Returning Memories: Usagi and Mamoru's Past

The thirty-fifth episode of the debut season pays off a long-building mystery. Now that Sailor Moon stands revealed as Princess Serenity, she and Mamoru relive their former existences as the moon princess and Prince Endymion of Earth. The Dark Kingdom spirits away the badly hurt Mamoru, yet Queen Beryl turns on Zoisite and executes him for defying her order to take Tuxedo Mask alive, while Luna and Artemis at last unfold the guardians' sorrowful history.

With the wounded Tuxedo Mask cradled in Princess Serenity's arms, Zoisite lunges for the Silver Crystal, only to be hurled back and knocked out by the Moon Stick. Serenity recounts the age of the Silver Millennium, when Usagi reigned over the moon and Mamoru ruled the Earth as Endymion, a pair of lovers whose bond ended in ruin. Back in the present she reverts to Sailor Moon and collapses as Tuxedo Mask fades. Kunzite arrives to retrieve both Zoisite and the captured hero, and once home an impatient Beryl strikes Zoisite down before his ally's eyes. As he dies in Kunzite's embrace, Zoisite professes his love and asks only for a beautiful death, and Kunzite conjures a bed of flowers around him.

The guardians find themselves trapped in a two-dimensional rift with an unconscious Sailor Moon. The moon cats reveal that Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Venus once guarded Princess Serenity, and that the Silver Crystal reincarnated them after the Dark Kingdom's assault. All swear to fight the revived evil except Sailor Moon, who refuses her role until Mars slaps her and berates her for squandering Tuxedo Mask's sacrifice. When Kunzite corners them and demands her surrender, he beats down the others one by one, leaving Sailor Moon alone; buoyed by the voices of her friends and Mamoru, she channels the Silver Crystal to defeat him and return everyone to Earth. Meanwhile Beryl feeds dark energy into Mamoru as his memories of Serenity dissolve.

This chapter debuts Prince Endymion and stands as the final appearance of Zoisite. The DiC dub reworked several beats: it cut the slap from Sailor Mars despite having shown it in the episode preview, rewrote the argument between the two guardians, and, having recast Zoisite as a woman, softened his death scene into fading away as a cherry blossom petal. A visible slip has Queen Serenity drawn with blonde hair rather than silver, likely a nod to the manga's original plan for Usagi. The English version, titled A Reluctant Princess, aired in North America on October 23, 1995, following the Japanese premiere on December 5, 1992.