Sailor Mercury

Code name of Ami Mizuno, one of the earliest members of the Sailor Scouts, she wields the power of water. A technical and scientific devotee, she tends to be more strategic than her comrades. She uses the Super Micro Computer, a powerful PDA with as much functionality as a tricorder. This is often used in conjunction with a visor activated by touching her earring. The visor functions as a heads-up display and also allows her to see things outside the normal range of human vision.

Of all of the Sailor Moon characters, Sailor Mercury's characterisation is most confusing from a purely mytho-symbological standpoint. Throughout the media, she is characterised as having two consistent attributes, one being exceptional intelligence, and the other being affiliation with water, including mostly water-based powers and attacks. This water affiliation derives from a historic Japanese mythological assignment of this property to Mercury. And yet, she is given in the live action series a harp (or a lyre), significant only to the Roman mythological assignment to the same planet.

There are more muted examples of this mythos-confusion elsewhere in the series. The love-based powers of Sailor Venus reflect only the Roman mythos, while Sailor Mars has fire-based powers, reflecting the Japanese mythos but not especially conflicting with the Roman vision of a God of War. Though Sailor Jupiter has some wood-based powers reflecting the Japanese mythos, her most spectacular gifts (besides fabulous tatas) are thunder-and-lightning attacks drawn wholly from the Roman cognate to Greek Zeus. Were Sailor Mercury to have a comparable Roman-mythos power basis, she ought to be portrayed, for example, with the swiftness of the Roman Mercury.

This confusion ultimately leads to an odd power divergence between the power given to Sailor Mercury and the Outer Guardian Sailor Neptune. Based, as well, solely on the Roman mythos, Sailor Neptune ought to be expected to have water-based powers. But, these having already been written into Sailor Mercury, the powers given to Sailor Neptune are further restricted by the characteristic of the Roman Ocean-God, Neptune -- and so, Sailor Neptune has no generalised power over water, but may rely only on ocean-based attacks, drawing strength from "deep waters." This restriction on Sailor Neptune is not reciprocated in treatment of Sailor Mercury, whose power over water is never described to have any limitations deriving from the source of the water. (I will also gratuitously mention here that Sailor Neptune is a lesbian, but most translations out of the Japanese original and into the media of other cultures sadly doctor this characteristic out of her personality).

A last note is on Dark Sailor Mercury -- for a seven-episode stretch of the live action series, Sailor Mercury turns teh evuls, accoutered with darker blues and hints of black, and relentlessly goes after Sailor Moon, even as the latter tries desperately to heal her former ally without harming her. Ultimately, bits and pieces of this effort have some effect, and Sailor Mercury's defeat of Sailor Moon triggers sufficient remorse to allow this healing to be culminated, restoring the good and wiping away the memories of the evil deeds (though Sailor Mercury remains haunted by her knowledge that she had been evil and harmed her loved ones).