Sasami/Pretty Sammy +

Overview

Tenchi Universe

Tenchi in Tokyo

Pretty Sammy +

Other Spin-offs

Pretty Sammy

Pretty Sammy

The versions of Pretty Sammy in the first OVA series, Magical Girl Pretty Sammy and the subsequent TV series, Magical Project S have a completely re-worked Sasami. Now she is Sasami Kawai (河合 砂沙美 Kawai Sasami?); in the OVA she is the daughter of a failed singer turned record-store owner named Chihiro Kawai and sister to Tenchi Kawai. She also has an unnamed father that never appeared, and his absence was explained as him being busy with work as a "magazine editor"; in the TV version her parents are Ginji & Honoka Kawai, also record-store owners and she has no siblings.

An ordinary japanese girl, Sasami was granted magical powers by Tsunami, who is in line to become the queen of a magical realm/planet called Juraihelm. She battles an enemy called Pixy Misa, who is secretly Sasami's best friend, Misao Amano. The Pretty Sammy series was originally created as a parody of the Magical Girl genre, particularly Sailor Moon.

Overview

In both series, Tsunami was chosen to become the next queen of the magical kingdom, Juraihelm. Before she can accept the crown, Tsunami must choose someone, a "kindred spirit", to represent her on Earth, and she has selected Sasami Kawai, a schoolgirl whose parents run a music store, CD Vision. Sasami was sent off by her parents to deliver a CD to a house she has never been to and discovers that the customer was actually Tsunami, who then introduces herself to Sasami. Sasami was given a magical baton that would allow her to transform into the magical girl, Pretty Sammy. She was also given Ryo-Ohki as her magical familiar, and advisor (similar to Luna of Sailor Moon).

At first, Sasami was reluctant to transform into Pretty Sammy (as she fears that everyone will be able to see through her disguise), but once Pixy Misa, another magical girl, comes into action, Pretty Sammy has to put a stop to her actions. However, neither Sasami nor her best friend, Misao Amano, are aware that Pixy Misa is actually a transformed Misao.

Also in these series, the upside-down triangle birthmark only appears on her forehead in her Pretty Sammy form.

Personality

Sasami Kawai's personality remains consistent across different Pretty Sammy continuities. She is a kindhearted, cheerful, and extroverted girl, though naive and immature. Often goofy and extremely energetic, she embodies childhood innocence.

She serves as a foil to her shy and introverted best friend, Misao Amano, with her outgoing and high-spirited nature. Sasami deeply values her friendship with Misao, often rushing to protect her and taking risks to ensure her safety. She does the same for Tenchi in the contunities they are siblings. No matter the danger, Sasami never hesitates to stand by those she cares about. She is also willing to put herself in harm’s way and selflessly fight for others, demonstrating a strong sense of responsibility, heroism and courage.

Sasami was, initially, a reluctant heroine, uninterested in magical powers and more concerned about being ridiculed. Unlike Konoha, who immediately tried to use magic for selfish reasons the instant she had the chance, or even Misao, who fantasized about having magic, Sasami wasn't even tempted by the idea of having magic powers vastly favoring a normal life instead . Just the thought of being laughed at for her magical girl outfit is enough to make her hesitant. However, her big heart always compels her to act, and save the day.

While Sasami enjoys traditionally girly interests, and even helps with house chores, she also has a tomboy streak and excels at sports, particularly dodgeball, often playing alongside boys. She also loves video games and has a competitive nature. In the original Japanese, she refers to herself in the third person, adding to her youthful and girlish charm. She finds joy in simple things like family, friends, and food and is deeply empathetic. Despite her initial reluctance, Sasami is exceptionally brave, never backing down from danger to save others. Fiercely protective of those she cares about, she is willing to sacrifice herself if necessary, even for strangers. Though hesitant at first, she comes to accept her magical abilities over time, growing into a capable and confident heroine while remaining true to her cheerful and kindhearted self.

Sasami: Magical Girls Club

Sasami from Magical Girls Club

The magical girl anime Sasami: Magical Girls Club (known in English as Sasami: Magical Girls Club) again reworked Sasami as Sasami Iwakura (岩倉 砂沙美, Iwakura Sasami). Although superficial changes to her include the total absence of the mark on her forehead and her freckles, she is still fairly recognizable. (In fact, rather than Chisa Yokoyama, child voice actress Mana Ogawa plays the voice of the character to make her sound more like a child.)

