Usagi in Tears: A Glass Slipper for My Birthday

On June 30, Kaolinite tells Professor Tomoe she is certain the day's target carries a talisman, and he grants her his most powerful Daimon. Usagi, meanwhile, is stung that her friends seem indifferent to her birthday and still intend to study at the shrine. Spotting a pair of glass slippers in a shop window, she wishes aloud that Mamoru might buy them, then finds him and asks, only for him to reveal he has no idea what day it is. She slaps him and runs off in tears.

By a fountain she is met by Haruka and Michiru, who agree Mamoru should have remembered and, privately, sense that Usagi holds an unusually pure heart, perhaps even a talisman. When Rei quietly reminds Mamoru of the occasion, he sets out to buy the very slippers Usagi admired, unaware Kaolinite is lacing them with the Daimon Egg.

Reaching the shrine, Usagi is surprised by a birthday party her friends had planned all along, and, guilty for the slap, she leaves to find Mamoru and apologize. He offers her the slippers, but the moment she slides her foot inside, the Daimon bursts free and tears out her heart, declaring it holds a talisman. A rose from Tuxedo Mask interrupts the extraction, and he flees with Usagi, though her brooch is knocked away in the struggle. Kaolinite recovers it, recognizes it as Sailor Moon's, and deduces her identity.

Watching from cover, Uranus and Neptune wrestle with whether to claim the talisman even though its loss would kill Usagi, and Uranus concludes it must be taken. Kaolinite and the Daimon corner the pair in a parking garage; Usagi's call to Luna is cut short when her communicator is destroyed. As the alerted guardians race toward them, the Daimon seals Tuxedo Mask inside glass, and the episode ends on Usagi rushing to him while Kaolinite laughs.

The first half of a two-part story, this chapter fixes Usagi's birthday as June 30 and marks the first time anyone takes her brooch to keep her from transforming. It is also the first episode in which none of the Inner Guardians appear in their transformed forms. The Daimon's name, Cenicienta, is the Spanish word for Cinderella, tying it to the glass-slipper motif, and this is the last time Tomoe fashions Daimon Eggs through his laboratory beakers.