On hangover days my boyfriend and I watch Sailor Moon. It has a mind-numbing simplicity as soothing as a cold compress to the head, and an uncompromising repetitiveness, allowing lapses in attention from minutes to entire episodes — it doesn’t matter, the bad guys will be back, mostly unchanged, next episode. Their plans will stay the same. The Sailor Scouts will foil them. It’s ultimate hangover viewing. It’s also, we decided one morning, groggy from the night before and running on little more than BBQ chips and gummy bears, an anti-capitalist text.

Okay, okay, it wouldn’t be accurate to characterise Sailor Moon as an intentionally anti-capitalist text, or even a strongly anti-capitalist one. I don’t want to get your hopes up. But it does have strong anti-capitalist undertones and, like all art, it can helps us see the ideological soup within which it swims and to which it points its gloved finger. Althusser said that. Or, what he said was that works of art “give us a ‘view’ of the ideology to which their work alludes and with which it is constantly fed, a view which presupposes a retreat, an internal distantiation from the very ideology from which [the art] emerged. [It] makes us “perceive” (but not know) in some sense from the inside, by an internal distance, the very ideology in which they are held.” Sailor Moon gives us this view vis-à-vis capitalism, while also charting a generalised dissatisfaction with its realities. In this essay I will — No really, I will.

Episode 1: A Moon Star is born

Born out of the 1991 manga Bishojo Senshi Sailor Moon (“Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon”) by Naoko Takeuchi, Sailor Moon arrived in so-called Australia in 1994 and aired on Channel 7’s Agro’s Cartoon Connection. It’s probably one of the most iconic anime series in the world, rivalling Pokémon and Dragon Ball Z as far as brand recognition goes. Everyone — or at least every millennial — knows Sailor Moon; everyone has a favourite Sailor Scout; everyone can finish the sentence “fighting evil by moonlight, winning …” (or the equivalent in their language). Around the world, Sailor Moon heralded a new era in children’s programming, not only the increasing popularity of anime, but also the ascendance of cartoons targeted specifically to girls. Card Captor Sakura, Winx, W.I.T.C.H., Powerpuff Girls, Totally Spies!, Kim Possible et cetera, all follow from Sailor Moon. The feminist revolution was here, and it would be televised.

The show’s premise is simple, if absurd: five middle-school girls are charged with finding the Moon Princess and protecting the planet from various evil forces. They have help from the talking cats Luna and Artemis and from a caped stranger named Tuxedo Mask. Usagi — Sailor Moon — is the first scout discovered. She’s an unlikely hero. Described by one academic as “a boy-crazy 14-year-old whose main talents lie in the areas of eating, shopping, and sleeping” and another as “a clumsy, noisy, boy-crazy crybaby”, it’s hard to believe she’ll be able to stop playing video games long enough to save the world, yet somehow, she does. As the series progresses, Usagi discovers and befriends the other Sailor Scouts and together they fight the forces of evil attacking Earth.

First there’s Ami/Sailor Mercury, a brilliant student who, in guardian form, has powers associated with water and access to futuristic tech. Then Rei/Sailor Mars, a tempestuous shrine maiden with psychic abilities, powers associated with fire and the ability to use Ofuda talismans against villains. The next to be discovered is Makoto/Sailor Jupiter, a tough new student with a penchant for domestic labour (cooking, especially) whose powers include superhuman strength and the ability to channel electricity. Finally, Minako/Sailor Venus, a superhero in her own right and, at least in the anime, a bit of a silly goose whose powers fall broadly under the rubric “love and beauty” but mostly involve heart-shaped attacks. Alongside the five main characters, there’s the aforementioned Tuxedo Mask, a university student-cum-love-interest named Mamoru, who helps by making cryptic speeches and chucking roses. At some point a child named Chibi Usa appears and becomes pivotal. Other Sailor Scouts are discovered in later seasons, but since only the first two aired in Australia in the 90s, that’s where I’ll direct my attention (albeit, using the scouts’ original Japanese names; they’re just better). These are the seasons that people are most familiar with, and they’re also the most overtly concerned with representations of capitalist consumption and therefore the most relevant to this essay. For similar reasons, I’m leaving aside the abundant and joyful queerness and gender-fuckery of the later seasons, as well as the sheer campiness of it all. Too, its racial politics and most questions regarding its feminism. This is a rich text, folks, and probably deserves its own essay collection. At the very least, a zine.

