What I took from this game, was going off of the idea of consumerism and just "things" But to me, the act of rolling is this sort of call to the nature of being and a celebration of all of the universes' things. Rolling up things feels really indiscriminatory in a beautiful way. Everything is a thing that can be a part of the star. The people screaming seems bleak but I think its optimistic, because its indiscriminatory, the people are no different from a tree or a chicken. It only seems sad because we cant think on such a cosmic level. And most of these people are just promotion men anyway, what life are they living? I think their lack of understanding in where they fit into the Katamari's plans sort of suggests they dont value the things around them, the tree, the chicken or all paperclips on the ground. Its like... optimistically violent ...like the rapture.
I think it's important that this is specifically a japanese game as opposed to an american one, because it really fits in with the Shinto religion; that idea that every object in the universed is inhabited by a spirit, and thus all things are equal. Every object has the same value when rolled together.
Especially if you look at it from a cosmic scale... the stars you're making serve a much more important role than the objects and people they're made of. You've heard fake-deep teenagers say we're made of stardust, well what if a star was made of people instead? Eventually the heat death of the universe will likely happen. Life is a state of delayed entropy, but overall entropy will increase. The star-ball things you roll are fighting entropy. You're literally making stars - the biggest and most important things to life in the universe. That's what I meant earlier by "playing an important role." If the goal is to fight entropy, making a star - which could support multiple planets and create life - pushes back entropy much further than simply making more living things. I don't know where I'm going with all this. But funnily enough it ties back to the intended message about consumerism, because people like to just buy a bunch of unnecessary shit and hoard it. It _seems_ like fighting entropy, but it's such a weak way of going about it. To really fight entropy, you should become part of something greater. Or do the total opposite and give up your possessions, and just embrace the fact that life is fleeting. One day all stars will burn out and life won't be able to exist. So treasure the act of being alive more than the fight against entropy itself.
I was just thinking about this from the UI perspective. I think the use of it is that you often can't actually see your lil guy rolling the ball around, and they want to give you cues for how he is moving when you press certain directions etc. Just acts as a form of feedback, similar to the controlling vibrating to signify weapon kickback or the sound Mario makes in 64 for different styles of jump.
@@niteowl9491They made one of the cutest mascots imaginable and what, they're just gonna let you play the whole game only seeing him during certain cutscenes? NO! CONSTANT EXPOSURE OF THE LIL CUTIE
For me, one of the things about the Katamari games that always stood out was how after the story of the first game, the humans all loved the katamari and wanted to be rolled up by it for some reason(?) My interpretation of this is that the humans represent the players who are playing the game, and that while they are afraid of being part of something they might not understand at first, they can't help but be pulled into this wacky silly game about rolling around. Something like that, idk. It's definitely just meant to be a fun video game that you can look at from an art perspective and find fun interpretations.
During the credits of this game, you roll all the countries on Earth into a ball and the music is basically saying that despite our meaningless and insignificant lives, the love we have on Earth can make us shine as bright as the brightest star. Very sentimental game, a love letter to life on Earth, even with all the cynical aspects, we cherish the little things and each other.
If we look at katamari more metaphorically, even the things like picking up people could be read as connecting with others. And maybe it is in the mundantiy of our lives (or jobs for our father the king of the cosmos) that we collect these interesting moments and people and friends. That's how I'd like to interpret it, anyway. So yeah, i think you're right. The game has heart.
I absolutely love hearing people talk about what Katamari makes them think of. I think there are definitely those consumerist points, you keep growing and consuming. The whole point of the game is fixing someone else's mess caused by irresponsibility and the great cost involved. The story is also about family and how you work to meet expectations and given the second game, how it's sometimes a generational thing too.
I always thought the Katamari ball was supposed to represent a day in our own lives, all the things we roll up being the objects and people we interact with on a daily basis and the star at the end represents how we catalogue each day in our memories.
I like the allegory of the workplace. You do your best to do a job that is loosely defined, and constantly changing. You get minimal and/or confusing feedback while you do it, and at the end, even if you didn't do good enough, your boss still takes your work and uses it anyway. Damn......
There is another alternative. That all the things you acquire and all the people you touch during your life become a part of something greater. Because you touched them and made them a part of your life, they transcend and become a timeless part of you and your "star".
I think a lot of the "hopeful" vibes is owed directly to the soundtrack, which is so off the wall and fantastic and featured zero input from Keita Takahashi - and an interpretation of the game feels woefully incomplete without analyzing the music. Yuu Miyake was the main sound director and composed seven songs for the first game, and of those, his favorite song was "Cherry Tree Times" - a song later in the soundtrack that features a children's choir, and I always have an oddly emotional response to hearing it. It speaks to a childlike wonder and appreciation for all that is in the universe that brings a tear to my eye like "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea". The game as a whole is really special, but that song in particular serves as a well-intentioned and optimistic coda to the chaos that precedes it.
This is the kind of video that goes viral, and I really expected it to have more views than this! it was very entertaining and interesting as someone who knew of katamari but didn't really know anything about it. Nice work! :)
Coming at it as a tryhard, I just loved accumulating all the mass, it felt good haptically as well, like the dopa hit of snacking. And I started to recognize people as excellent sources of mass. Pretty much buildings and life were excellent targets to roll up and speedrun. So I saw it as a race course. If you play the 3rd installment, "We Love Katamari" you become large enough to absorb continents and celestial bodies. So I always saw how insignificant life affairs compared to galaxy level events. Life did come from galaxy level events so if it can give it, it can take it away I suppose.
My interpretation is that this game is about the inability to please a self-absorbed family member. The King is a parental unit who is completely disconnected emotionally with the Prince. The game opens on the King completely ruining the universe on a drunken bender. In the level intro cutscenes, the King is framed as towering over the prince, as in he is literally and figuratively talking down to him. Every level you finish has the King telling how much better you could have done, and he reluctantly accepts your creation as long as it met his low bar of expectations. These expectations get bigger every time you finish a level. You can never truly appease the King, he just chooses to NOT punish you when he sees fit. At the end of the game, you give the world to him, and he gives you a pat on the back and thanks you for cleaning up his mess. However it’s clear that the King still believes that he could have done it better and faster than the Prince. It’s a story about never being good enough for somebody who you care about. Especially if that person who you care about expects you to be exactly like their vision of you, rather than your true self.
This video was so fun. It felt like a modern house of philosophy, with socrates questioning the deeper meaning of Katamari and our place in the universe.
I replay Katamari every now and then because the rolling feels meditative. The last time I played, the whole idea of the game reminded me of Claes Oldenburg's House Balls.
