Venus: Minako's Nurse Mayhem

A cold cooked up by Esmeraude spreads across Tokyo, and Minako is the rare person who stays well. Determined to nurse her ailing friends, she instead makes a mess of every attempt at care, culminating in a visit to the Tsukino home where she and Chibiusa try to look after a feverish Usagi.

Minako's clumsy nursing wrecks Rei's boombox and leaves her with oversalted rice porridge before she reaches Usagi's house. After Usagi faints and wakes under Minako's care, the two realize the epidemic is Esmeraude's scheme. When the villain moves to jab Chibiusa with a needle through her droid, Minako blocks her and bluffs that she has cracked the entire plan. The recovered guardians, restored by Minako's earlier tending, come to her rescue, though she winds up sick herself and passes the bug to Artemis, left choking down the same salty porridge she once inflicted on Rei.

In the manga it was Petz, not Esmeraude, who released the flu, and during summer rather than winter. The DiC dub renamed the rice porridge as soup and recast Rei's complaint about its saltiness as spiciness. The episode drew renewed attention around 2020, when some viewers felt its outbreak eerily foreshadowed the COVID-19 pandemic. Minako's apron still shows her full name even in dubs that shortened it to "Mina."