Rei, Yuuichirou, and Sailor Moon S on a 1994 Banpresto Card

Rei & Yuuichirou Bond Card #272, Sailor Moon S — Banpresto, 1994

A Card From the Sailor Moon S Broadcast Year

Sailor Moon S was the third season of Toei Animation’s magical-girl series, broadcast in Japan from April 1994 through March 1995. Those 38 episodes — numbered 90 through 127 in the full run — introduced the outer solar system senshi (Sailor Uranus, Neptune, and Saturn) for the first time, and brought a darker, more emotionally layered storyline than earlier seasons. Director Kunihiko Ikuhara shaped much of the season’s tone before leaving mid-run. Among international fans, it remains one of the most discussed chapters of the franchise.

This card is part of a numbered collection that Banpresto produced alongside the 1994 broadcast. Banpresto is a Japanese toy and amusement-prize manufacturer with close ties to the Bandai group, known for producing figures, plush toys, and trading cards for popular anime series. Card #272 falls under a “Bond” theme, pairing Rei Hino with Yuuichirou Kumada. The set is described as “Episode Collectibles,” though whether this is the official Japanese product name or an English-language label on an export version is not entirely certain. The card carries bilingual text — “Sailormoon S” in English alongside the Japanese title — and a red Mars astronomical symbol in the lower left corner that links it visually to Sailor Mars before anything else registers.

Rei Hino, Yuuichirou, and the Relationship That Defines This Card

Rei Hino is one of the five inner senshi, transforming into Sailor Mars. Away from battle she lives and works as a miko (shrine maiden) at a Tokyo shrine, a setting that lends her character a particular gravity among the inner warrior group. Determined, introspective, and at times bluntly candid, she has become one of the franchise’s most internationally recognized figures.

Yuuichirou Kumada occupies a much quieter corner of the story. A young man who arrived at Rei’s grandfather’s shrine after a period of wandering, he stays on to help maintain the grounds. He carries an unrequited affection for Rei, and the show handles him with a light, sometimes comic touch. North American audiences watching the DIC dub knew him as Chad. Because he is a supporting character with no transformation or central plot role, standalone merchandise featuring him is uncommon. A “Bond” card that documents his specific connection to Rei is an unusual configuration — which gives it a certain distinctiveness within the broader Sailor Moon S collecting landscape.

Trading Cards in 1990s Japan

The mid-1990s were a high point for numbered anime trading card sets in Japan. Hit series generated large sequential runs organized around characters, episodes, and relationships from the show. These were collector’s items rather than game pieces — no gameplay rules, no combat stats, just imagery from the source material on glossy, rounded-corner card stock.

Banpresto was one of several manufacturers active in this space alongside its better-known figure and crane-game prize work. The Mars symbol, dual-language text, and glossy finish on this card are all characteristic of official licensed anime cards from the era. At over thirty years old, card #272 dates from the original broadcast year of Sailor Moon S — a specific artifact of the merchandise landscape that surrounded one of the decade’s most internationally distributed animated series.