Ooooo i really enjoy this style of video, Austin. Very interesting to hear you just talk about game design/philosophy. I like hearing a different perspective about games people are interested in. EDIT: honestly, I always kind of zeroed in on the antagonistic Father/Son relationship in Katamari. The rolling-up part was always second in my mind to that aspect of the game.
I always thought that Katamari was about how everyone is connected, we all being a product of the cosmos, and the prince is just putting it all back together, kinda like how some other user here put it, like Evangelion but much less horrific.
I always felt it was just a given that the game was about the stress of having a parent make mistakes and then putting the responsibility of fixing it all on their child, no matter what gets sacrificed in the process. ...But like, on a dramatically cosmic scale lol. I never thought to consider it as an allegory for anything else 💀
i think it's funny how we talk about whether something "means" or "represents" one thing or another thing when it's in the eye of the beholder, you know? like for a painting or a word to "mean" something implies someone receiving or interpreting that meaning. makes me think about how the definition of a word in any language is always "whatever native speakers of that language think it means when you say it", like, by definition. that's the definition of a definition, even
I interpreted Katamari as that it’s about the joy of cleaning up and the satisfaction of order. Stages begin as a chaotic mess and you clean it all up. It’s therapeutic to roll that ball and to make stages orderly.
When I play katamari, I feel determination. I just have to do my best. I like to observe the scenes laid out, and notice little details like grape candy being misspelled as greap. I spend a long time reading the item descriptions and replaying the sound bites for items that make noises. I suppose my feelings are very "surface level" but i get a lot out of the game even in that way.
I’ve been going through your catalog and loving your dry wit and analytical eye, but this was the video that made me subscribe! You called it “rambling,” but I’ve seen enough 15 minute TH-cam videos of a person talking over game footage to know the difference between rambling and insight. You really got me to think about this game and its themes far more deeply than a scripted video essay with an overly simplified thesis ever would. To me, I see Katamari Damacy as being about maximalism. More is more is more is more until everything is combined into one. That and the undercurrent of optimistic nihilism (and generational conflict now that I think about it) strongly evoke the themes of the film Everything Everywhere All At Once: if nothing matters, then we might as well keep pushing that ball forward. Side note: I adore the low poly objects in this game. I find low poly art fascinating in the same way you find skyboxes fascinating, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on that art form.
Yessss !!!!! Literally exactly what you said around 9:25 about efficiency is so perfectly heideggerian, its NOT just capitalism, its late-modernity’s ontotheology of the eternal return of the will to power: enframing.
An interesting tidbit to note? A fan asked why the dev made the Cowbear levels so unforgiving. The dev replied, "Because I'm a jerk." So there's that to add into the pile.
I like this (namely the commentary on what art is, what artists intend, the meaning we project onto art…as well as your own insights). Please make more.
I don't know why, but Katamari has never struck me as violent. I never feel guilt throughout hearing the screams of people that I roll up, and I don't feel that The King hates me even when hest degrading me or shooting lasers at me from his eyes or just straight up punching me. Throughout it all, Katamari is a peaceful experience. I couldn't tell you why.
When I play katamari I feel joy despite the ominous subtext. The universe is a surreal place and I think absurdist themes run throughout it (both the game and the universe). Mostly I think it's about doing the best you can with what you got. No matter how strange or frightening things get the only path is through and so the little guy keeps going, sweeping people into his life/ball, having new experiences, and in the end hopefully the world (or the night sky) is a little better for his/your efforts. At least this is my takeaway
the workplace allegory feels real silly when the cycle of paternal abuse is standing right there in front of you with his whole package + baggage out 💜 Katamari otherwise, is similar to your more hopeful take and for me specifically reconnecting with the objects, environment and people around you. Reestablishing the bonds that used to be there! that connection being the cosmic energy that makes the star. You are right to say that the things that surround us every day are part of being alive and are beautiful when appreciated as a whole. When its all sent into space and transforms, the unity creates the star and all the objects and people pop right back where they were, but maybe with restored connections between eachother. A positive outcome of this could be people being less blind to the mess of stuff around them and more appreciative, leading to them maintaining it themselves. The king of course isnt so interested in that side of things, he just wants the resulting stars, ONLY seeing the big picture and not appreciating the fine details of it, the work and love behind it. But this makes sense, the king was fairly isolated from the human space around him growing up because of the high king (Papa) being so strict. The task of rolling is exposing the prince to these wonderful things though, with a whole family of cousins for support. Maybe he can grow kinder than the kings before him. I thought about this for like a year straight in 2019 and im desperately trying to recall my feelings about it. u activated my trap card (autism) and now you have to play We
also, heres something interesting i found when checkin the wiki for which of the names for Papa is more recognizable - after rolling up Papa in a level, After stage dialogue: _"Remember rolling up the High King, Our Papa? Papa knows best, such a burden for poor Papa. Doesn’t he look carefree now? _*_Here’s a Cosmic Secret: Getting rolled up by a katamari lightens your heart._*_ When the High King smiles, the world smiles."_
I love that when I play katamari damacy, I always get so into the game that I always tend to forget that as us, the player, and being the prince. We are just basically picking up the extra work after the King of all Cosmos decided to have a boogie and dance and destroyed all the stars himself. And now he just wanted his son to pick up that extra load of work to bring the stars back LOLLL and I always forget that’s what we’re doing throughout the game and I feel bad for the Prince, but it’s still so fun rolling up so many things :’)) (and the cute random outfits you find in each level and can have the Prince wear too!)
To me it’s about world domination. Like at first you’re tiny and everything is in your way, unattainable, and other things bully you. Eventually after hard work you end up coming back and swallowing up everything. Plus the ending really fits that vibe for me.
@@any_austin I just crapped out a dumb little comment at work before watching the video but after watching it I agree with your assessment that it's partially about the beauty of everyday objects. They had to render milk crates and traffic cones in this cutesy little artstyle rather than just using the default rocks that came with unity. Everything was modeled specifically for the game and that's something.
