Tag Archives: Sailor Mercury

What’s the Significance of Ami’s Parents Being Divorced?

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Ami and her BFF Luna

Ami and her BFF Luna

The world of Sailor Moon is definitely not kind to happy and stable family lives, at least where parents are concerned. Between Makoto and her trouble with airplanes, Mamoru and his issue with cars, Rei and her difficulties with childbirth, and Hotaru and lab explosions, there seems to be dead parent epidemic going around – and that’s only among the main cast! When you look at it that way, I guess you could say that Ami got pretty lucky with only having her parents divorce. While divorce is a common thing that most of us have first- or second-hand experience with now, what did it mean for viewers back in 1990’s Japan? Surely how Japanese fans perceived it was different than how we look at it now (and in the west), right?

Saeko Mizuno

Saeko Mizuno

Like everything else we discuss, the answer is “complicated.” So let’s start with what we do know: Ami’s parents are divorced, her mother is a doctor, her father is an artist, and after the divorce she kept her father’s name.1 Divorce was certainly not uncommon back in the 1990s in Japan, but it definitely wasn’t something you generally saw on tv or in anime, so that was certainly forward-thinking of Ms. Takeuchi to put in. For a little bit of context, the crude divorce rate (i.e., the rate of divorce per 1,000 people)2 in 1991 in Japan was 1.4% (vs. 2.0% in 2010)3 and 4.7%4 and 6.8%5 respectively in the U.S.

Where Japan and America (and much of the west, in fact) differ most of all when it comes to divorce is that Japan is still a sole-custody-only country – meaning that shared/joint custody is not possible. In the overwhelming number of cases (nearing 90%), the mother retains custody of the children and the father is out of the picture. In fact, in nearly 40% of the cases, the non-custodial parent never sees their child again.6 This would explain why Ami continues to live with her mother and her father only keeps in touch via postcards.

We also know that she learned to swim and play chess from her father as a way of “keeping herself centered,” so we can assume they had a pretty good relationship. Her father is also a member of an high-class sports club (and the other members clearly know who he is), so we can probably assume that he does (or used to) live in the Tokyo area.

Ami's Father

Ami’s Father

Though it’s never quite clear why her parents divorced or what kind of impact it had on Ami, we do know that at the time it definitely left her in the minority, and may have been partially responsible for part of her isolation from the other students in her class.7 One thing that is interesting to note is that while we associate the names of all of the Sailor Team with the female sailor soldiers, their last names actually all come from their fathers – and Ami is no exception. It definitely brings up the interesting question of how lineage works in the Sailor Moon universe, and how things change in Crystal Tokyo (no “Usagi Chiba” here!).

In another world and another time, it would’ve been interesting to see how Ami – the brains of the team – turned out if she lived with her father. At least I know I’d be interested in seeing it!

Who Saved Ami From Becoming a Cyborg?

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Ami Mizuno – Not a Cyborg

Ami Mizuno – Not a Cyborg

To be fair, a more appropriate first question would probably be “was Sailor Mercury supposed to be a cyborg?” but that can be solved with a simple yes or no answer, so it’s better to not make things so simple. However, that is a very good (and astute!) question, and the one which we’ll answer first. So what is this talk about Ami being a cyborg, anyway?

Well, as Ms. Takeuchi outlines in her liner notes,1 Ami (or Sailor Mercury, since the character of Ami Mizuno probably wasn’t fully developed at that time) was originally meant to be a cyborg.

Cyborg Ami

Cyborg Ami

The original design for Mercury was that she would be a cyborg with acceleration technology. (This is probably the original Ami that I randomly sketched out)

Making matters worse, Ms. Takeuchi’s original intention was for this Cyborg Mercury to be destroyed at the end of the Dark Kingdom arc and have her die off (though this idea was ultimately taken up in the shocking end of the first arc in the anime).

Ami Five is Alive!

Ami Five is Alive!

Princess Naoko: “What’s more, near the end of the first arc, I had planned to have her arms and other parts torn away and have her die.”
Editor Osabu: “This isn’t some joke here, NO WAY! This is a girl’s comic!”