Episode 2: Talk radio (Marx)

When I was a kid, my mother worked multiple jobs. Sometimes neighbours looked after us, sometimes we stayed home alone. Even after she remarried and we had two incomes to support us, Mum worked a second job on the weekends. We were fighting our way out of the housing commission and into the middle class, and for that, we needed money. Both my sister and I got jobs when we were legally allowed to at fourteen and nine months and have had jobs ever since. This is not what the world looks like in Sailor Moon.

No-one has to work in Juban District. Of course, people do: Usagi’s father is a salaryman and there are teachers, store clerks and janitors moving through the world. But money isn’t exchanged for labour and it seems not to be a problem for anyone. There’s no such thing as poverty in this world. Everyone lives in beautiful, airy houses with all the modern amenities — even orphaned children. Mako, whose parents died in a plane crash, lives in a charming and plant-filled apartment all by herself. Mamoru, whose parents also died when he was a child, lives alone in a minimalist apartment with a balcony and view. When new middle-schoolers Ail and An move to the area, they too live in their very own stylish apartment. Neither healthcare nor education are limited by anyone’s financial circumstances, nor does anything prevent the Sailor Scouts from spending all their time shopping, playing video games and eating in restaurants.

This world is something of a utopia, something other-than-capitalist. Money is never an object to living in comfort and the series seems to be underpinned by the motto, once seen at a demonstration in Berlin and since taken up by leftist groups around the world, “Luxury for All”. It’s not, to be fair, an overt political stance. More like a coincidence of narrative. Even so, the Juban District of Sailor Moon is a world where work doesn’t necessitate the exploitation of those doing it and, regardless of employment status or perceived prestige of the work in question, everyone’s needs are met with dignity. If we think about Marx’s conception of capitalist societies — that is, those underpinned by the capitalist mode of production — Juban District is a poor contender since there’s little wage-labour and to the extent that there’s any production, it’s almost always out of passion or interest rather than in exchange for pay. Even the most obscure hobbies can be pursued without worry for one’s financial stability, and the world of Sailor Moon is populated by successful doll makers, ice skaters and painters. Consumer goods appear on the market as if by magic, which isn’t meaningfully different to how they appear in West and Global North markets, except that in the real world they’re made by invisible(d) people (almost always People of Colour) working in conditions of near slavery. But since Sailor Moon plays out in something approximating a utopian ideal, it’s possible to imagine that in that world, the utopia exists for everyone, not just everyone in Juban.

It goes without saying that this is a children’s program, so it’s unlikely to feature steely-eyed critiques of wage-labour and the private ownership of the means of production, but there’s something to be said for the show’s awareness of the impetus to extract surplus labour in order to accumulate capital. Or, in Sailor Moon parlance: harvest energy to accumulate power. In this no-one-has-to-work-luxury-for-all world, capitalist forces are artificially brought to bear by the Dark Kingdom, the aliens Ail and An and their Makai Tree, and then the Black Moon Clan. Capitalism, Sailor Moon says, is not inherent to humanity but is something imposed on us. (It’s worth noting here that the personification of capitalist greed as monstrous Others manipulating innocent people runs a not insubstantial risk of being antisemitic, but Sailor Moon manages to avoid this by being completely unaware of antisemitic imagery and tropes.)

