Mercury Aqua Mirage [anime]

Japanese Name: Mercury Aqua Mirage

First Appearance: Sailor Moon S Opening 1

See Also: [manga]

In Brief: Well before it's famous use in the SuperS Special, the first opening of the Sailor Moon S season suggests that Sailor Mercury was originally supposed to gain that attack during that season. The Sailor Moon musicals also hint at this with the 1994 Summer Special Musical: Usagi's Road to Becoming a Soldier of Love also having Sailor Mercury use the attack and the other Sailor's using the other attacks shown in this first opening. Several episodes early on in the Sailor Moon S season were dedicated to each of the Inners and it stands to reason that any of these would have given them their new attacks (This though is just my speculation).

Why the plan changed is unknown, though a possible theory may be that with Sailor Moon, Uranus and Neptune getting two new attacks and Sailor Pluto and Mini Moon getting one new attack each plus all the new transformations, the animation teams simply didn't have enough time to create the animation sequences for four new Inner attacks. Another possible theory is that the fans or staff simply thought the Inners didn't need new attacks and that their current repertoire was sufficient. It did take them until halfway through the fourth season, Sailor Moon SuperS until they were given new attacks with the possible reason for this being the dramatic change in animation style.

Cultural: "A mirage is a naturally-occurring optical phenomenon, in which light rays are bent to produce a displaced image of distant objects or the sky. The word comes to English via the French mirage, from the Latin mirare, meaning 'to appear, to seem'. This is the same root as for mirror. Like a mirror, a mirage shows images of things which are elsewhere. The principal physical cause of a mirage, however, is refraction rather than reflection. A mirage is a real optical phenomenon that can be captured on camera, since light rays actually are refracted to form the false image at the observer's location. The interpretation of the image, however, is up to the fantasy of the human mind, and is easily mistaken for a small puddle of water."
-- Taken from Wikipedia

The Move: Coming Soon