>>58216523
>Sapphire finally breaking down her mental walls or her being moved.
Yes it's supposed to be this.

>The way it's presented always looked more like a "joke" or gag.
But comes off like this. What is THE major emotional development for her (finally opening up) looks like a joke, because it happens at the literal worst possible time in the entire story.

1 - The RS arc has 87 whole chapters, but the one time Sapphire is shown displaying this major emotional vulnerability (straight up crying) happens right after Norman's corpse gets cremated right in front of Ruby. So her feelings look trivial compared to whatever Ruby is going through at the time.

2 - The "joke" feeling could be intentional. There's a trend in RS where Sapphire's given comedic relief scenes following Ruby's serious scenes, as a tonal palate cleanser. The first main example is in Mauville (chapter 203) where Sapphire coincidentally meets the Trick Master there too. Since Ruby just had a serious moment, I guess Kusaka made Sapphire's next scene look funny to release some tension. But that decision just caused way more issues than solved them.

3 - The moment's significance is also ruined because Sapphire's crying in front of the most irrelevant stupid looking background character in the story (Trick Master) who barely knows her. The Trick Master also brings along his equally stupid robot invention that looks like a shitpost fakemon. Sapphire should be having this vulnerable moment in front of someone she's actually close to, like her dad or Ruby, even Winona would've worked better, as these characters would actually notice what a big deal this is for Sapphire. Instead of the Trick Master looking at her crying then going "well ermmmm that was awkward xD"