Happy Birthday Ami!
Ami Mizuno – is there nothing this girl can’t do? Our second – or third, depending on if you count Sailor V – Sailor Soldier to appear in the series takes on a variety of important roles for the team, both in and our of costume. In addition to being an absolute genius, she also shows that she really understands her friends by serving as Usagi’s confidant in early episodes and as the voice of reason when Rei and Usagi start bickering.
She also likes cats, and anyone who likes cats is awesome in my book.
In honor of Ami’s birthday, I decided to compile a five of my favorite articles about her and share them with you, together with a few comments on the article.
What I found most interesting about this subject is that not only would Ami not be the first person to claim an IQ score of 300, but that nowhere in the series was it actually stated factually that it actually is that high. Just like the school rumors that were floating around about Makoto being a violent savage, her IQ score as just playground gossip originally.
This is where we first encounter Ms. Takeuchi’s love for 1980s and early 1990s idols, and it was a bit of a surprise to me to learn that there was actually a real-world inspiration behind Ami’s design. To be honest, though, I wonder how much of what Naoko says here is true, since Ami is clearly taken straight from her earlier manga, Miss Rain, and is very similar in design to the Sailor V character Hikaru Sorano. So maybe Miss Rain/Hikaru was based on the idol…?
While by no means “the norm” now, it’s far more accepted in today’s day and age to portray single parent households in media. In Japan, however, that’s still not quite the case, with more single parent homes either being the result of the death of one parent, or the parent simply not being show or addressed… ever. And that’s today. But back in 1993, this was a pretty big move for Ms. Takeuchi to take in her children-focused manga. As someone who grew up with divorced parents, I commend her for doing this.
After years of hearing it repeated over and over on message boards, websites, and at Sailor Moon events, I finally had to take look at the whole concept of the cast’s popularity, and how the characters were perceived at the time. To my surprise, the results showed that Sailor Mercury’s popularity was in fact just like we had been told… and not true at all, at the same time.
The topic for this article came to mind while I was having lunch with a friend and we were joking about “stupid, unrealistic anime tropes,” and the topic of how ridiculous it was that Ami could be allergic to love letters came up. The more I thought about it, though, the more I wondered if it could in fact be true. Psychomatic disorders are something that have fascinated me for a long time (don’t ask, I know I’m weird), so it seemed like something worth diving into. I’m glad I did!
In the words of Winston Churchill: “It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”
Every time I sit down to write an article and begin my research, I always wind up coming away with more questions I want to delve further into than I started with – and that’s exactly what I love about Sailor Moon! The deeper you dig, the more mysteries you find, waiting to be uncovered.
If you have any questions you’d like me to look into about Ami – across her myriad of forms, be it manga, anime, or the live-action show! – I’d love to hear about it in the comments below!
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