The series relies on the fundamental understanding that value can be — and is — easily manipulated: a product’s value is not defined by its production costs but rather by murkier inputs, primarily its perceived cultural value. Might we even go so far as to say that Sailor Moon is premised on the interplay of base and superstructure, namely that it depicts manipulation of elements of the superstructure — culture, media, institutions — to ensure exploitation at the base? We might — why not? Who’s gonna stop us? After all, in Sailor Moon energy is harvested after the forces of evil create or corrupt a product or fad that people become irrationally enamoured with. Once enamoured, they cannot help but have their energy drained by, or in pursuit of, it. Clearly, this is not your Uncle Marx’s capitalism. The workers are not being alienated from their labour; they are not uniting. Still, if we understand “energy” as standing in for labour power, then the real-world comparison is clear. Unlike the Sailor Scouts, we have to work to afford the latest hot thing, but at the end of the day, it’s our energy too.

Episode 3: Slim City

Sailor Moon is a shōjo, meaning it’s a manga/anime targeted at pre-teen and teen girls, defined by its interest in romance, friendship and appearance. More specifically, it comes out of the mahō shōjo (“magical girl”) genre, whose conventions require that the girl protagonist have special powers which she must keep secret and which she typically uses for small, selfish reasons. But Sailor Moon broke from these generic constraints by pioneering the concept of magical girl warriors: magical girls who used their powers for the good of the world. In this, it directly referenced Power Rangers-style, male-focused and action-centric anime, deploying the common tropes of these shows including a team of colour-coded warriors with specific powers and new monsters to battle every week.

Sailor Moon didn’t follow all the tropes laid down by these boy-coded animes. Feminist commentator Kazuko Minomiya notes that Sailor Moon offers a more utopian version of the superhero because her non-hero life is filled with pleasures like shopping, video games and amusement parks, and this differs starkly from the arduous and serious lifestyle male warriors are prescribed. This is true. Sailor Moon might be fighting evil by moonlight, but she spends a lot of her daylight hanging out with friends, trying new restaurants and goofing around — even in the midst of an ongoing battle for the future of the earth. In one episode, after Mamoru is kidnapped, Usagi and Mina even make time for a mental-health hair day. It’s not only that Sailor Moon doesn’t have to give up her girlhood to be a superhero; rather, girlhood is a constituent feature of her superhero life: Takeuchi chose the sailor suit as the Scouts’ post-transformation uniform specifically because it resembles Japanese middle-school and high-school girls’ uniforms.

Because Sailor Moon is a show about girlhood and girlpower, it’s problematic for the same reasons as those concepts are, and then some. While, as Hoi F Cheu writes in the essay “Imported Girl Fighters: Ripeness and Leakage in ‘Sailor Moon’”, the show answered a public demand for girl fighters; ignited somewhere in the midst of the feminist second wave, it’s not straightforwardly unproblematic in its feminist pursuits. The episode “Slim City: Learn How to Be Skinny from Usagi” makes this abundantly clear. To be honest, I’m not interested in making an argument that Sailor Moon is or isn’t feminist. I’ll leave the bickering over problematic childhood faves to the Barbie discourse. Remember, this is an essay about capitalism. But to that end, Sailor Moon’s hyper-femininity is important: consumerism in Sailor Moon is feminine-coded and, as Cheu notes, it’s the characters’ “hyper-feminine love crazed natures” that are being exploited. This shouldn’t surprise anyone: young women are big money under capitalism and Sailor Moon doesn’t shy from depicting this. No product or fad in Sailor Moon is targeted specifically to men or boys. Instead, the villains exploit the relationship between girlhood and consumption — that’s where the real energy [money] is.

When Queen Beryll and her four Kings of Heaven/Henchmen are harvesting energy, they do it by stoking feminised desires: for beauty, for an attractive figure, for love. Often they create desirable consumer products or services that purport to meet, or help meet, those desires. When the aliens Ail and An arrive, they similarly plot to suck energy from earthlings through feminine-coded spaces adjacent to capitalist cultural production: attacking movie castings, song-writing and singing contests, even a production of Snow White. The Black Moon Clan, too, targets feminised sites of spending. They plan to steal energy from crystal points so as to disrupt the potential of future Crystal Tokyo, and their first location from which to suck energy is a cosmetics store. Others include a charms and potions store, a women’s fitness class, and a supermarket.

Episode 4: So you want to be a communist superstar?