@@violet_broregarde lord thats a great point and something that throws me into wonder in every entry i play, they modeled ALL those things! thats so many damn things!!! got damn!!! and every single one is just enough of what its supposed to be. larger things arent even necessarily more detailed than the smaller things
The end of the game, you roll everything up until there is nothing left, and you eventually just get sad that there is nothing left. The fun was the journey, not the result. And the stars represent those processes. Everybstar is an instance of enjoying the process. The result is not memorable on its own. Like a man and a woman having a little house somewhere between the middle of town and the edge, with a couple bland cars and a couple bland kids and a few years sitting around, enjoying your days as much as you can between toiling through your workdays. Your results are entirely devoid of meaning. They are infinitely tiny dots. But you enjoyed it. You felt good making that fading, distant dot. You and your little family existed, yes, but you enjoyed it. Every year was a gift. Every interaction with the world along the way was a blessing, whether you enjoyed it or not. You existed for a time. You had something to do before the long sleep. That's all the meaning life needs. The mouse in your wall is as valid as you. The whale in the ocean bigger than everything you own is as valid as you. Either one can end in an instant. You could end in an instant. You might be sitting there with your lower back in pain and your head clogged by a song you don't even like. And suddenly you might pass out, the blood vessels in your head giving up and flooding your brain with your blood, leaving your last moments in this life, as dull and insignificant as they were, as a fleeting breath of thought. You jolt into the long sleep unaware you are done with life. Your coworkers won't know you have had an incident for a while, possibly hours, as they too work through their days to earn money to pay for food to feed their own lives. Maybe someone you cared for will find you. Maybe they will cry so hard their head hurts and they can't speak. Maybe your passing will make them appreciate what they have better than they did before. They might not be so caught up in the results, and be more appreciative of the process. They will go home to their loved ones and feel more connected to them than they did that morning. This result will not be known to you, but it will be part of their process. Their little ball of experiences will have you in it. They will be a better person as they adapt to your passing. Their process will be enriched one way or another. They will be reminded to appreciate the process better, in the infinitely small time they have in this existence. Katamari is about enjoying the process. And sometimes some really fucking good music. edit: while I was typing this out, our local EMS got paged out for an old man found pulseless by his son. he was in his 90s.
when you’re saying “a box means the same to me as a penguin” with a pessimistic implication, maybe the point is that in a vacuum they clearly have different levels of value, but in the Big Trash Ball of it all, they make up life. Kind of like a yin yang thing
10:18 i totally agree, i make music/art and you kinda just make whatever comes to your mind first then you make sense of it afterwards. not saying every artist does that but i bet that’s how the majority of us come up with the process of creation. (found your channel last week and have watched literally every video before bed lol)
Katamari always gave me a vibe of togetherness and unity. There are all of these small things on Earth that sometimes feel insignificant in the grand scheme, but when you sum everything up and put it together it makes something as beautiful and awe-inspiring as a star. This can also apply to people. Sometimes on an individual level people may feel like its difficult to make a lasting difference or change in the world, but together humans can accomplish so much.
I like the notion of using the small pieces available to you in order to grow, which you can use to leverage even greater things in environments you couldn't reach before. And then looking back and seeing how far you've come.
I'm here in 2025. Started watching Austin a few 6 months or so ago. I never knew how much I needed the hair clips and green screen. They wouldn't have necessarily made this video any better (cause it's already great), but I still need them.
IDEA: As someone who has never played this game in my life, this discourse was a good introduction. I’d love to see you further introduce nostalgic games/franchises to someone who has never “visited” before, a la working for the tourism department. Anyway good talk. Thank you.
I played Katamari Damacy and the sequel (We ❤Katamari) on the PS2 back in the day, and then more recently I played WLK Reroll on the Switch. My take is that both are very fun, very quirky games that lend themselves really well to entering a flow state and building a deeper mastery of the game(s). I am very focused on the mechanics and the surface level of the story, and never looked for deeper messages about capitalism or having a job, although your comments on both of these topics ring true with my own experiences of the game. I'd be very interested to see your take on WLK. It has some very interesting levels and tweaks on the mechanics. Two that I think are worth analyzing are the campfire level (where your Katamari is on fire and if you go too long without rolling up any new items the fire goes out and you immediately fail the level) and the Sumo level (where your Katamari is replaced with a boy sumo wrestler and you're trying to roll up enough food to get heavy enough to win a sumo match at the end of the level). The things I find interesting about those levels is what they say about the game designers' views on life and harm. In the fire level, there are lots of humans but if you run into them (even if you are way too small to affect them normally) their pants catch fire and they run away. You can never roll up any living thing on that level, suggesting that the developers wanted to avoid any suggestion of putting people through a horrible death by burning. Conversely, the Sumo level lets you roll up everything that you normally could, including people, with the implication being that this boy is devouring the people to gain weight. There's also the thing where when you reach a certain size and get close to police, they will start shooting at you - a very reasonable thing when your Katamari is a big scary ball, but carrying very different connotations when your Katamari is a large child and the police still open fire on you. I like to think about the contrasts between these two levels because the first one shows that they are willing to change up the game mechanics to avoid truly horrible things being done to people (I am questionably not counting getting rolled up normally as "truly horrible"), but they didn't change any game mechanics to avoid having police open fire on a child, or to avoid having the child cannabalistically devour anyone he can consume. Is there a message there? Probably not. But I like to think about it anyway.
I did an essay at university about algorithmically generated music, and most of it was asking the same questions as you were at some point in this, how meaning is created by the audience. the phrase i used was 'beauty is in the ear of the beholder'. really enjoyed this one.
the katamari series is maybe my favorite in video games. it's one of a handful of titles where the objectives feel kind of secondary to just enjoying the mechanics and atmosphere, at least to me. before working at Namco, Keita Takahashi studied sculpture in college, and probably just had this weird artsy idea and wanted to see it as a playable experience. at Namco, he spent years doing unsatisfying grunt work on fighting games but somehow weaseled his way into getting the green light on his own title, maybe explaining the boss/employee dynamic and the freedom of expression/making a non-voilent game for the hell of it. the low poly models were made by students learning modeling at some Namco summer school type-thing too. so the whole development seems like it was pretty experimental, which is probably why the game is so quirky and full of character. also the soundtrack(s)? cmon!! fire. there's a little book abt it's development by L. E. Hall that i highly recommend :)
For me, Katamari Damacy was about the slippery slope of going too far by not being able to see when you've crossed a line. Every level starts as a puzzle; you can't get X until you're big enough, so lets follow this trail of Y. But eventually, that all shifts from solving a puzzle to just "getting everything you can" rolled up. After all, the ball is big enough now - why shouldn't you? As a result, players experience this unrecognized shift where the ends justify the means. It's also worth mentioning that the Katamari is like Godzilla. Unconcerned with the destruction caused, just seeking to accomplish it's goals regardless of the impacts.
I loved this weird genre of game where you basically eat things and get bigger, remember like two flash games that had that same design but never got to play this as a kid
I agree that art is just pure expression that we project meaning onto. You can use it to convey specific ideas if you want but I think art in its purest form is just unfiltered expression, which I prefer.
it could be that the game is just nondidactic, meaning it doesnt have a meaning it just is. Didacticism is the belief that all art, literature, etc has an underlying intention or bigger picture and this game might just not comply with that philosophy
This started out and I was like wait he doesn’t already have a point prepared? Then I was like oh this guys kinda spittin and I agree with a lot of this. Good vid!