In this anime, Sasami is a fifth-grader who has magical powers since birth. But she has been forbidden by her parents to use those powers since age three; she still practices it, but in secret. It is after she and her new friend Misao find out about the secret of her new teacher, Washu Kozuka that she becomes a member of the latter's magical girl club and maximize the use of her magical power.

Her full article with more in depth information can be found here.

Powers and Abilities

With the exception of the "Magical Night 2" radio continuity, Sasami is an average Japanese girl and a Tokyo resident. While she is has tomboyish side and while she is a very athletic girl who excels at sports, she doesn't have superhuman abilities until she transforms into her alter ego, Pretty Sammy. She also keeps her talent for cooking, and doing house chores from the main continuity .Her Sasami: Magical Girls Club version uses an entirely different magic system from the usual henshin magical girl, best explained on her page here.

Common Powers and Abilities (In Most Continuities)

• Magic Baton: A magic baton that resembles a small girl's toy with a heart shaped tip. Sasami uses it to transform into Pretty Sammy, as an offensive weapon, and as both the source of her magical powers and the conduit for her magic spells. In MPS it has an AI that allows it to directly talk, but it's seldomly used. While it's extremely durable, and able to redirect energy, it's not indestructible and can be broken if it suffers too much damage.
  • NT System: Thanks to Washu's invention, her baton was upgraded to shield her from Romio's magic absorption and to recall magic and recharge her own magic after she had been drained. This gave her a certain immunity to having her magic stolen.
• Pretty Mutation Magical Recall: The magic spell that triggers her transformation sequence, allowing Sasami to become Pretty Sammy. It changes her clothes and grants her magical powers. Magic also seemed to make it harder for people to recognise Sasami, and Pretty Sammy were one and the same. But it didn't stop people from deducing it on their own later.
• Pretty Coquettish Bomber: Pretty Sammy's ultimate attack and trump card. It is a very powerful offensive spell, usually enough to defeat most enemies as such many stories create obstacles to prevent her from casting it. The Magical Project S version is apparently non-lethal, as her enemies are often seen later unharmed, or the spell simply destroys evil magic. It seems to be of planetary scale as energy from around the earth seems to converge before Sasami casts it.
• Pretty Sexy Coquettish Bomber: A team-up attack that she can use whenever she and Pixy Misa combine their ultimate abilities for a very powerful offensive attack .
• Enhanced Physical Attributes: Ryo-Ohki claims that transforming enhances Sasami's physical prowess, which can also improve with training. Her enhanced stamina, endurance, strength, and athleticism can be attributed to this power. In the OVA especially, she demonstrated several kicks and punches enhanced by her magic, showing impressive physical feats. Overall, she seemed to operate at the level of a top human athlete.
• Pretty Home Run Attack: Her baton can redirect energy attacks as if she were using it like a baseball bat. She used an unlabeled version of this ability in Magical Project S to assist Pixy Misa.
• Miscellaneous Magic: While Sasami shows little interest in developing her magical abilities beyond saving the day, she was nonetheless given vast magical powers by her benefactor, Tsunami, for her quest to protect the world. Like her rival, she has the potential to warp reality on a small scale, casting various spells outside her usual arsenal to adapt to specific situations. For example, using her Magic Baton, Konoha created a castle and used mind control. The spell "Pipopa" summoned food. In the OVA, Sasami also appeared to charm others with her cuteness.

OVA (Exclusive Powers)

• Hyper Sammy: Unlike her Magical Project S version, Sasami can only use her trump card, the Pretty Coquettish Bomber, with this power-up. Her clothes become fancier as a result of this transformation.
• Pretty Heart Boomerang Attack: A magic attack involving Sasami's Magic Baton. As the name implies, the attack uses magical energy to return to her like a boomerang.
• Magic Shield: A spell that blocks enemy attacks, including magic, from reaching or harming Sasami.
• Pretty Wing: A spell that grows wings on her boots, apparently granting her the ability to glide.