The first Sailor Moon communism meme I saw was someone’s Twitter banner: a simple, two-panel display. In the first image, Usagi has her eyes closed, her yellow bangs flowing loosely around her face. Her pencil-thin eyebrows rise up in a look of sorrowful concern to meet the glowing crescent moon on her forehead. In the second panel, her eyes are open and her brows drawn together in serious determination. The crescent on her forehead has transformed into a hammer and sickle. She’s a boss bitch and she’s about to seize the means of production, damn it.

There are others. Usagi cast against a red sky, her school shirt photoshopped green, her skirt brown, and a rifle drawn behind her back; she looks back to the Moon Castle, which now has a hammer and sickle atop its central cupola. Usagi lying on her back with an angry Luna on her chest, accusatory paw in Usagi’s face, giving her the lecture: unskilled labour is a classist myth the rich use to justify poverty wages. Sailor Moon with clenched fist, hair blowing in the wind crying: The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workers of the world unite!

Although I would agree with Cheu’s assessment that Sailor Moon doesn’t “deliberately reject the general social-economic values of the globalizing consumer society”, the plethora of anti-capitalist and social justice-oriented memes that surround the show seem to suggest that there’s something there for us, if we look. And really, we don’t have to look too far. My partner, for example, reads Luna as the voice of a sort of Leninist vanguard party, teaching selfish, capitalism-pilled Usagi and co. to develop their political consciousness and imbuing them with the revolutionary leadership they’ll need to overthrow capitalism/the bad guys. Personally, I’m more interested in the whole energy-draining thing. For example, every group that comes along to harvest human energy mobilises monsters (later called Cardians and Droids) to help them in the harvest, and Marx himself was all about monsters as ciphers for capitalism. Capitalism, he wrote, has a “vampire thirst for the living blood of labour”, and a “werewolf hunger for surplus labour”. That Sailor Moon understands monsters as symbolic of consumer-related exploitation is not, I think, mere coincidence. It’s capitalist critique, baby! Like Marx said, “Capital is dead labour, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.” If energy = labour and power = capital, the analogy writes itself.

I can go one step further (and I will). When energy has been drained or is being drained from the people of Juban, they often turn into zombies, blank-eyed husks dully obeying commands or working furiously away on whatever project they’ve been entrapped in. The capitalist gets rich — or the Dark Kingdom, or Black Moon Clan get powerful — Marx says, “at the same rate as he squeezes out labour-power from others, and compels the worker to renounce all the enjoyments of life”. The capitalist gets rich at the same rate he turns people into zombies! As Mark Fischer put it: “Capital is an abstract parasite, an insatiable vampire and zombie-maker; but the living flesh it converts into dead labour is ours, and the zombies it makes are us”. In Sailor Moon, this is made so explicit as to be on the nose, for example in the episode “Time Bomb”, in which the Dark Kingdom attempts to harvest energy by manipulating time so that humans are forced into working harder and faster, thus increasing their energy output. The clock is the mechanism by which their energy is stolen, and the mechanism which keeps them (us!) beholden to capitalist temporal logics, even as the work itself produces nothing except its own continuation.

After the Dark Kingdom’s tactics change, they start glomming on to the hobbies and interests of promising young people (most often girls and women). Passions become unhealthy obsessions, the victims suddenly dedicating all their time to frantic productivity while their energy is harvested. This compulsive production is not dissimilar to the contemporary phenomenon of monetising one’s hobbies or even the “do what you love” mantra that makes us hostage to ourselves as well as neo-liberal capitalism. In Sailor Moon, victims of the Dark Moon Kingdom are rendered zombies pitched to a particular task, the objective of which is not the satisfaction of the worker or even the production of anything in particular, but rather the maintenance of their labouring, the continual output of their energy. In the real world, money would compel this self-destructive work ethic, but in Sailor Moon, money’s never exchanged for the fruits of labour, a choice which alludes, I think, to the real-world fact that monetary payment for labour is entirely made up and bares no relation to the labour performed.