Fortunately for us, and for the rest of the Sailor Moon lore, her editor Fumio “Osabu” Osano objected strenuously against this idea for, well… multiple reasons. Of course, the series was intended to be a shojo manga for girls and obviously you’d want to avoid really dark scenes like the death of a character. Robots also (at least at that time) seemed oddly out of place. One of the biggest reasons, though, seems to be that Mr. Osano seems to have taken quite a liking for Mercury from the beginning and is a self-professed Mercury fan even now.2 In fact, Ami’s character design is even based on the source for his Osa-P/Osa-Bu nickname.

Happy Happy Ending

Happy Happy Ending

Princess Naoko: “However, my manager rejected that idea vehemently and it ended happy-happily without any of the Sailor Soldiers dying.”
Editor Osabu: “You absolutely, totally, CANNOT kill anyone!”

So while all of the characters were spared in the manga, it turns out things took a turn for the worse and, in a strange turn of fate, the anime producers decided to kill off all of the Sailor Soldiers in the anime (an oddly dark turn for the worse for a series meant for such little kids and their families). The irony wasn’t lost on Ms. Takeuchi, however.

Dark Rabbit

Dark Rabbit

Princess Naoko: “However, in the final part of the first arc in the anime, wouldn’t you know it, but they all died! I still hold a grudge over that (but they all came back!)” (I also wanted to make a manga where the characters all die off!)
Editor Osabu: HEY!

It’s definitely interesting to see what a dark turn the manga was originally supposed to have taken and, had her editor not interfered, how different the Sailor Moon series could have turned out to be. Though Ami was ultimately spared from being a cyborg, she did keep some of the original ideas for Ami in tact, such as her being cool and logical, her high IQ, and her affinity for computers. To be honest, I definitely prefer it this way – I can’t imagine the story being remotely the same with robots running around! – but do kinda wish she would’ve elaborated more on what her ideas were!

Who Was the Inspiration Behind Ami’s Character Design?

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The Bob-Hair'd Goddess

The Bob-Hair’d Goddess

It probably shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that with all the various female designs that Ms. Takeuchi had to come up with when designing the cast of Sailor Moon that one or two of them (or even more!) would be based on people in the real world. Much has been said in recent years about modern Japan’s obsession with their (often very young) idols, but this is not a recent trend at all – not by a long shot. The young idol who became the basis for Ami (in design, at least), Noriko Sakai,1 was only 15 when she made her debut in the magazine Momoco‘s section that would introduce pretty up-and-coming talents entitled Momoco Club (モモコクラブ), before later that year gracing television screens on a show by the same name.

Noriko Sakai (15) in a November 30, 1986 Performance on Momoco Club

This actually isn’t the first time we’ve talked about Noriko Sakai, actually. Her name came up previously in the discussion on Osa-P, Luna-P, Mina-P, and the various uses of -P in Sailor Moon. Despite being the youngest member of the Momoco Club cast, she served as an MC of sorts and introduced various segments, made the opening and closing remarks, and basically ran the show (on-screen, at least).

May 21, 1987 – Noriko Sakai on the show Gochisosama

May 21, 1987 – Noriko Sakai on the daytime talkshow Gochisosama

Going back a bit, I mentioned that the “Osa-P” name given to the jewelry shop is also a playful nickname that Ms. Takeuchi gave to her editor, Fumio Osano,2 based on the wildly popular “Nori-P” language that Noriko Sakai made up and played with at the height of her fame as a sort of character branding (however, as the Sailor Moon manga continued through the mid- and late-90’s, this nickname had evolved into “Osabu,” as a play on the sound a pig makes in Japanese – buu). It’s no secret that Ami is Mr. Osano’s favorite character, between him tweeting about her birthday3  or even mentioning his “beloved Ami” in the manga.4 The bio on his official Twitter account5 even describes him as:

武内直子先生「美少女戦士セーラームーン」の原作担当者（永遠のマーキュリー 男子）です。
Manager of the original “Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon” by Ms. Naoko Takeuchi (and eternal Mercury fanboy).

While this part is just conjecture, between the -P nickname given to him and his absolute love for the character of Ami Mizuno, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to guess that he may have been of a fan of Noriko Sakai to begin with (and the nickname was a teasing play on his obsession) and then used Noriko Sakai as the basis behind Ami’s character design, as they do bear quite a striking resemblance.

One last note: Ms. Takeuchi has also mentioned in the past6 that Ami’s origins can be found in a short-story compilation written by her – Miss Rain – which was serialized in 1993 in Nakayoshi. Take a look at it sometime, it’s a pretty interesting story!