I've always just seen this as a very weird Japanese game with a good soundtrack. And that if there is some deeper meaning to it, it's probably about some aspect of Japanese culture or history that I just don't understand because I'm not Japanese.
My memory could be butts on this, but I remember the loading screen saying like "Sending things to earth" Which to me seemed to imply that it was just the King playing the most elaborate game of 52 pickup ever.
In the context of consumerism, I think the initial optimism makes sense because I think people typically have good intentions when they start a business or something and as it expands it loses the initial meaning. Companies come up with grand, wishy-washy mission statements and they spend a lot of time and money on appealing to consumers, but the bigger they are, the less genuine it seems to be. Because in the end, it's about money, an abstraction of our material relationships with other people. At the end of a level in Katamari, all the stuff you picked up becomes a number: the diameter of the singular object you made.
Thanks to this video I discovered a wonderful game. Who knew mindless consumerism could be so fun? Very good analysis, love your videos. P.S. Gatsby sucks, who cares if it’s raining?
imagine a katamari unemployment video. it would follow the capitalist work-environment theme but also highlight how each of the people you roll up are individuals with a unique life
Katamari for me is a reminder of the bygone era when people invented weird games like Katamari. Katamari is a game for me that a lot of people told me to play, but nobody ever knew why it was good. It makes me think of the spiral nemesis and how the universe will end. And how as beings of entropy we are constantly pushing toward the heat death of the universe by playing Katamari.
all i can derive from this is, everything will eventually become star fuel. nothing deeper or shallower than that. simplistic, entertaining and without much politics. just like i like my games.
I think this game always felt like it was about power dynamics to me. You start small, scared of bumping into most things, and end the round powerful enough to roll up objects indiscriminately. Then you immediately get the rug pulled out from under you by a dad who makes me you feel either like crap for all you've accomplished or barely satisfactory. Its about the satisfaction of having power, and how we will hurt people without care to experience it. Its about how in the process of making ourselves feel big, most people will carelessly make others feel small. At least, that's what I always got out of it.
“It’s about the worker’s sense of unfulfillment?” Oh, so THAT’S why the original didn’t give us the “Endless” mode that was the obvious post-game reward
i really like this video, i guess the feeling i get when i play katamari is mostly very positive as it's kind of a euphoric experience but when people and animals and everything are also screaming and running away from me there is a slightly grotesque/disturbing element too, but less straight up and more like a black comedy. i guess if i had to say it was about any one particular thing, it's about the accumulation of objects and experiences in life and how when you die they/the trace you left on them all kind of are sent up and vanquished, but the memory (star) of them remains. also, you look like andrew garfield a bit (that's a compliment)
I guess mostly what I thought about at the age my sister and I played Katamari was a kind of cosmic awe. I was pretty into space as a concept, in the way that the universe is so big that my problems aren't really that significant. Even the King of All Cosmos being a dick to the prince is just a moment on the way to turning back into a part of the universe. I would guess that he acts that way because he knows this. We're all stardust in the end. I found it comforting that my problems wouldn't feel so important forever. Thanks for reminding me of this. I had to fight myself not to scroll to the comments before allowing my own thoughts to form and I'm glad I did. Your videos help me slow down.
To expand on what you said about it feeling optimistic at the beginning - I think that is how life under capitalism feels at first, you see everyone else's identity represented in their possessions and clothing and hairstyle. I think the king character does represent a father figure and a boss, at first in life we are praised for and actively enjoy the accumulation of stuff as a statement of our own identity, but as we progress further in life this need to accumulate sees us often metaphorically crashing through lives of people in much more meaningful ways as we accumulate experiences and people and places. What we end up doing often affects people in negative ways driven by desires fed to us by capitalism and by our patriarchal archetypes, whether they be father figures, bosses or even friends sometimes. At some point our identity becomes so tied up in what we have consumed , experienced and 'accumulated' that we are unrecognizable and in the end, it doesn't even matter because we all die and become stardust anyway.
i feel like for video games in particular you have to be kind of willing to accept that the message is always gonna have to be second to the needs of the medium. So no explanation for "what does this mean" is ever gonna feel clean
I like the work allegory more than anything else. Specifically, working for someone else’s betterment in an effort to make ends meet as opposed to working for yourself. What’s the point of a life like that
“You roll this big fuckin’ snowball around a city and it’s satisfying at fuck.”
What I took from this game, was going off of the idea of consumerism and just "things"
But to me, the act of rolling is this sort of call to the nature of being and a celebration of all of the universes' things.
Rolling up things feels really indiscriminatory in a beautiful way. Everything is a thing that can be a part of the star.
The people screaming seems bleak but I think its optimistic, because its indiscriminatory, the people are no different from a tree or a chicken.
It only seems sad because we cant think on such a cosmic level. And most of these people are just promotion men anyway, what life are they living? I think their lack of understanding in where they fit into the Katamari's plans sort of suggests they dont value the things around them, the tree, the chicken or all paperclips on the ground.
Its like... optimistically violent ...like the rapture.
I really like this one
High effort shitpost comment
I’m going to make this my college essay.
I think it's important that this is specifically a japanese game as opposed to an american one, because it really fits in with the Shinto religion; that idea that every object in the universed is inhabited by a spirit, and thus all things are equal. Every object has the same value when rolled together.
Especially if you look at it from a cosmic scale... the stars you're making serve a much more important role than the objects and people they're made of. You've heard fake-deep teenagers say we're made of stardust, well what if a star was made of people instead?
Eventually the heat death of the universe will likely happen. Life is a state of delayed entropy, but overall entropy will increase. The star-ball things you roll are fighting entropy. You're literally making stars - the biggest and most important things to life in the universe. That's what I meant earlier by "playing an important role." If the goal is to fight entropy, making a star - which could support multiple planets and create life - pushes back entropy much further than simply making more living things.
I don't know where I'm going with all this. But funnily enough it ties back to the intended message about consumerism, because people like to just buy a bunch of unnecessary shit and hoard it. It _seems_ like fighting entropy, but it's such a weak way of going about it. To really fight entropy, you should become part of something greater. Or do the total opposite and give up your possessions, and just embrace the fact that life is fleeting. One day all stars will burn out and life won't be able to exist. So treasure the act of being alive more than the fight against entropy itself.
It's also beem confirmed that living things rolled up are returned to earth when the katamari becomes a star. Don't think about it too much.
I think for me, Katamari Damacy is about rolling up everything a person experiences in a lifetime and cherishing all of it, even the tiny things.