Episode 5: Marxist school blues

To say that there are anti-capitalism critiques written into Sailor Moon is not to say that they aren’t ham-fisted. These are easy lessons and they come cheap. This isn’t actually a program about the oppression of the workers or exploited labour. Nor does it offer us a coherent alternative to capitalism, despite the semi-utopian access to food, shelter, education and medical care that underlies it. Neither the Moon Kingdom nor Crystal Tokyo represents a utopian past or future the likes of which Marx might have argued for: both are monarchies rules by a Queen whose right to do so seems premised almost entirely on possessing the universe’s most powerful magic crystal. It’s not exactly promising in so far as liberatory politics go.

One could say, if they were so inclined, that Sailor Moon doesn’t offer an alternative to capitalism because it was created within and functions under the premise of what Fisher calls “capitalist realism’, the “widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it”. This is less a matter of propaganda in the way that socialist realism was, but more like a “pervasive atmosphere” conditioning (among other things) the production of culture and “acting as a kind of invisible barrier constraining thought and action”. Capitalist realism constrains thought, blocks the imagination: Like us, Sailor Moon knows capitalism is bad, and like us, she has no meaningful alternative, except, apparently, Reject modernity, embrace tradition. For Sailor Moon this means a return to the monarchy. For us, it seems to mean a return to traditional gender roles, if the tradwives of TikTok are anything to judge by. Yikes.

In reality, there is no anti-capitalist utopia. With every defeated villain comes another, the same thing dressed up in a different costume, a game of whack-a-mole disturbingly similar to how we approach anti-capitalist struggles today. Milk production’s fucked up? That’s okay, there’s soy milk. Soy milk uses a deranged amount of water? That’s okay, have you tried oat milk? Oatley’s part-owned by Blackstone? Well, have you heard of — ? Meanwhile, nothing changes for the cows.

All this is to say that we also don’t have a coherent alternative and our only means of fighting back is to battle each hydra head as best we can. For many, the only resistance that can be envisioned under capitalist realism is not revolutionary but mitigatory, minimising capitalism’s worst effects for want of any better ideas. Similarly, Sailor Moon attacks each monster as it comes, battling each fad or product as it arises and begins to do harm. It’s gruelling, unrewarding work, and she’s only a teenager and a crybaby at that! But Sailor Moon never gives up and, even though it’s impossible to see at times, every battle won brings her one step closer to victory. Not because every monster fought means one less to fight — there’s a seemingly inexhaustible supply of them — but because she and the other Sailor Scouts get better at fighting every time. They learn how to work as a team, how to combine their attacks and go for the monster’s weak spots, how to recognise the signs and how to resist being taken in themselves.

Episode 6: Usagi’s disaster: beware of the proliferation of products

Before we get too ahead of ourselves, let’s be clear: Sailor Moon is a product and it sells products. In Japan, Sailor Moon out-ranked boys programming like Super Sentai (the original Power Rangers) to become the top-ranking TV show for its animation studio, Tōei, and by the mid 90s had been exported to eighteen countries. According to a 1994 article in Broadcasting, in the two years after its release, Sailor Moon generated 1.5 billion US dollars in Japanese sales for its toy and videogame manufacturer, Bandai. Of course, it was used to market other toys, too, and when sold into the US, marketers noted in the magazine Broadcasting that it was an effective means to meet “advertiser demand for a show that reaches girls”, a necessary advance in children’s programming since “[w]hen Mattel tries to market Barbie they have to go into shows where most of the audience is boys to reach girls, which is very inefficient.”

In a 1998 article “Sailormoon: Manga (comics) and anime (cartoon) superheroine meets Barbie: Global entertainment commodity comes to the United States”, Mary Grigsby noted that Sailor Moon is a “global entertainment commodity that offers rapid diffusion cross-culturally as entertainment” and is simultaneously “a marketing tool designed to create consumer demand for products associated with the characters of the entertainment product”. This is putting it mildly. At the time of writing, Grigsby observed that there were over five thousand novelty Sailor Moon products and twenty related video games. Today, there are over ten thousand Amazon listings for Sailor Moon products — everything from socks to wallets, figurines to bathmats. Etsy goes harder still: its sellers have created over 27,150 results for Sailor Moon products, including tarot cards, custom portraits, cookier cutters, Princess Serenity-inspired wedding dresses and latex Sailor Scout uniforms. There’s a späti on my street that sells Sailor Moon Ocean Bomb soda in Sailor Jupiter (cucumber flavour) and Sailor Chibi Moon (lychee flavour). There are (or were) Sailor Moon tortilla chips, and maxi pads, Heinz Spaghetti O’s, bra and pantie sets, toothbrushes and kitchen utensils.

