meaning of その姿に

Question

I would like to know the meaning of その姿に in the sentence

Context: the character is genuinely impressed by her friend's determination at persisting in a way that seems to be a dead end.

素晴らしいわ！その、非効率ながらもロマンを追い求めるその姿に、私は感動したわ！

Just wonderful ! When I see you pursuing something so utterly impractical - and yet so romantic - I'm moved to tears !

I've looked into several questions such as

https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/41627/meaning-of-おられる姿

and

https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/9807/whats-the-difference-between-姿すがた-and-形かたち

姿 has a lot of meaning such as "the way someone looks", "someone's appearance", so I understand it can mean a lot of things (including working as a nominalizer) but could you give me some info about その姿に ?

Answer 1

I think rather than the meaning of 姿, what is tripping you up here is the order of the sentence. Everything before this phrase is modifying the noun 姿.

非効率ながらもロマンを追い求めるその姿
That appearance of pursuing romance/aspirations no matter how inefficient.

Which means this clause can be taken out of the sentence, and the independent clause would still make sense. So, if we remove this section, we should get:

その姿に、私は感動したわ！
At that appearance, I am moved!

The sentence order is reversed to make it more emphatic. We can rearrange this into:

私はその姿に感動したわ！
I am moved by that appearance!

Which looks a lot more like a textbook sentence structure.