Yea love this too
I love the little guy on the bottom right. There was no need for the UI element gameplaywise, but I am glad he is there.
He's just a lil guy. Everybody love a lil' guy.
I was just thinking about this from the UI perspective. I think the use of it is that you often can't actually see your lil guy rolling the ball around, and they want to give you cues for how he is moving when you press certain directions etc. Just acts as a form of feedback, similar to the controlling vibrating to signify weapon kickback or the sound Mario makes in 64 for different styles of jump.
@@niteowl9491They made one of the cutest mascots imaginable and what, they're just gonna let you play the whole game only seeing him during certain cutscenes? NO! CONSTANT EXPOSURE OF THE LIL CUTIE
@@jakebrantley8889 the cutest team of mascots even.
For me, one of the things about the Katamari games that always stood out was how after the story of the first game, the humans all loved the katamari and wanted to be rolled up by it for some reason(?) My interpretation of this is that the humans represent the players who are playing the game, and that while they are afraid of being part of something they might not understand at first, they can't help but be pulled into this wacky silly game about rolling around. Something like that, idk. It's definitely just meant to be a fun video game that you can look at from an art perspective and find fun interpretations.
During the credits of this game, you roll all the countries on Earth into a ball and the music is basically saying that despite our meaningless and insignificant lives, the love we have on Earth can make us shine as bright as the brightest star. Very sentimental game, a love letter to life on Earth, even with all the cynical aspects, we cherish the little things and each other.
If we look at katamari more metaphorically, even the things like picking up people could be read as connecting with others. And maybe it is in the mundantiy of our lives (or jobs for our father the king of the cosmos) that we collect these interesting moments and people and friends. That's how I'd like to interpret it, anyway. So yeah, i think you're right. The game has heart.
Katamari is like a much more colorful version of Evangelion, minus the orange fanta
@@happily_blue 1 month old but right???
Holy shit ur right
Never watched evangelion because I have personnal hygiene. Does as many people die slowly crushed by gravity in that show ?
@@magusperde365 I’m as clean as a whistle. Do yourself a favor and watch it.
@@AntiBellum
Is "orange Fanta" a euphemism for jerkin' your gherkin over someone comatose?
I absolutely love hearing people talk about what Katamari makes them think of.
I think there are definitely those consumerist points, you keep growing and consuming. The whole point of the game is fixing someone else's mess caused by irresponsibility and the great cost involved. The story is also about family and how you work to meet expectations and given the second game, how it's sometimes a generational thing too.
I always thought the Katamari ball was supposed to represent a day in our own lives, all the things we roll up being the objects and people we interact with on a daily basis and the star at the end represents how we catalogue each day in our memories.
i never considered that before, i love this idea!
That’s literally it friend
This is my personal favorite interpretation
I like the allegory of the workplace. You do your best to do a job that is loosely defined, and constantly changing. You get minimal and/or confusing feedback while you do it, and at the end, even if you didn't do good enough, your boss still takes your work and uses it anyway. Damn......
There is another alternative. That all the things you acquire and all the people you touch during your life become a part of something greater. Because you touched them and made them a part of your life, they transcend and become a timeless part of you and your "star".
I think a lot of the "hopeful" vibes is owed directly to the soundtrack, which is so off the wall and fantastic and featured zero input from Keita Takahashi - and an interpretation of the game feels woefully incomplete without analyzing the music. Yuu Miyake was the main sound director and composed seven songs for the first game, and of those, his favorite song was "Cherry Tree Times" - a song later in the soundtrack that features a children's choir, and I always have an oddly emotional response to hearing it. It speaks to a childlike wonder and appreciation for all that is in the universe that brings a tear to my eye like "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea". The game as a whole is really special, but that song in particular serves as a well-intentioned and optimistic coda to the chaos that precedes it.
The soundtrack for this is so good.
I think the fact that it can be taken as 'art,' with different interpretations, is an achievement in itself that isn't found in a lot of video games.
This is the kind of video that goes viral, and I really expected it to have more views than this! it was very entertaining and interesting as someone who knew of katamari but didn't really know anything about it. Nice work! :)
You’ll have to play it and see if any of what I said actually makes sense
It needs a better thumbnail
Coming at it as a tryhard, I just loved accumulating all the mass, it felt good haptically as well, like the dopa hit of snacking. And I started to recognize people as excellent sources of mass. Pretty much buildings and life were excellent targets to roll up and speedrun. So I saw it as a race course. If you play the 3rd installment, "We Love Katamari" you become large enough to absorb continents and celestial bodies. So I always saw how insignificant life affairs compared to galaxy level events. Life did come from galaxy level events so if it can give it, it can take it away I suppose.
Little sidenote but WLK is the 2nd game, and my personal favorite. 😄
My interpretation is that this game is about the inability to please a self-absorbed family member. The King is a parental unit who is completely disconnected emotionally with the Prince. The game opens on the King completely ruining the universe on a drunken bender. In the level intro cutscenes, the King is framed as towering over the prince, as in he is literally and figuratively talking down to him. Every level you finish has the King telling how much better you could have done, and he reluctantly accepts your creation as long as it met his low bar of expectations. These expectations get bigger every time you finish a level. You can never truly appease the King, he just chooses to NOT punish you when he sees fit. At the end of the game, you give the world to him, and he gives you a pat on the back and thanks you for cleaning up his mess. However it’s clear that the King still believes that he could have done it better and faster than the Prince. It’s a story about never being good enough for somebody who you care about. Especially if that person who you care about expects you to be exactly like their vision of you, rather than your true self.
Came looking for this one. This is my main takeaway from the game as well.
This video was so fun. It felt like a modern house of philosophy, with socrates questioning the deeper meaning of Katamari and our place in the universe.
I replay Katamari every now and then because the rolling feels meditative. The last time I played, the whole idea of the game reminded me of Claes Oldenburg's House Balls.
Ooooo i really enjoy this style of video, Austin. Very interesting to hear you just talk about game design/philosophy. I like hearing a different perspective about games people are interested in.
EDIT: honestly, I always kind of zeroed in on the antagonistic Father/Son relationship in Katamari. The rolling-up part was always second in my mind to that aspect of the game.
I always thought that Katamari was about how everyone is connected, we all being a product of the cosmos, and the prince is just putting it all back together, kinda like how some other user here put it, like Evangelion but much less horrific.
It's Simple.
You had to roll a big enough bloint to lure gigachad Dad back home to save the day.
