Romance Under the Moon: Usagi's First Kiss

Late for class again, Usagi puzzles over the police checkpoints crowding the streets. The reason surfaces at school: Umino explains that Princess D of the Diamond Kingdom is arriving to display her gems and reveal a prized family heirloom called the Legendary Secret Treasure. Naru, whose jeweller parents were invited to the gala, offers to scout it for her.

The same event catches the Dark Kingdom's attention. Beryl suspects the treasure's name might point to the Silver Crystal, and when Zoisite volunteers to check, Nephrite brushes him aside and claims the mission for himself. Kunzite quietly reassures the seething Zoisite that Nephrite can be discarded later. At Hikawa Shrine, Luna floats the idea that Princess D could be the royal they have hunted for, and Ami proposes slipping into the embassy for a look.

Barred from tagging along with her reporter father, Usagi uses the Disguise Pen to pose as royalty and bluffs her way into the masked ball. Meanwhile Tuxedo Mask wakes shaken from a dream of a girl pleading with him to recover the Silver Crystal.

Nephrite plants a shadow in Naru and steers her toward Princess D, seizing the girl's body to snatch the heirloom. Before the ball, a clumsy spill ruins Usagi's borrowed gown and leaves her without a partner, until Tuxedo Mask asks her to dance. As they spin together, both sense a familiarity neither can place, and he begins connecting her face to his dream.

When the possessed princess tries to hand the stolen treasure down to Nephrite, Usagi intervenes and is shoved over the balcony rail. Tuxedo Mask catches her hand just in time. Nephrite moves to finish them, but Sailor Mars drives him back with Fire Soul alongside Sailor Mercury, and Luna tosses down an umbrella so the pair can drift safely to the ground. Pressed by Mercury on whose side he stands, Tuxedo Mask admits he cannot say, only that he chases the same crystal they do, which could make him a rival.

Controlled once more from outside, Princess D knocks the guests out cold, but Sailor Mars flushes the shadow into the open with Akuryo Taisan, Mercury scatters it with Bubble Spray, and Sailor Moon erases it using Moon Tiara Action. The vaunted treasure turns out to be a two-thousand-carat statue of the princess herself, leaving Nephrite furious at the wasted effort.

The installment adapts Act 4 of the manga and marks the point where the anime's plot begins diverging sharply from the source. Kunzite appears here only in silhouette, with his full debut held for the following episode. Nephrite mistakenly calls Earth his own domain, a claim later contradicted when the Dark Kingdom is shown to sit in the Arctic.

Usagi mistakes punch for alcohol and ends up tipsy, a gag repeated much later in episode 108. Tuxedo Mask carries her onto the balcony and kisses her while she is barely conscious, stirring a buried memory of the same moment long ago. The DiC dub reworked this by making her merely ill and reframing the kiss as a dream, and it cut the umbrella descent entirely, playing the fall in reverse instead. Their first fully conscious kiss comes much later in the series.