To understand why Ranma held the Aquarius Amulet, a brief aside in metaphysics must take place. Keep in mind that the Silver Millennium was a utopian society that spanned much of the known solar system. At its peak, this civilization’s population numbered in the tens of millions. That’s a lot of souls. It should therefore come as little surprise that in any given universe that had a Silver Millennium, nearly every person on Earth could trace his or her past lives back to a different planet. For example, Cologne was once a bureaucrat whose office was on one of the tinier moons of Jupiter. The old woman who had a habit of ladling water on the sidewalk was at one point the Grand Duchess of Triton. The discrepancies were the result of several hundred intervening lives, with their own experiences, karmic tweaks, and so forth. Souls that are considered “new” by most mystics in these timelines are simply ones that had been in Limbo for several millennia and bear a considerable resemblance to those long dead. This is essentially how eight of the Princesses of the Silver Millennium were reincarnated with minimal alteration from their royal personas.
Ranma Saotome is no different to most people, dozens upon dozens of lives having tweaked his spirit to something somewhat unlike his last incarnation during the Silver Millennium. That person had been the son of a peasant from Tethys, one of Saturn’s moons, and a minor aristocrat from Oberon, a Uranian satellite. His parents’ meeting, courtship, and marriage were products of and rife with million-to-one chances, ridiculous misunderstandings, pure coincidence, and sheer dumb luck. To summarize, all the forces that would come back to haunt Ranma when he was Ranma.
Their son, having come from a mixed marriage and of debatably royal blood, was assigned the duties of a page, a sort of double ambassador to and for both Saturn and Uranus. Naturally, given the nature of Saturn and its royal family, the communiqués were few but always of vital importance. Proto-Ranma performed his duty with skill, loyalty, and aplomb. Indeed, his service was so commendable, his daughter was the last person granted the title of Sailor Aquarius.
Aquarius would look familiar to observers accustomed to the reincarnation of her father. Red hair, short stature, generous bust line, and so forth. However, the similarities between her and Ranma in either gender largely ended there. The comparison that best described the two is that between a jewelry-ready diamond and the Mesozoic flora that would eventually become a seam of coal, provided one didn’t match chronological analogues. Aquarius was brilliantly intelligent, wildly imaginative, fascinated with technology and magic, and would have loosely fit the archetype of benign mad scientist. (Not to say Ranma lacked intellectual potential. It was just almost completely untapped.) Still, she was equally rebellious, stubborn, and outspoken as her father’s current life.
To return to the point, the reason the Aquarius Amulet had found its way to Ranma was not happenstance. As with most mystical items, the amulet had a bit of say in its fate, and to the Mobius logic of magic, the best person with whom it could be entrusted, after its Senshi, would be a page of the Silver Millennium. Among these, the best choice was its last bearer’s father. The trick had simply been waiting for a suitable soul to wend its way to the Amulet after the Planetary Senshi had been reincarnated…or a smidgen before.
The end result of all of this was Ranma holding a small amulet decorated with three wavy lines reminiscent of a body of water. Now the trick was finding the reincarnation of Sailor Aquarius. Fortunately, the Amulet had honed in on her soul harmonics, and would gently push Ranma in her general direction.
Since the Zodiac Senshi hadn’t been included in the last spell woven by Queen Serenity, their personalities had also been altered by more than a few intermediary lifetimes. Still, the soul was still recognizable to the Amulet, which, after Rei’s dream, had begun leading Ranma to:
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Tue, 17 Jul 2007 02:27)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.