The Painting of Love: Usagi and Mamoru Get Closer

The reclusive illustrator Yumemi Yumeno, whose romantic pictures are said to make dreams come true, decides that Usagi and Mamoru are the perfect pair to pose for her. Neither is thrilled about being thrown together, but their session becomes far more dangerous once Zoisite marks the artist as his next target.

Beryl is furious that two of the three recovered Rainbow Crystals have slipped away and that half of her generals are dead. Zoisite promises to retrieve the next stone, which he learns rests inside a bespectacled young woman. Meanwhile, a gloomy Usagi wanders an autumn park full of couples, brooding over whether Tuxedo Mask is friend or foe, and carelessly drops the Moon Stick, which Luna rescues just before it rolls into the pond. At a gallery of Yumemi's work, Usagi and Naru run into Mamoru, whose recurring dream matches one of the drawings on display. When Yumemi collides with him, she recognizes him at once as the ideal subject she has been hunting for and drags both him and Usagi off to her home.

There the pair discover that the artist has kept her plain looks hidden so the public would imagine her beautiful. Seated side by side, Usagi privately admits Mamoru is handsome before scolding herself for the thought. Yumemi explains that she draws so strangers might find happiness and love, though she keeps none for herself, prompting Mamoru's blunt observation that one cannot bring others joy without first finding it within. A picture of a woman giving a man a pendant leaves Mamoru shaken, and Yumemi confesses that particular pair always pains her to draw.

That night the Moon Stick reacts near Yumemi's house, where Zoisite uses his dark crystal to warp her into Binah, one of the Seven Great Youma. Sailor Moon corners the pair at a construction site and is nearly crushed by conjured boulders until Tuxedo Mask saves her and gives chase to Zoisite. As the other Guardians hold off the monster with Sailor Mercury's bubble attack, Sailor Moon shields Tuxedo Mask with her tiara, but Zoisite escapes with the fourth crystal. When Sailor Moon's dropped pendant makes Tuxedo Mask murmur about a princess, he denies knowing anything, lets her keep it, and openly declares himself her rival where the Rainbow Crystals are concerned. She then returns to finish the fight, using Moon Healing Escalation to restore Yumemi.

The episode leans on foreshadowing: Mamoru's dream and the pendant imagery point toward the deeper Silver Millennium romance, and the Princess Serenity glimpsed in his dream wears the very gown Usagi donned at an earlier masquerade ball. Among Yumemi's background paintings, one recalls a folklore princess later referenced in a Sailor Moon S film, and another resembles the past enemy Nephrite alongside Naru.

The DiC English dub cut a scene of Usagi complaining to Luna about Tuxedo Mask keeping a Rainbow Crystal, though it resurfaced in a bonus segment. In that version the artist is renamed Peggy Jones, working under the alias Lani Lanai because audiences preferred her art under that name. A background gag also slips in two paintings from an earlier Naoko Takeuchi series, The Cherry Project.