Who is the True Messiah? Chaos of Light and Darkness

During an amateur movie shoot that doubles as a picnic, Chibiusa strikes up a fast friendship with Hotaru Tomoe, a sickly and withdrawn girl her own age who quietly carries unusual powers. The story hints at something darker beneath the bond, since Hotaru's father Souichi Tomoe is the deranged researcher responsible for creating the Death Busters.

Hotaru makes her anime debut here, and her act of catching Chibiusa's runaway hat becomes a memory revisited far later in episode 168, when a reborn Hotaru begins recovering her past. The installment also introduces the spoken transformation cue Crisis Make Up and showcases the attacks Dead Scream and Rainbow Moon Heartache. Viewers see that a person whose Heart Crystal is pulled out and swallowed by a Daimon turns an ashen gray.

This twenty-third chapter of the third season, the 112th overall, aired in Japan on November 5, 1994, written by Shigeru Yanagawa and directed by Noriyo Sasaki. North America received it as Show Stoppers on July 12, 2000, and its featured monster is U-Estern.

In the Cloverway dub, Sailor Moon shouts Moon Crisis Power! while rising into Super Sailor Moon rather than the Japanese and Viz line Crisis, Make Up! The manga also stages the first meeting outside a Mugen Academy laboratory building and has Chibiusa injure her arm instead of her knee.