The Crybaby: Usagi's Beautiful Transformation

Usagi Tsukino is a fourteen-year-old middle schooler, cheerful but clumsy and quick to cry, forever stumbling into trouble she never asked for. When she rescues a black cat from cruel children, she uncovers a crescent mark beneath a bandage on its head. That cat, Luna, later reveals that a hidden evil menaces innocent lives and that Usagi carries the power to resist it. Handed a magical brooch, she calls out the transformation phrase and becomes Sailor Moon, a champion sworn to love and justice.

Usagi oversleeps, is scolded by her teacher Ms. Haruna over a failing English test, and spends the afternoon at the OSA-P jewelry shop run by the mother of her friend Naru. A crumpled test tossed over her shoulder strikes a sharp-tongued stranger who dubs her "Bun-head." Far below the city, Queen Beryl presses her followers to gather energy for their sleeping ruler, and the general Jadeite volunteers his youma to drain it from humans. That night the OSA-P shoppers fall under a spell, and the monster Morga, wearing the face of Naru's mother, seizes the girl. Luna gives Usagi the brooch, she transforms, and races to the store. Overwhelmed and frightened, she weeps until the jewels in her hair release Supersonic Waves that stall the enemy, and a caped stranger's rose steadies her. Following Luna's guidance, she hurls her tiara with Moon Tiara Action and destroys Morga, freeing the captives.

Adapted closely from the manga's opening chapter, the episode debuts "Moonlight Legend" as its opening theme and "Heart Moving" at its close, and stages Sailor Moon's first transformation sequence. Sailor V appears only as a daydream poster, the earliest glimpse of a guardian in the whole series. The DiC dub retitled it "A Moon Star is Born," reordered footage to explain the Silver Millennium far ahead of the original, swapped the failed English test for algebra, and softened Usagi's furious mother into a parent sending her off to study. It first aired in Japan on March 7, 1992.