I might be making a claim that the show has some anti-capitalist valence, but that can only go so far. Sailor Moon is hardly challenging the system. It cannot. It cannot defeat itself. To the extent that it does critique capitalism, or present something akin to an anti-capitalist message, it does so because it’s safe to do so under contemporary capitalism and capitalist realism. Not just safe, but trendy: anti-capitalism is happily co-opted into capitalism, the same way as feminism, queerness and even anti-racism are. I’m describing Sailor Moon’s anti-capitalist potential, but it’s not a revolution if there’s money being made.

Episode 7: A gimmicky life

When I was a kid my favourite parts of Sailor Moon were the transformation scenes — specifically Sailor Moon’s. There’s one almost every episode and they each start the same way: a hand in the air and the transformation command (Moon prism power make up!, later Moon crystal power make up!). The transformation itself is over 40 seconds long: the same captivating sequence every time. Once transformed, Sailor Moon typically chastises the villains for the particular way they’re exploiting people this time, before making her signature introduction: I am Sailor Moon, the champion of justice! I right wrongs and triumph over evil. In the name of the moon, I’ll punish you! This is, naturally, accompanied by much gesticulation, rendered across close-ups of her face, medium shots with her elegantly drawn hands in motion, and a final full-body shot of Sailor Moon assuming her pre-battle pose. When this is out of the way, the battle can begin.

Sailor Moon is not a good fighter, She has few powers of her own and always requires the assistance of a special object to launch her attacks, which, like her transformation sequence, come as extended moments of extra-spatiality and extra-temporality. They take forever and involve complex contortions of her body, dedicated music and background images, special tools (a tiara, her moon stick) and shouted commands (Moon Tiara Magic!; Cosmic Moon Power!; Moon Princess Elimination). Sometimes these attacks turn monsters into piles of dust, other times they return zombified humans back to themselves.

As a child it was impossible to look away: as an adult, it’s hard not to skip past them. They’re captivating, but also cringey, so long-winded, convoluted, and extravagant that they approach, and very quickly overtake, absurdity. It’s hard to imagine how they could destroy any monster, so dependant are they on the bad guy not dodging or running or counter-attacking during the long preamble. In their unbelievable efficacy, they recall Sianne Ngai’s conception of the gimmick, the capitalist form par excellence, which she explains in her essay “Theory of the Gimmick” as at once “a wonder and a trick … a form we marvel at and distrust, admire and disdain”. The gimmick, according to Ngai, both saves and does not save labour; works too hard and too little; is outdated and newfangled; dynamic and static; unrepeatable yet reusable; transparent and obscure. All of which can be said for Sailor Moon’s battle sequence.

It works too hard by involving long and complexly animated scenes, while also working too little in that they are the same scenes, recycled every episode. Similarly, the attacks themselves involve much gesticulation and movement but, once enacted, invariably hit the target, and defeat them easily. It’s outdated by virtue of being reliant on ancient moon magic, but new-fangled because it comes in new and ever-changing forms (tiara, transformation pen, transformation brooch, new transformation brooch, moon stick, moon rod, et cetera). It’s dynamic, requiring a lot of movement and complex contortions, yet it’s an unchanging series of the exact same movements. Unrepeatable in that no-one else can perform this magic and the specifics of each battle are different, yet entirely reusable, the same moves and animation stills used over and over. It’s easy to index the products and fads mobilised by baddies in Sailor Moon as gimmicks, or as sold to Juban residents by way of gimmick (charms promising your crush will fall in love with you, or receiving a coveted brooch in exchange for writing love letters to a radio station, for example), but Sailor Moon’s only means of fighting back is also by way of gimmick. There’s a clear contradiction between the show’s broader moral project — concerned with long-term goals around friendship, personal growth and never giving up in the pursuit of the good — and its need to offer viewers immediate gratification. While Sailor Moon is opposed to short-term gratification, as manifest by its overt stance towards the products and fads marketed to Juban district, the show cannot resist providing it.

