Death of the Sailor Guardians: The Tragic Final Battle

With Metalia's return drawing close, the five heroines accept that reaching the Dark Kingdom may cost them everything. Before they set out, Usagi botches a curry dinner for her family, and the group gathers at Hikawa Shrine to trade small hopes about who they might love and what they will do once the fight is over. Beneath a full moon they join hands and vanish through Sailor Teleport, leaving Artemis and Luna behind to pray for their return.

Their destination lies at D Point inside the Arctic Circle, where Beryl has offered any monster brave enough the chance to intercept the team. The formidable DD Girls take the assignment. A purple haze soon blankets the tundra, and the enemy starts weaponizing each Guardian's affections, conjuring illusions of loved ones to bait them into fatal traps.

Phantoms of Tuxedo Mask and then Motoki draw first Sailor Moon and later Sailor Jupiter into peril. Hoisted into the air and shocked with electricity, Jupiter pours every last bit of herself into Supreme Thunder, obliterating two attackers before her strength fails and she dies. A shattered Usagi has to be slapped back to her senses by Mercury.

Mercury then stays behind to delay the surviving trio, freezing their lava with Shabon Spray and finally cracking the gem on the leader's brow that powers their illusions, a final act that ends her life. Venus is hauled underground and scorched, yet fires a point-blank Crescent Beam that kills a monster and herself in the resulting blast.

That leaves only Mars and Sailor Moon. Encased in an ice mountain and presumed gone, Mars burns free just long enough to reduce the last enemy to ash with Fire Soul, dying with a regret that she never kissed Yuichiro farewell. Alone and numb on the snow, Sailor Moon is stirred by the spirits of her fallen friends, who tell her she is never truly alone as she runs on toward the Dark Kingdom.

This installment debuts Sailor Teleport and ends the season's use of Yoma, though the DD Girls operate as elite hunters rather than a monster-of-the-day. It also captures Usagi's first attempt at cooking curry, a dish she would try again the next season. The manga staged these deaths quite differently: there the team sacrificed their transformation pens to awaken Sailor Moon within Metalia, and Beryl fell before them.

For its North American release, DiC merged this episode with the finale into one broadcast called Day of Destiny, cutting the ruined dinner, the graphic deaths, and the spirits' farewell while reworking dialogue so the heroines seemed captured rather than killed. As they fall one by one, Endymion's brainwashing finishes and he wakes with malice in his eyes.