“Sorry it’s naked” is the most iconic thing I have ever seen Fuuma say and I will stand by those words.
The design is quite cool at least. And what do you know, the cross hatching on the parts almost looks like dragon scales wouldn’t you say?
Somehow extremely appropriate, wouldn’t you agree?
Fai? Fai are you listening?
Syaoran’s reaction to this is GOLDEN and ENTIRELY UNNECESSARY so I love it. I adore this.
Fuuma’s offhand comment comes back around like it was an important plot point we should have been paying attention to (even though I had genuinely forgotten about his existence and was very happy about that).
Though, and I don’t mean to sound overly critical when I say this, but Lava Lamp’s reactions don’t ring as true as our original Syaoran’s did. Syaoran was essentially the original Point of View character, so his reactions essentially became our reactions because we learned about the plot at the same time. Every shocking piece of news was equally shocking to both Syaoran AND us in equal measure because we’d followed him from the start, so it made sense and never felt out of place.
Now that we have Lava Lamp in his place it feels strange. I genuinely believe that Lava Lamp would have experienced the same exact emotions as Syaoran so none of this is fake at all – he’s being genuine, and his reaction is the same intensity as it should be. But the CONNECTION between us and Syaoran is not there with Lava Lamp – he was an observer the entire time the exact same way we were, so it’s kind of like seeing an audience member reaction instead of someone we’ve built a long lived bond with. More, the entirety of Lava Lamp’s plotline IS the purely fact that he knows LOTS AND LOTS of important plot information that WE don’t. He has a long and complicated backstory that we aren’t privy to, and we don’t get his inner monologue the same we did had Syaoran’s on occasion. In a purely narrative sense there is a large gap of separation between us and Lava Lamp that shouldn’t be there for his reactions to have the same function that Syaoran’s did.
Do we like Lava Lamp fiercely anyway? Of course! He is a deeply good person fighting for Sakura and [indistinct plot scribbles] and he clearly cares about the rest of the family. But does slipping an exact visual copy of a character into the same narrative space have the same result for scenes like this? Not even slightly!
But this is all meta thoughts and on a character level all I want is for Lava Lamp to relax and be happy and safe in his new family so his reactions are WELCOME.
Lava Lamp you nice keep going
