Back to the Board
I haven’t played Monopoly in years. Maybe not since my cousin—the scratchy type who’d get bored after thirty minutes and start throwing houses and hotels at me in frustration. Or with my dad, who refused to lose. He had this uncanny way of maneuvering me into financial ruin so smoothly that I stopped believing in capitalism altogether. I’ve been quietly rooting for the collapse of international banking ever since.
But here’s the thing: despite those disasters, Monopoly means something to me. It was about sitting down with people I actually liked, giving them three hours of my time, and doing nothing but slowly bankrupting each other. Yeah, it usually ended in chaos or days of awkward silence. But when someone eventually asked if we wanted to play again, we’d all say yes. Because it was fun. Because the sitting together was what mattered.
I found out there’s a Sailor Moon Monopoly. Not the redesigned characters from the new anime, but the originals—Usagi and the girls we actually wanted to play as. It’s not a thing I needed, but it’s making me want to sit down and play again. With people who watched the same show. Who get why playing as a sailor guardian matters even if it’s just pretend real estate.
There’s something about having the exact right version of something that makes me want to come back to it. The characters I actually cared about. The thing that reminds me why I liked it in the first place. I’ll get it for that reason—not because Monopoly is a good game or because Sailor Moon deserves a board. Just because I want to sit with the right people for three hours and do something pointless together. That’s the whole thing.