The only correct answer. ☝️
I always felt it was just a given that the game was about the stress of having a parent make mistakes and then putting the responsibility of fixing it all on their child, no matter what gets sacrificed in the process. ...But like, on a dramatically cosmic scale lol. I never thought to consider it as an allegory for anything else 💀
i think it's funny how we talk about whether something "means" or "represents" one thing or another thing when it's in the eye of the beholder, you know? like for a painting or a word to "mean" something implies someone receiving or interpreting that meaning. makes me think about how the definition of a word in any language is always "whatever native speakers of that language think it means when you say it", like, by definition. that's the definition of a definition, even
I interpreted Katamari as that it’s about the joy of cleaning up and the satisfaction of order. Stages begin as a chaotic mess and you clean it all up. It’s therapeutic to roll that ball and to make stages orderly.
Order through annihilation.
We need more essays like this
Improvised video game essay
Kind of love that idea
incredible how much you've evolved in two years. still a good watch.
When I play katamari, I feel determination. I just have to do my best. I like to observe the scenes laid out, and notice little details like grape candy being misspelled as greap. I spend a long time reading the item descriptions and replaying the sound bites for items that make noises. I suppose my feelings are very "surface level" but i get a lot out of the game even in that way.
I’ve been going through your catalog and loving your dry wit and analytical eye, but this was the video that made me subscribe! You called it “rambling,” but I’ve seen enough 15 minute TH-cam videos of a person talking over game footage to know the difference between rambling and insight. You really got me to think about this game and its themes far more deeply than a scripted video essay with an overly simplified thesis ever would.
To me, I see Katamari Damacy as being about maximalism. More is more is more is more until everything is combined into one. That and the undercurrent of optimistic nihilism (and generational conflict now that I think about it) strongly evoke the themes of the film Everything Everywhere All At Once: if nothing matters, then we might as well keep pushing that ball forward.
Side note: I adore the low poly objects in this game. I find low poly art fascinating in the same way you find skyboxes fascinating, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on that art form.
Yessss !!!!! Literally exactly what you said around 9:25 about efficiency is so perfectly heideggerian, its NOT just capitalism, its late-modernity’s ontotheology of the eternal return of the will to power: enframing.
An interesting tidbit to note?
A fan asked why the dev made the Cowbear levels so unforgiving.
The dev replied, "Because I'm a jerk."
So there's that to add into the pile.
This is my favorite video game analysis on the whole internet
I like this (namely the commentary on what art is, what artists intend, the meaning we project onto art…as well as your own insights). Please make more.
I’d watch a 2 hour version of this
The message of Katamari is i like to make big rolly things and then i do that
I don't know why, but Katamari has never struck me as violent. I never feel guilt throughout hearing the screams of people that I roll up, and I don't feel that The King hates me even when hest degrading me or shooting lasers at me from his eyes or just straight up punching me. Throughout it all, Katamari is a peaceful experience. I couldn't tell you why.
I've never seen this guy without the hair clips
I thought he was someone else for a second
When I play katamari I feel joy despite the ominous subtext. The universe is a surreal place and I think absurdist themes run throughout it (both the game and the universe). Mostly I think it's about doing the best you can with what you got. No matter how strange or frightening things get the only path is through and so the little guy keeps going, sweeping people into his life/ball, having new experiences, and in the end hopefully the world (or the night sky) is a little better for his/your efforts.
At least this is my takeaway
the workplace allegory feels real silly when the cycle of paternal abuse is standing right there in front of you with his whole package + baggage out 💜
Katamari otherwise, is similar to your more hopeful take and for me specifically reconnecting with the objects, environment and people around you. Reestablishing the bonds that used to be there! that connection being the cosmic energy that makes the star. You are right to say that the things that surround us every day are part of being alive and are beautiful when appreciated as a whole.
When its all sent into space and transforms, the unity creates the star and all the objects and people pop right back where they were, but maybe with restored connections between eachother. A positive outcome of this could be people being less blind to the mess of stuff around them and more appreciative, leading to them maintaining it themselves.
The king of course isnt so interested in that side of things, he just wants the resulting stars, ONLY seeing the big picture and not appreciating the fine details of it, the work and love behind it. But this makes sense, the king was fairly isolated from the human space around him growing up because of the high king (Papa) being so strict. The task of rolling is exposing the prince to these wonderful things though, with a whole family of cousins for support. Maybe he can grow kinder than the kings before him.
I thought about this for like a year straight in 2019 and im desperately trying to recall my feelings about it. u activated my trap card (autism) and now you have to play We
also, heres something interesting i found when checkin the wiki for which of the names for Papa is more recognizable -
after rolling up Papa in a level, After stage dialogue: _"Remember rolling up the High King, Our Papa? Papa knows best, such a burden for poor Papa. Doesn’t he look carefree now? _*_Here’s a Cosmic Secret: Getting rolled up by a katamari lightens your heart._*_ When the High King smiles, the world smiles."_
Very good shout thank you. I love all this.
i honestly never thought katamari had any deeper meaning
we're all still children who just like rolling around colorful balls for fun
Katamari was around during a good time in my life. It's always fun, I'll always love it, still play it. Katamari Forever was its swan song
I love that when I play katamari damacy, I always get so into the game that I always tend to forget that as us, the player, and being the prince. We are just basically picking up the extra work after the King of all Cosmos decided to have a boogie and dance and destroyed all the stars himself. And now he just wanted his son to pick up that extra load of work to bring the stars back LOLLL and I always forget that’s what we’re doing throughout the game and I feel bad for the Prince, but it’s still so fun rolling up so many things :’)) (and the cute random outfits you find in each level and can have the Prince wear too!)
In the Japanese version, it's explicitly stated that the King was drunk. :P
I have never seen or heard of this game before, but watching the gameplay was super relaxing to me. Especially paired with your commentary
To me it’s about world domination. Like at first you’re tiny and everything is in your way, unattainable,
and other things bully you. Eventually after hard work you end up coming back and swallowing up everything. Plus the ending really fits that vibe for me.
katamari damacy is about NA NAAAAA NA NANA NANANA NAA NAAA
hot take
@@any_austin I just crapped out a dumb little comment at work before watching the video but after watching it I agree with your assessment that it's partially about the beauty of everyday objects. They had to render milk crates and traffic cones in this cutesy little artstyle rather than just using the default rocks that came with unity. Everything was modeled specifically for the game and that's something.
