Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon R: The Movie

Standing as the debut film spun off from the Sailor Moon television anime, this 1993 release originally screened in Japan alongside a short titled Make Up! Sailor Guardians. Sukehiro Tomita wrote the screenplay and Kunihiko Ikuhara directed. English editions carried the subtitle The Promise of the Rose, and the picture has since been dubbed twice, first by Pioneer and Optimum Productions and later by Viz Media, which gave it a fresh theatrical run in 2017. A soundtrack album accompanied the original Japanese premiere.

An outing to a botanical garden stirs Mamoru's buried memory of a lonely, hospitalized childhood, when a strange boy vowed to return one day carrying flowers. That boy, an alien called Fiore, now reappears, wounded that Mamoru no longer knows him and hostile toward Usagi. Soon a low mass asteroid laced with plant energy is detected drifting toward Earth, and the city is overrun by draining, vine wrapped civilians and monstrous flower creatures. The Guardians beat them back, but Fiore, corrupted by the parasitic Xenian Flower fused to him, spirits the injured Mamoru away.

Learning that the asteroid is Fiore's hideout, the team teleports into space and battles through waves of blossoming monsters. Fiore intends to seed the planet and wipe out humanity, believing the world discarded his only friend. When he drains Sailor Moon and hurls the asteroid's core at Earth, Usagi resolves to unleash the Silver Crystal despite the danger to her own life. Fiore crushes her brooch, but the crystal reveals the truth: the rose he once received from Mamoru had itself been a gift from a young Usagi, a small kindness passed forward.

Freed from the flower's grip, Fiore falls when Mamoru strikes him with a rose. Usagi channels the Silver Crystal to protect her friends from the falling debris, and the strain shatters the gem and seemingly kills her. Grateful for being saved, Fiore offers the nectar of his own life flower, which Mamoru passes to Usagi with a kiss, reviving her and mending the crystal. Reunited, the Guardians weep with relief as Usagi assures them she kept her promise.

The film first opened in Japan in December 1993, and a companion music collection went on sale later that month. Its earliest English dub came from Pioneer and Optimum Productions rather than the DiC team behind the series, and it swapped the insert song Moon Revenge for a track called The Power of Love while renaming Usagi's finishing move. A Viz Media redub arrived decades afterward with a limited theatrical showing in early 2017 followed by disc releases. The movie later became available across numerous streaming platforms.