The ending of the previous strip had left ambiguous who Latho was speaking to – on purpose, to create tension. Pointless tension. Which, probably, no member of the audience actually felt in any major, or even minor, way. But tension nevertheless.
And thus the short reign of this (mostly pro-forma) tension ends: it is Snuka who is the first member of the team to receive and reveal his second, empowered form. (After Mopey, that is, who is on a different trajectory reserved for (nominal) leader-type characters.)
Since his first form was, quite obviously, based on Impmon from the Digimon franchise, it’s somewhat logical (by my standards) that his second form would be based on Wizardmon, one of its evolved forms. And certainly the more iconic of its evolved forms – although, as Latho points out, there’s a slight hitch involved: its iconic nature rests largely on its established status as heroic-sacrifice/sacrifical-lamb-type-character. Is this a bad omen for Snuka, and is he aware of that? And does that even matter, given how bad things happen to Snuka all the time, whether preceded by omens or not? Questions over questions…
Other than that minor issue, Snuka has much reason to be happy with his new form. From imp to wizard seems like a natural progression: Snuka has always hoped that the various treacheries and tricks he’s always had to rely on for survival might one day involve into some actual supernatural ability – and today is that day, at least for the purposes of this chapter. So, congrats?
More on Monday.
Wizard only dies if he is old. Did you ever see kid wizard die?
Now, if he was a girl, he would not be a wizard, but a witch. And witches have it much worse then wizards. You can die by pretty much everything, like getting into contact with an ordinary water.
True! And the survival rate for female characters is several orders of magnitude over that of males in pretty much all genres.
Well, most of the fictional Wizard population tends to be elderly, anyway – kid wizards aren’t unheard of, but a clear majority. But I have to admit that they rarely died…before JK Rowling came along. Since the Battle of Hogwarts, it’s been open season on kid wizards in professional fiction as well as fan fiction. Probably just a fad, though. XD