@@violet_broregarde lord thats a great point and something that throws me into wonder in every entry i play, they modeled ALL those things! thats so many damn things!!! got damn!!! and every single one is just enough of what its supposed to be. larger things arent even necessarily more detailed than the smaller things
I love these more thoughtful outlooks on video games, I personally think you and thorhighheels honestly make the best content on this whole platform
The end of the game, you roll everything up until there is nothing left, and you eventually just get sad that there is nothing left. The fun was the journey, not the result. And the stars represent those processes. Everybstar is an instance of enjoying the process. The result is not memorable on its own. Like a man and a woman having a little house somewhere between the middle of town and the edge, with a couple bland cars and a couple bland kids and a few years sitting around, enjoying your days as much as you can between toiling through your workdays. Your results are entirely devoid of meaning. They are infinitely tiny dots. But you enjoyed it. You felt good making that fading, distant dot. You and your little family existed, yes, but you enjoyed it. Every year was a gift. Every interaction with the world along the way was a blessing, whether you enjoyed it or not. You existed for a time. You had something to do before the long sleep. That's all the meaning life needs. The mouse in your wall is as valid as you. The whale in the ocean bigger than everything you own is as valid as you. Either one can end in an instant. You could end in an instant. You might be sitting there with your lower back in pain and your head clogged by a song you don't even like. And suddenly you might pass out, the blood vessels in your head giving up and flooding your brain with your blood, leaving your last moments in this life, as dull and insignificant as they were, as a fleeting breath of thought. You jolt into the long sleep unaware you are done with life. Your coworkers won't know you have had an incident for a while, possibly hours, as they too work through their days to earn money to pay for food to feed their own lives. Maybe someone you cared for will find you. Maybe they will cry so hard their head hurts and they can't speak. Maybe your passing will make them appreciate what they have better than they did before. They might not be so caught up in the results, and be more appreciative of the process. They will go home to their loved ones and feel more connected to them than they did that morning. This result will not be known to you, but it will be part of their process. Their little ball of experiences will have you in it. They will be a better person as they adapt to your passing. Their process will be enriched one way or another. They will be reminded to appreciate the process better, in the infinitely small time they have in this existence. Katamari is about enjoying the process. And sometimes some really fucking good music.
edit: while I was typing this out, our local EMS got paged out for an old man found pulseless by his son. he was in his 90s.
one of your best videos! you should make more like this one
when you’re saying “a box means the same to me as a penguin” with a pessimistic implication, maybe the point is that in a vacuum they clearly have different levels of value, but in the Big Trash Ball of it all, they make up life. Kind of like a yin yang thing
Love this
You really hit on something special and interesting at 7:15 I like it
10:18 i totally agree, i make music/art and you kinda just make whatever comes to your mind first then you make sense of it afterwards. not saying every artist does that but i bet that’s how the majority of us come up with the process of creation.
(found your channel last week and have watched literally every video before bed lol)
Katamari always gave me a vibe of togetherness and unity. There are all of these small things on Earth that sometimes feel insignificant in the grand scheme, but when you sum everything up and put it together it makes something as beautiful and awe-inspiring as a star. This can also apply to people. Sometimes on an individual level people may feel like its difficult to make a lasting difference or change in the world, but together humans can accomplish so much.
I like the notion of using the small pieces available to you in order to grow, which you can use to leverage even greater things in environments you couldn't reach before. And then looking back and seeing how far you've come.
a great video as always! this style of video is so good for your vibes! very thoughtful and interesting
I'm here in 2025. Started watching Austin a few 6 months or so ago. I never knew how much I needed the hair clips and green screen. They wouldn't have necessarily made this video any better (cause it's already great), but I still need them.
IDEA: As someone who has never played this game in my life, this discourse was a good introduction. I’d love to see you further introduce nostalgic games/franchises to someone who has never “visited” before, a la working for the tourism department.
Anyway good talk.
Thank you.
It’s a game about rolling the biggest katamari ever! It’s also a game about love.
I played Katamari Damacy and the sequel (We ❤Katamari) on the PS2 back in the day, and then more recently I played WLK Reroll on the Switch. My take is that both are very fun, very quirky games that lend themselves really well to entering a flow state and building a deeper mastery of the game(s). I am very focused on the mechanics and the surface level of the story, and never looked for deeper messages about capitalism or having a job, although your comments on both of these topics ring true with my own experiences of the game.
I'd be very interested to see your take on WLK. It has some very interesting levels and tweaks on the mechanics. Two that I think are worth analyzing are the campfire level (where your Katamari is on fire and if you go too long without rolling up any new items the fire goes out and you immediately fail the level) and the Sumo level (where your Katamari is replaced with a boy sumo wrestler and you're trying to roll up enough food to get heavy enough to win a sumo match at the end of the level).
The things I find interesting about those levels is what they say about the game designers' views on life and harm. In the fire level, there are lots of humans but if you run into them (even if you are way too small to affect them normally) their pants catch fire and they run away. You can never roll up any living thing on that level, suggesting that the developers wanted to avoid any suggestion of putting people through a horrible death by burning.
Conversely, the Sumo level lets you roll up everything that you normally could, including people, with the implication being that this boy is devouring the people to gain weight. There's also the thing where when you reach a certain size and get close to police, they will start shooting at you - a very reasonable thing when your Katamari is a big scary ball, but carrying very different connotations when your Katamari is a large child and the police still open fire on you.
I like to think about the contrasts between these two levels because the first one shows that they are willing to change up the game mechanics to avoid truly horrible things being done to people (I am questionably not counting getting rolled up normally as "truly horrible"), but they didn't change any game mechanics to avoid having police open fire on a child, or to avoid having the child cannabalistically devour anyone he can consume. Is there a message there? Probably not. But I like to think about it anyway.
I did an essay at university about algorithmically generated music, and most of it was asking the same questions as you were at some point in this, how meaning is created by the audience. the phrase i used was 'beauty is in the ear of the beholder'.
really enjoyed this one.
Playing katamari feels like an Any Austin video
One must imagine the Prince happy, rolling the katamari up the hill
the katamari series is maybe my favorite in video games. it's one of a handful of titles where the objectives feel kind of secondary to just enjoying the mechanics and atmosphere, at least to me. before working at Namco, Keita Takahashi studied sculpture in college, and probably just had this weird artsy idea and wanted to see it as a playable experience. at Namco, he spent years doing unsatisfying grunt work on fighting games but somehow weaseled his way into getting the green light on his own title, maybe explaining the boss/employee dynamic and the freedom of expression/making a non-voilent game for the hell of it. the low poly models were made by students learning modeling at some Namco summer school type-thing too. so the whole development seems like it was pretty experimental, which is probably why the game is so quirky and full of character. also the soundtrack(s)? cmon!! fire. there's a little book abt it's development by L. E. Hall that i highly recommend :)
For me, Katamari Damacy was about the slippery slope of going too far by not being able to see when you've crossed a line. Every level starts as a puzzle; you can't get X until you're big enough, so lets follow this trail of Y. But eventually, that all shifts from solving a puzzle to just "getting everything you can" rolled up. After all, the ball is big enough now - why shouldn't you? As a result, players experience this unrecognized shift where the ends justify the means.
