Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon S: The Movie

Released in Japanese theaters in 1994, this second Sailor Moon feature loosely reworks the manga side story The Lover of Princess Kaguya. Sukehiro Tomita handled the script and Hiroki Shibata directed. Pioneer and Optimum Productions produced the earliest English dub under the title Hearts in Ice, and Viz Media issued its own dubbed version on disc in 2018. Its warmer emotional thread follows the cat Luna rather than the usual villain of the week formula.

An icy extraterrestrial called Princess Snow Kaguya reaches Earth intending to freeze it solid, but she cannot proceed until her henchwomen recover a lost fragment of her comet. Back in Tokyo, a stargazing researcher named Kakeru Ozora recovers the shard and stores it inside his observatory. When Luna falls ill and is nearly struck by a car, Kakeru rescues and nurses her, and she quietly develops feelings for him, though he already has a girlfriend, the astronaut Himeko Nayotake, and Luna is, after all, a cat.

The comet fragment latches onto Kakeru's life force and slowly drains him. Kaguya seizes the shard, hurls it into the sea to form a colossal ice crystal, and begins blanketing the world in cold. The Guardians confront her, and even Super Sailor Moon is overpowered until the eight Guardians and Sailor Chibi Moon pour their strength into the Legendary Silver Crystal, destroying Kaguya, her Snow Dancers, and the ocean crystal. Usagi grants Luna a single night in human form, letting her save Kakeru just as he once saved her before steering him back toward Himeko, and the two cats reconcile.

The film premiered in Japan in December 1994. Its first English dub, released as Hearts in Ice, existed in two edits: a censored broadcast and VHS version carrying replacement music, and a fuller, mostly uncut disc version. Luna's transformation into human shape was trimmed in that dub because of the nudity in the scene. Viz Media later produced a faithful redub for a 2018 DVD, and the movie eventually reached a range of streaming services. It marks the only occasion in the anime where Luna's human form is shown.