomoyo is gorgeous, and she’s talented. She wears dresses and designs fashion and is incredibly enthusiastic about presenting things in just the right way. Tomoyo is resourceful, able to run countries and companies and entire worlds, and is always important enough to be protect. Tomoyo is incredibly feminine, and the biggest lesbian in the universe, and SHE WILL SHOOT YOU IN THE FACE AT THE DROP OF A HAT. Because there is power in all of these things. Tomoyo IS all of these things, and my god, she is not defenseless by any definition of the word.
The Princess of the Birdcage Kingdom and FUN THEMES FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY
BUCKLE UP GUYS WE’RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT THE ONE TIME I LIVEBLOGGED THAT MOVIE FOREVER
As with pretty much anything there are quite a number of themes running through the Birdcage Kindgom and quite a few fun things you could latch onto, but the one that stands out to me the most right now is the idea of SACRIFICE.
BECAUSE HELLO YES CLAMP HAS CALLED AND THEY WANT TO MAKE SURE YOU ARE GETTING A TASTE OF THE FULL TSUBASA EXPERIENCE
And when I say “sacrifice” in this context I mean it as shorthand for “being forced to part permanently with something extremely important to who you are as a person for the good of everyone”. This will lead to a “better” outcome than the one that would have happened otherwise, but not necessarily a completely good outcome. So like, better than oh god everything is terrible why is everything on fire but still not something you would have wanted to happen otherwise. Ever.
Because Tsubasa.
[Spoilers for The Princess in the Birdcage Kingdom within, just in case you wanted to go watch that]
[Spoilers for Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle NOT within, but guesses are made]
[But also like, do not confirm or deny said guesses]
[Okay cool]
SO. SACRIFICE.
The first place the idea shows up is right at the very start in the opening scene.
It’s a scene we’re all very familiar with, and I absolutely love how it works on an artistic level, but it also serves as an instant reminder/introduction of sacrifice and just how central it is to Tsubasa’s story as a whole. When paired with the movie’s ending, this bookends the entire experience with the inescapable vision of these characters needing to give up important parts of themselves in order to stop the world ending as they know it.
The inclusion of the scene at all is interesting. It frames the story within the narrative that we already know but it doesn’t present any new information if the viewer is even passingly familiar with the series they just walked into the theatre to watch. Moreover, for a viewer that WASN’T familiar with Tsubasa, would the scene make sense? Does it present any information they desperately need in order to make sense of the movie that follows?
The answer is no.
The importance of the deal made to Yuuko is never brought up again. The movie doesn’t play with the idea of Sakura’s missing memory, or Syaoran’s role in fixing it, or even the importance of the feather beyond the fact that they (probably) want it back. The film doesn’t need to explain the feather any further, so it doesn’t, and we don’t even see Sakura benefit from its retrieval. The film doesn’t even tell us what these shots mean:
We know if we’ve read the beginning of the manga already, and the movie banks on that, because it’s not immediately relevant to anything else they want to show you.
So, if you were new to the series, the scene probably wasn’t all that necessary.
But those things ARE still there regardless, so the scene quite deliberately establishes an idea of personal sacrifice that becomes quite important by the end of the film. Thematically, more than anything else, the scene paves the way towards what to expect from the storyline, and HOT DAMN DOES IT DELIVER.
AND LET’S TALK ABOUT THAT.
Here we are in the Birdcage Country, which is, perhaps unsurprisingly, nestled safely within a giant birdcage.
Notable unique features of this land include: said birdcage, small birds for every one, giant glowing birds, people dressed as birds, and also bird motifs.
Given the title of the movie, none of this is probably a surprise.
We sadly don’t get a lot of world building beyond what you can glimpse from a few establishing shots, but unsurprisingly, birds are important. They do, in fact, make a very big deal about the fact that the Terrible Awful Villain has been separating people from their birds and that this is a very, very bad thing (and also maybe brainwashing people too, but that isn’t actually mentioned ever again)
So when the ending happens and, in exchange for saving everyone’s souls from the forces of darkness (which, also, aren’t really established or explained and are very vague but are Bad ™) everyone in the country has to give up their bird companions, which means they lose everything that is unique to them. The lose their closest friends, their cultural identity, and end up ensuring the one thing they’ve been fighting against all this time.
Admittedly I was very pissed when this happened. Not just because I liked the birds, and that their sacrifice was handled very quickly and with little exploration of the emotional impact, but also because the threat this was supposed to counter was never properly explained to us. We don’t know WHY this is the only option, or why the price is worth it, what exactly this is supposed to solve, or why the birds would all just choose to leave like they do.
But on the other hand all of these questions come down to a question of time. There were answers to these questions that the storytellers just plain didn’t get the time to tell us, and given more time I’m sure the impact of the birds leaving would have been handled with more care.
So if we stray away from exactly what happens in the film and try to read what they wanted to happen, the sacrifice of the bird companions becomes an irreversible tragedy - but one that was necessary to save the lives of everyone in the kingdom. Despite the fact that the birds all leave “for some reason”, the fact remains that the humans and birds that used to live together happily were all in danger of losing their souls, and living permanently apart was the only way to prevent this. The lives of everyone involved are marred with loss and pain in the process, but their souls survive, and that is better than the alternative.