It's also worth mentioning that the Katamari is like Godzilla. Unconcerned with the destruction caused, just seeking to accomplish it's goals regardless of the impacts.
I loved this weird genre of game where you basically eat things and get bigger, remember like two flash games that had that same design but never got to play this as a kid
I agree that art is just pure expression that we project meaning onto. You can use it to convey specific ideas if you want but I think art in its purest form is just unfiltered expression, which I prefer.
My best friend and i are both addicted to Katamari. We compete on who can find the most amount of random katamari merchandise.
it could be that the game is just nondidactic, meaning it doesnt have a meaning it just is. Didacticism is the belief that all art, literature, etc has an underlying intention or bigger picture and this game might just not comply with that philosophy
I liked this video more than most of your others, nice job
This started out and I was like wait he doesn’t already have a point prepared? Then I was like oh this guys kinda spittin and I agree with a lot of this. Good vid!
I've always just seen this as a very weird Japanese game with a good soundtrack. And that if there is some deeper meaning to it, it's probably about some aspect of Japanese culture or history that I just don't understand because I'm not Japanese.
My memory could be butts on this, but I remember the loading screen saying like "Sending things to earth"
Which to me seemed to imply that it was just the King playing the most elaborate game of 52 pickup ever.
In the context of consumerism, I think the initial optimism makes sense because I think people typically have good intentions when they start a business or something and as it expands it loses the initial meaning. Companies come up with grand, wishy-washy mission statements and they spend a lot of time and money on appealing to consumers, but the bigger they are, the less genuine it seems to be. Because in the end, it's about money, an abstraction of our material relationships with other people. At the end of a level in Katamari, all the stuff you picked up becomes a number: the diameter of the singular object you made.
Thanks to this video I discovered a wonderful game. Who knew mindless consumerism could be so fun? Very good analysis, love your videos.
P.S. Gatsby sucks, who cares if it’s raining?
imagine a katamari unemployment video. it would follow the capitalist work-environment theme but also highlight how each of the people you roll up are individuals with a unique life
i think about it as taking everything you can out of life and making it a part of you, on your quest to become the most you.
Katamari for me is a reminder of the bygone era when people invented weird games like Katamari. Katamari is a game for me that a lot of people told me to play, but nobody ever knew why it was good. It makes me think of the spiral nemesis and how the universe will end. And how as beings of entropy we are constantly pushing toward the heat death of the universe by playing Katamari.
I'm a simple man and I dont wanna know what katamari is about. idk why. still gonna watch your video.
lmfao I loved the single shot of green days lead. word
Loved this video, really interesting interpretation of this acid trip of a game, cheers!
The game is about
Eggbusters
all i can derive from this is, everything will eventually become star fuel. nothing deeper or shallower than that. simplistic, entertaining and without much politics. just like i like my games.
If I’m being honest, my main reaction to “what is Katamari about?” would be the “Cocaine is a helluva drug” sound byte
Strange and unremarkable places in Katamari Damacy, WHEN?!
I think this game always felt like it was about power dynamics to me. You start small, scared of bumping into most things, and end the round powerful enough to roll up objects indiscriminately. Then you immediately get the rug pulled out from under you by a dad who makes me you feel either like crap for all you've accomplished or barely satisfactory. Its about the satisfaction of having power, and how we will hurt people without care to experience it. Its about how in the process of making ourselves feel big, most people will carelessly make others feel small. At least, that's what I always got out of it.
Heyyy don't call yourself an idiot. Positive self talk is great!
i know im late but the stuff and people turning into a star reminds me of carl sagan saying we're all stardust and i prefer that interpretation
What’s with that frame of Billie Joe Armstrong? 😂 2:29
its about the king of cosmos destroying the cosmos and you have to repair it!
“It’s about the worker’s sense of unfulfillment?”
Oh, so THAT’S why the original didn’t give us the “Endless” mode that was the obvious post-game reward
I just think the main feeling is of creating the perfect snowball. 😅
I did not expect the dissertation that I recieved, but I like it.
I got this game for my switch and aside from one software update I have never even touched it in my life.
I kinda had the same experience with it. Still haven’t beaten it but it’s so neat and fun
One of my favorite examples of cosmic horror.
i really like this video, i guess the feeling i get when i play katamari is mostly very positive as it's kind of a euphoric experience but when people and animals and everything are also screaming and running away from me there is a slightly grotesque/disturbing element too, but less straight up and more like a black comedy. i guess if i had to say it was about any one particular thing, it's about the accumulation of objects and experiences in life and how when you die they/the trace you left on them all kind of are sent up and vanquished, but the memory (star) of them remains.
also, you look like andrew garfield a bit (that's a compliment)
I guess mostly what I thought about at the age my sister and I played Katamari was a kind of cosmic awe. I was pretty into space as a concept, in the way that the universe is so big that my problems aren't really that significant. Even the King of All Cosmos being a dick to the prince is just a moment on the way to turning back into a part of the universe. I would guess that he acts that way because he knows this. We're all stardust in the end. I found it comforting that my problems wouldn't feel so important forever.
Thanks for reminding me of this. I had to fight myself not to scroll to the comments before allowing my own thoughts to form and I'm glad I did. Your videos help me slow down.
Nothing like a good ol' mini existential crisis while playing Katamari
To expand on what you said about it feeling optimistic at the beginning - I think that is how life under capitalism feels at first, you see everyone else's identity represented in their possessions and clothing and hairstyle. I think the king character does represent a father figure and a boss, at first in life we are praised for and actively enjoy the accumulation of stuff as a statement of our own identity, but as we progress further in life this need to accumulate sees us often metaphorically crashing through lives of people in much more meaningful ways as we accumulate experiences and people and places. What we end up doing often affects people in negative ways driven by desires fed to us by capitalism and by our patriarchal archetypes, whether they be father figures, bosses or even friends sometimes. At some point our identity becomes so tied up in what we have consumed , experienced and 'accumulated' that we are unrecognizable and in the end, it doesn't even matter because we all die and become stardust anyway.
It seems like a game about aliens who put zero value on Earthlings and our stuff.
i feel like for video games in particular you have to be kind of willing to accept that the message is always gonna have to be second to the needs of the medium. So no explanation for "what does this mean" is ever gonna feel clean
I like the work allegory more than anything else. Specifically, working for someone else’s betterment in an effort to make ends meet as opposed to working for yourself. What’s the point of a life like that
Sometimes it's better when you don't allow something to matter.