Misao Amano (天野 美紗緒, Amano Misao) is Sasami's best friend and Pixy Misa’s alter-ego (ピクシィミサ, Pikushyi Misa?) in the Magical Girl Pretty Sammy, and Magical Project S series.
As Pixy Misa, she serves the role of an evil magical girl, later redeemed to become a heroine. She is the rival of the series' protagonist, magical girl Pretty Sammy.
She was created by Tenchi Muyo! co-author Hiroki Hayashi[1].
Misao Amano resembles her counterpart Misao Shinohara from Sasami: Magical Girls Club.
Role in the series
All Version of Misao so far.
While specific details vary between versions, Misao serves as Sasami’s dramatic foil in both versions of Pretty Sammy, being her exact opposite in both civilian and magical girl forms.
Her role in the series comes with the irony that she is both Sasami’s best friend as Misao, and her worst enemy, and rival, as her alter-ego Pixy Misa. Albeit this fact is something neither herself, nor Sasami, are aware of for most of the series.
To contrast Sasami’s cheerfulness, optimism, and extroverted personality, Misao is depicted as being a rather shy, and introverted girl that is often melancholic, depressed, and plagued with fear, insecurities and self doubt. However, despite her sadness, she is still a kind, sweet good-natured girl, at heart.
Also opposite to Sasami’s brighter day to day life, Misao is depicted as having a rather miserable life, being neglected by her parents, struggling with socialization, and suffering a deep loneliness, with the time she spends with Sasami, and Sasami’s family, being some of the few moments of genuine happiness she enjoys. Besides often doubting and demeaning herself, in both the PlayStation game and novel versions, her insecurities reach such an extent that she secretly fears Sasami is only her friend out of pity because she is a miserable girl without friends[2]. This is, of course, false, as Sasami genuinely considers Misao her best friend.
She tends to take a passive role, quietly following and watching the more energetic Sasami. Misao has a weak constitution and is not athletically skilled. She is, however, a talented musician, able to sing, compose music as well as play the piano; in this respect, she takes after her father, Shigeki, a world-famous composer.
As Pixy Misa
in an effort to sabotage Tsunami’s ascension to the throne of the magical kingdom of Juralheim, and by extension Pretty Sammy’s efforts to do good, Ramia, a failed queen candidate, chose Misao Amano, as her own champion. Ramia granted her far reaching magical powers for spreading chaos, as the evil magical girl Pixy Misa.
Unlike Pretty Sammy, Misao is, for most of both series, forcefully, and unwillingly transformed via hypnosis by Rumiya, and less often by his sister Ramia, to serve the latter, and spread chaos on her behalf. In fact Misao has only been shown on screen willingly transforming into Pixy Misa, on screen, exactly, only once.
Even compared to other kids her age, Misao is portrayed as being rather weak and unathletic, this being one of the chief reasons nobody suspects Misao is also Pixy Misa, who, for the most part, is able to overpower, or even fight, Magical girl Pretty Sammy in even terms with her considerable magical powers.
Another main reason being her drastic personality change she goes trough once transformed as Pixy Misa. While both versions of Pixy Misa differ between each other in their personalities, they are still both portrayed as being far more assertive, and confident than her untransformed self. As Pixy Misa, Misao is far for willing to embrace her negative impulses, like laziness or gluttony, and express her repressed feelings, like jealousy or anger, that she hardly ever, if ever, expresses as Misao.
Unlike her usual self, Pixy Misa is willing to be cruel, and mean against innocents, and, even her best friend Sasami Kawai, often using her magic to summon Love Love monsters to terrorize people.
For most of the series, and due to the hypnosis that triggers her transformation, Misao is not even aware of her Pixy Misa alter ego’s existence, let alone the fact that they are one and the same. Misao generally wakes up with amnesia, without any idea on how she got to places she doesn’t remember ever going to, and with no memories of her deeds as Pixy Misa. Although, Misao does learn the fact that she is Pixy Misa in the tail end of Magical Project S.
All of that, coupled with Misao’s changes in appearance, makes it nearly impossible for any character to link the two identities together, even fooling a scientific genius like Dr Washu who was shocked by the reveal. This in contrast to Pretty Sammy herself, who only really changes her clothes after transforming , but retains her personality.
Pixy Misa is also opposite to Pretty Sammy in that they are meant to represent different sides of femininity. Sammy embodies cuteness and childhood innocence, a fact that is reflected in her outfit and the name of her attacks that had the adjectives like “pretty” or “coquettish”; whereas Pixy Misa wears a gaudy outfit representing a more rebellious, and untamed attitude, with some of her attacks having the adjective “Sexy” in the original Japanese.
In both versions, Pixy Misa embodies the girl Misao wishes she was in her day to day life. The Pretty Sammy version of Misao wishes she was stronger, and more atlethic , which her alter ego is; while her Magical Project S counterpart wishes she was more confident, extroverted, and cheerful, which her own version of Pixy Misa embodies to the extreme.
Physical appearance
Misao is a young, frail looking Japanese girl. She has light green eyes, and black hair.
Her trademark hair style has her sporting long hair with a fringe, alongside 2 side bangs. She is also always seen wearing a headband. Misao is often seen wearing simple clothes, that aren’t meant to stand out. However, she is more often seen wearing her regular sailor school uniform.
In contrast, when she transforms into her alter-ego, Pixy Misa, she wears, a far more revealing and colorful outfit. It seems inspired in part by the flapper style of the 20’s with her use of feathers, long black gloves, a fan, and extravagant headpieces like a diadem or a hat, both with a long feather. This is thematically relevant, as women of this subculture embraced freedom, and were associated with a rebellious and more assertive attitude, just like how Misao becomes more unhinged and wild while she is transformed.
Pixy Misa’s magical girl get up is predominantly black in both versions, and its gaudy revealing design is meant to be the opposite of Pretty Sammy’s more innocent, and traditionally cute outfit.
Her physical appearance also changes with both her hair becoming blond and her eye color acquiring a golden tint. Her hair also becomes slightly longer, with her backside hair acquiring more puffier ends. In her Magical Project S, incarnation, Misao even grows one head taller once she transforms, becoming even taller than Pretty Sammy herself as Pixy Misa.
Trivia
- Misao has made a cameo appearance in the final OVA of Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure) and, she is a main character in the series Battle Programer Shirase in which she is the main character's great-niece. In this continuity, her maternal grandmother Mitsuko Shirase, was introduced for the first time.
- For the Korean version her name was changed in both identities to localize her. As Misao her name was changed to “Marie” (마리). And as Pixy Misa her name was changed to “Black Witch Tammy”(블랙마녀 타미).
- In both animated versions of Pretty Sammy, she is confirmed to live in Tokyo. The events of the second OVA are set in Akihabara, a commercial district in Tokyo. Additionally, in Magical Project S, a newspaper read by Washu, in her introductory episode, confirms that the show's events also occur in Tokyo.
References
- ↑ https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/BPS_バトルプログラマーシラセ. The anime “Battle Programmer Shirase” credits Hiroki Hayashi as Misao’s original creator.
- ↑ https://dic.pixiv.net/a/天野美紗緒