Premonition of the Apocalypse: The Mysterious New Guardians Appear

Launching the S season as the ninetieth episode of the franchise, this installment sets the stakes for a longer war. Rei is haunted by a premonition in which shadow blankets the planet, her fellow fighters and the whole of Tokyo are frozen into stone, and a single burst of energy wipes out Sailor Moon and the others. In the aftermath a lone brilliant light splits into three and drifts off. When a Daimon later ambushes Rei, none of the usual attacks can bring it down, and it takes the surprise arrival of two masked strangers, later known as Neptune and Uranus, to finish the creature.

The girls gather at the Hikawa Shrine to cram for an exam, though Rei stays rattled by her dream and Usagi keeps nodding off. Elsewhere a scientist called Professor Tomoe crows to his aide Kaolinite that their creation is ready, explaining that three talismans lie hidden inside three Pure Heart Crystals and that collecting all of them will conjure a Holy Grail of enormous power. He looses a Daimon Egg, which burrows into a tree on the shrine grounds. When Rei pins a paper charm to that tree, it warps into the monster Mikuuji, which nails her to a wall with detachable stone hands and blasts a glowing light out of her chest.

Usagi and Luna race to the scream and she becomes Sailor Moon, but the Daimon shrugs off every effort, even Moon Princess Halation. The rest of the team and Tuxedo Mask are pinned before they can help. Mikuuji shatters Usagi's compact, which shuts down the Silver Crystal and drops her back to her civilian self, then wrenches a heart crystal free from Rei. Two sudden energy blasts strike the monster and revert it to a harmless tree. The pair of mysterious guardians inspect Rei's crystal, judge it is not the one they hunt, and hand it back. With the danger gone, the freed friends rush to the reviving Rei and puzzle over the identity of this new foe.

The chapter is a milestone of firsts and lasts. It introduces Sailor Uranus, Sailor Neptune, Souichi Tomoe, and Kaolinite, along with the Pure Heart Crystal and Daimon Egg, plus early unnamed showings of World Shaking and Deep Submerge. It is the final time Usagi transforms with the phrase Moon Crystal Power, Make Up and the last outing for her Crystal Star brooch; from the next episode she wields the Cosmic Heart Compact and a new call. This was also the first episode handled by Cloverway for the English release, retitled Star Struck, Bad Luck, which reportedly nods to a Rainbow song that rhymes starstruck with bad luck. The Japanese broadcast fell on March 19, 1994, with the dub reaching North America on June 12, 2000.