When paired with the movie’s introduction this kind of sacrifice isn’t anything new to us - especially within the main cast, and especially in regards to the deals they made with Yuuko. Syaoran and Sakura paid the price of their relationship in order to save Sakura’s soul – they can never live “together” in the way they were previously going to, but they’re both alive, and that is better than the alternative. Obviously I can’t say much about any parallel’s in Fai’s past, but in Kurogane’s at least we have a small mirror to this as well. The alternative to him going on this journey was (as far as Tomoyo was convinced) him losing his soul to the bloodlust (and poor manners?) that consumed him, and so again, they pay the price of their togetherness to avoid that fate. They all lose a large part of something important to how they define themselves, but they live on, and aim to improve the lives of their loved ones in the process.
The sacrifice that started the film inspires the sacrifice that ends it, but that’s not the end of the parallel altogether. While I can’t say for sure what happens in the rest of Tsubasa from this point onwards, the importance of this kind of sacrifice is an idea that will (PROBABLY?) be central to the way the plot develops . After all, even though Sakura’s feathers aren’t properly discussed in the film, we already have a mirror to her in Tomoyo.
(Are we really surprised that I found an excuse to talk about Tomoyo I mean come on)
We have a princess (Sakura/Tomoyo) of an isolated kingdom (Birdcage/Clow) with a strong feather motif (Soul feathers/Soul birds) which is then put in danger from some powerful dick (Evil Wolverine/Movie Villain) with a hunger for power and the ability to render the princess powerless (Sakura’s memory/Tomoyo’s voice) by separating them from their power source (Sakura’ feathers/Laifan) and reducing the princess to an object (Sakura’s Tsubasa Thing/Tomoyo becoming a literal key) so that they can claim that power for themselves and potentially rule the world/s. Regardless of how awkward that sentence is to read (I’m so sorry), there is enough of a pattern that the resolution of the plot could easily follow the same pattern. Even when/if the villain is gone the threat he began is still present and active and can only be reversed through another personal sacrifice of huge magnitude. In the film, Tomoyo is forced (I’m being generous with “forced”) to sacrifice the heart and soul of her kingdom in order to save everyone. In Tsubasa… well, who knows what will happen.
In this way the plotline of The Princess of the Birdcage Kingdom almost becomes shorthand for the plot of Tsubasa as a whole, if condensed and minimalised. IMPORTANT things will happen, the safety of everyone will be put into danger, and our main characters will (again) sacrifice important things to keep it from happening. There is, after all, no guarantee that everyone will survive this journey, and more than one of our cast members has expressed their willingness to sacrifice their own well-being to save the people closest to them. After all, nothing worth doing is free of a heavy price.
But let’s backtrack to the villain of the film for a moment.
Because this villain guy is interesting, but not in his own right. He’s not characterised in any way that stands out and I’m still convinced that they never speak his actual name – which means that, either by design or coincidence, you’re not going to think about him much. How are you going to bring him up in conversation? How do you have lingering thoughts over an empty title with no particular traits or explainable motivations?
You don’t. Because you’re not really meant to.
The villain serves as a type of stand in for Evil Wolverine in the same way that the storyline of this movie stands as a parallel for the events of Tsubasa. The villain is always there. We are shown from the very start that he is watching our main cast, has vague yet undoubtedly terrible plans, is in a position of clear power, and is willing and able to send other characters in to influence events towards the outcome he desires (which he does at least three times). The movie villain isn’t as good at it as Evil Wolverine is in that last respect, but that’s to be expected. He only gets a few minutes to establish himself as a threat and then quickly die, when Evil Wolverine has years of our time to do the same thing. (Or at least, “years” if you were reading the series as it came out, or if you’re like me and are a ridiculous human being in all possible ways) In that vein of thought, Movie Villain accomplishes things on the micro level that we can probably expect Evil Wolverine to do on the macro level later; Movie Villain poses a powerful and evil threat to this one single kingdom, whereas Evil Wolverine is a threat to multiple worlds, if not the multiverse as a whole. Both have plans involving the feathers, both want to be in charge of whatever new world order they will usher in, and both have rather ridiculous facial hair.
(NB: no offence to anyone with similar facial hair. I’m sure it looks lovely on you! As long as you aren’t trying to rule the universe I will A+ guarantee that I adore your facial hair WELL DONE ON YOUR FACE IT’S AMAZING)
To further this, the ending of the final battle visually reminds us that Evil Wolverine is still a thing.
While Movie Villain is down for the count, the bat is a sign that we still exist within Evil Wolverine’s sphere of influence. He’s still out there in his position of power, he’s still watching us, and as long as the feather plot continues on its way things are still working towards his advantage. Again, this was a really interesting touch to the movie. Without those few seconds the narrative would have been more complete, a kind of standalone story that entirely wrapped itself up, but with Evil Wolverine’s influence directly referenced the story instead becomes part of the bigger picture. The story isn’t over yet, because Tsubasa isn’t over yet, and you are lured in to consider what happens after this.
Because what will happen after this? If the theme of the movie stands true, the pattern of sacrifice will be there waiting for us.
Evil Wolverine will aim to introduce a terrible fate to as much of the universe as he possibly can. Through the Tsubasa, his success is pretty much a guarantee unless the main cast do something about it.
And the “doing something” will cost them heavily. They will lose a lot to stop him. It will hurt them to stop him, and their lives will never quite be the same, but they will do it willingly because it means a better future for the people they’re leaving behind.
Like with Yuuko’s store at the beginning, everything has a price. The more important the exchange, the higher the price is. Stopping Evil Wolverine’s threat could quite possibly be the most important exchange of all – but our Tsubasa family has already proven themselves quite willing to pay extraordinary prices, and are willing sacrifice pieces of themselves (or themselves as whole) in the process of saving what they need to save.
