Protect the Melody of Love: Usagi Plays Cupid

The sixth installment of the opening season, long absent from the original English release and later restored by Viz, follows a chance meeting in the rain. Usagi runs into Yusuke Amade, a well-known musician convinced a youma is hunting him. Once she and Luna decide his fears are genuine, they shadow him to the club where he performs, determined to catch the creature in the act and keep him safe.

Inside the Dark Kingdom, Jadeite presents Queen Beryl with a cassette whose frequency saps the life from anything nearby, meant to harvest human energy for Queen Metalia. He dispatches the monster Kyurene to slip the tape into a musician's recording. At Jam Records the plan tangles when a staffer named Akiko mistakes the cursed cassette for Yusuke's demo and leaves it in his hands. Yusuke, meanwhile, has come to confess his love to Akiko, roses and all. After he collides with Usagi on the street and explains his monstrous pursuer, she uses the Disguise Pen to pose as a performer and watch over him at his show.

In the parking garage Kyurene ambushes Yusuke, snatches the tape, and flees as a swarm of bats. Usagi and Yusuke give chase by car to Jam Records, where every worker has been lulled to sleep. Luna knocks the cassette loose, Usagi grabs it, and Kyurene takes Akiko hostage to force a trade. Usagi flings the tape into the air, Yusuke pulls Akiko free, and Luna shatters the cassette. As Sailor Moon, Usagi hurls a microphone that amplifies Kyurene's own supersonic waves back through nearby speakers, stunning the monster long enough for Moon Tiara Action to finish her. Yusuke and Akiko later marry, to Naru's dismay, and Usagi shows off his new record titled Moonlight Lady, its cover shaped like Sailor Moon.

This was one of six early episodes cut entirely from the DiC dub and only reached English viewers through the Viz stream on May 26, 2014, after the Japanese broadcast on April 18, 1992. It featured tweaks to the season's opening, with Moon, Mercury, and Mars shedding their veiled silhouettes to reveal their guardian forms, and a small change to the Moon Prism Power transformation. In a fun bit of casting, Emi Shinohara, later the voice of Sailor Jupiter, played Kyurene, and Stephanie Sheh voiced both Usagi and the same monster in the Viz version. A running gag has Sailor Moon confuse Bach and Haydn as the so-called father of music before Luna corrects her.