Magical Project S (Exclusive Powers)

• Pipopa: Seen in the theme song, this spell summons or creates food out of thin air.
• Teleportation: It allows Sasami to nearly instantly change locations. It's a difficult spell that even Tsunami struggled with. However, after training, Sasami mastered it and regularly used it in battles and to save herself from falling. Notably, Pixy Misa was proficient with teleportation from the start.
• Pretty Space: A phenomenon that manifests whenever Sammy casts her "Pretty Coquettish Bomber" spell. Reality seems to warp, changing the environment with a pink sky with floating hearths, symbolizing her magical control. It is not inherently harmful, but it can be overturned as a sign of her being overpowered.
• Flight/Levitation (Temporary): In one episode, Sammy was able to meet a flying Pixy Misa in the sky and fight her above Tokyo. Later, Sasami glided safely to the ground. However, this power was not shown consistently and is not considered a regular ability. She instead relied on teleportation when in danger of falling from great heights.
• Pretty Time Wap (Time Travel): A one-shot comic had Sammy practice a new spell that allowed her to time travel by casting time portals. She accidentally was sent thousands of years into the future to the year 4999. Given that, much like her teleportation spell, she was still practicing, and she hadn't mastered it yet, she had to be rescued by Pixy Misa.

Magical Night 1 Radio Play Exclusive powers

• Pretty Mutation Miracle recall: A second transformation on top of her regular transformation. This spell can transform Sasami into an adult version of herself. It’s mostly used to give Sasami access to places she wouldn’t be allowed as a kid. Tenchi doesn’t seem to recognize adult Sasami as his sister and thus he developed a crush on Sasami’s adult self. A variation of this spell was used to undo Tenchi's petrification curse at the cost of Sasami losing this power.

Weaknesses

• Magic Linked to Age: The MPS version of Sasami drank a potion that aged her and temporarily turned her into a baby. As a result, her magic strengthened or weakened considerably, depending on her age. Thus, her magic grows stronger as she gets older and weaker as she becomes younger.
• Baton Dependency: In all versions, Sasami has no inherent powers of her own. Without her Magic Baton, she reverts to being an average (albeit athletic) girl.
• Magic Absorption: Like all magic users, Sasami is vulnerable to magic-negation powers, such as those used by Hikari. She is also susceptible to having her magic drained by Romio's NT system, which would revert her to a normal human girl.
• The Petrification Curse (Magical Night 1 Radio exclusive) : While Sasami is usually too embarrassed to disclose she is magical girl, her main incentive not to share her secret identity in the radio play version is a curse. This curse would turn anyone to stone if they ever discovered her secret identity, thus forcing her to keep it a secret whether she likes it or not. This ends up happening to Tenchi, and thus Sasami had to find a special magic stone and sacrifice her magic power to become slightly older in order to save him.

Trivia

• Instead of being Jurain like she was in the main series, she was reimagined as being a human japanese girl, and a Tokyo resident.
• Sasami first debuted as a magical girl in 1993 in a voice drama titled Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki CD Special 1: Creation of the Universe Journey Across Space-Time. This adventure was later adapted into an episode of Tenchi Universe. She also appeared in animation as part of a music video and as a fully-fledged character in the Mihoshi Special.
• Mirroring how in the meta series Tsunami and Sasami are in the process of merging into one being, in the pretty Sammy continuities it was explained that Sasami was chosen as a magical girl, because she is Tsunami's "kindred spirit". Thus the link between the two is kept, explaining their similarities, while keeping the two separate. Similarly Ramia also chose Misao as her own magical girl champion because the two are also kindred spirits.
• While very similar in appearance, the Magical Project S and OVA versions of Pretty Sammy can easily be distinguished by the ornaments on their belts. The OVA version features strings, while the Magical Project S version has a golden clam-like shape.
• There was an unsuccessful attempt to have her return as Pretty Sammy in Sasami: 14, a proposed sequel to Magical Project S. Had it been greenlit, it would have depicted her adventures as a more experienced 14-year-old magical girl after a four-year time skip from the original series.
• The "NT system" upgrade she uses for her magic seems to be a reference to Windows NT which was alredy outdated even when she first used it.
• The Sasami: Magical Girls club version of Sasami is one of the few version of Sasami that never fell in love with Tenchi, nor was she related to him. The reason is that Tenchi never made an appearance on this show. Instead Amitav takes his place as Sasami’s main love interest.

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