This is an upgrade from the “Tsukino-san” she would usually say. Would a Sailor Guardian with glasses have something like Sailor Mercury’s visor? Regardless, they’re fake, and by the end of the episode Ami finds she isn’t wearing them anymore which is a sign of her gradual transition into the person she was pretending to be.Īmi also manages to call Usagi by her given name “Usagi” by the end, though there is no “chan” honorific included.
This makes me wonder… what if she really needed glasses? Ami wears glasses but Sailor Mercury doesn’t! Does transforming somehow heal all physical limitations? In the not at all canon Toon Makers’ Sailor Moon series which only ever had a pilot which never went to air, Sailor Mercury was in a wheel chair but when she transformed she still needed a special flying vehicle (which we can’t call a wheel chair because it doesn’t have wheels) to move around. As I type this I’m distracted by the visible frames and twitching my nose, but Ami feels some sort of comfort from them. Do people really do this? I’ve recently started wearing real glasses and it’s a real pain to get used to. Ami wears fake glasses, which is pretty odd. She tells Usagi not to push things and she’s totally right! What we have in Ami and Rei are a girl who doesn’t have friends because she’s bad at it and a girl who doesn’t have friends because she doesn’t want any! Meanwhile Rei, who herself has been shown to be very antisocial in past episodes, is very socially aware and the voice of reason. She doesn’t say “chan” and they lie to each other. She tells her that lying is the one thing friends don’t do! Usagi, of course, is a good friend through all of this but Ami only sees evidence that their friendship is eroding as she basically is hearing her state ways in which they aren’t real friends. Usagi finds the book and is upset that Ami is trying to be someone she’s not. Distraught she tries to wash it off and collapses out of exhaustion. Ami ends up looking like a clown causing Usagi and Naru to laugh, which Ami perceives as laughing at her. When it comes to trying on makeup however things are not as easy as screaming a catch phrase and transforming.
It’s no one’s birthday, but it’s full of streamers! The girls sing karaoke and Ami claps along in a robot like motion and finally joins in. This is not the Ami we are used to, and it’s not one we will see for long! She even skips her cram school in order to go to a pyjama party with Usagi and Naru. When other students boo the teacher because of a surprise test, she boos along! She even intentionally fails the test (or pretends to have failed the test) in order to help out with chores as punishment. The “chan” honorific is used between friends while the “san” honorific is more formal. She speaks to Usagi more casually, using the honorific “chan”, which was something Usagi had mentioned she wanted her to use. This causes her to act atypical in a number of ways. This was drawn before the concept of Sailor Moon was completely figured out.Īmi buys a book, “How To Be A True Friend” which gives advise that she doesn’t really follow all that well.
This goes so far as to having her imagine being shot by Usagi! Like mother, like daughter! Though my mind always goes to Chibiusa when I see Usagi with a gun, there is an early image of Usagi drawn by Naoko Takeuchi which similarly shows Sailor Moon wielding a gun. As she goes through her daily life she sees a number of examples telling her that many friendships are not as they appear, and so she begins to doubt the strength of her bond with Usagi. In earlier episodes it seemed as if things were going well for those two, but we are quickly learning that for Ami, making friends doesn’t come all that naturally. This is a pure drama episode focusing on the friendship between Usagi and Ami. There’s a monster in here somewhere, but that small aside is almost unnecessary to the story. Want a faithful adaptation? Watch Sailor Moon Crystal! This series is about to do its own thing!Īct 5 is all about Ami doubting her friendship with Usagi. While it may have seemed at first like this would be an episode per episode adaptation for the manga, this is no longer the case and the series will continue to deviate from the source material as it goes on. While Act 6 is somewhat close to the manga Act 5, is still its own original story.
For the first time we get a live action original story with Act 5 and Act 6.
These episodes aired on TV in Japan on November 1st and 8th respectively and, as with earlier episodes, those dates seem to match dates in the show as a calendar in Usagi’s room shows that the month is November. This is a review and discussion of Live Action Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Act 5, Is Usagi a True Friend?, and Act 6, The Transfer Student is Sailor Jupiter.