Insofar as the question of anti-capitalist struggle by way of gimmick is concerned, one of the most important contradictions is that Sailor Moon always takes far too long to do the work of defeating the bad guys, while simultaneously doing it far too quickly, both saving and not saving labour. I mean this outside of specific attacks and all their gesticulation. Rather, while Sailor Moon defeating each monster happens relatively quickly, defeating the source of the trouble takes much longer and allows for people to be hurt in the meantime — it’s the same game of whack-a-mole we’re playing with milk production, only animated. Similarly, Sailor Moon labours hard so that people neither have to succumb to nor fight against the baddies themselves. It saves them labour in the moment while ensuring that Sailor Moon’s work is ongoing — she will always have to step in because the people cannot help themselves. Worse, by constantly fighting the manifestations of evil/capitalism, Sailor Moon does not fundamentally challenge the underlying structures that allow for these products and fads to take off in such big ways, every, single time. The work is sped up in the instant and prolonged across the years, rendering real change increasingly difficult to achieve. When resistance becomes formulaic by virtue of repetition, it becomes predictable and therefore, easy to ignore, mitigate or co-opt.

In Sailor Moon, the gimmick is the primary — indeed, the only — means to combat the capitalist machinations of the series’ various villains, and similarly, the gimmick has become a primary means of engaging in progressive struggle under capitalism. Under capitalist realism, when an alternative is unimaginable and revolutionary action feels — depending on the day — just as or almost as impossible, the only tools through which change can be imagined, are the master’s. Clean Up Australia Day is sponsored by the likes of McDonalds, Coles and Amazon. Consulting firms and multinational hotel brands, among other dubious actors, participated in 2023’s Earth Hour with the hashtag #TimeOutForNature. R U OK? Day is a PR stunt that does nothing to address anyone’s mental health care needs. Dove’s various body positivity campaigns are just advertising campaigns. I could go on. Like Sailor Moon’s attacks, these “progressive” actions play into the strange temporality of the gimmick: by acting against a specific manifestation of a bigger problem — while not acting on the problem itself — they are both acting and not acting in the present with a promise that they are creating change that will be felt in the future. Thus, companies engaged in such action intentionally obfuscate the extent to which their measures are working at all.

For Ngai, to understand something as a gimmick means to have misgivings about its value vis-à-vis labour and time, which in turn is indicative of our broader misgivings about value under capitalism, the way that capitalism produces and measures wealth. Things are not worth what we pay for them — there’s profit being made and someone’s being exploited to make it. This same disconnect is indexed by progressive gimmicks, which promise a changed world for the price of a tweet or slogan T-shirt and without any damage to the bottom line. Such gimmicks act only symbolically in the present and therefore only extend the work into the future. We have to stay vigilant against this and against the gimmickification of our fight against capitalism, against climate change, racism, patriarchy. We must be attuned to how our causes are appropriated and made gimmick. We have to resist it.

Sailor Moon, as determined as she is to fight monsters whenever they appear, models for us the kind of progressive gimmick we ought to be weary of: aesthetically driven, showy, narrow, superficial. Time wasted on performative displays when it should be spent not only in battling each manifestation of capitalist exploitation as it arises, but in doing the harder, deeper work of changing our societies and ourselves. And here too, there’s something to be learned from Sailor Moon here too. While the Scouts don’t show us how to save the world, they do model the attributes we’ll need along the way: collaboration, determination, optimism, love for one another, an unwavering commitment to doing the right thing.

If this sounds twee, it’s because it is. This essay is also a gimmick, but you already knew that.