83: Katamari

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Katamari

Title text: As the King of All Cosmos remarked, 'Is it that it's fun, or that it lets you forget yourself?'

Explanation

Katamari Damacy is a Japanese video game in which the player must roll around an infinitely sticky katamari ball, cottoning up objects and terrain to increase the ball's size. In this comic, Cueball uses the katamari as an analogy for his love for Megan, pushing it to such embarrassing extremes that Megan feels the need to remark whether he could "possibly get any gayer." At this point, Cueball wins the level he is playing and is transported by a "Royal Rainbow," an in-game occurrence at the completion of each level. The rainbow is a symbol of gay pride, in addition to being just a generally happy (i.e. gay) idea.

Cueball also only takes up such a stand after Megan requests that he help her. This is possibly a criticism of male selfishness (perhaps Randall's self-criticism), in that males do not discuss romantic ideas, except as a way out.

The King of All Cosmos, mentioned in the title text, is an instructive character in all of the Katamari games. The title text points out that perhaps we either like or love video games not because they are fun, but because they let us forget our problems and retreat into someone else or an intricate fantasy.

Transcript

[Megan stands on the left. Cueball is sitting on the floor with a game controller in his hand. He is looking at a TV on the floor connected to a game console, also on the floor.]

Megan: Can you pause for a moment and help me with something?

Cueball: You know, our love is like a katamari. We travel along, rolling up more and more of the world into our shared experience, taking it and making it our own.

Megan: I, you... wow. Geekiness aside, that was actually incredibly sweet.

Cueball: The clutter of everyday life, with a simple core to tie it together, eventually becomes something grand as the world itself.

[A rainbow extends outward from the TV, with "ROYAL RAINBOW!" above it. Cueball raises his hands in victory.]

Megan: Okay, also sweet, but now I'm wondering if you could possibly get any gayer.

Trivia

Katamari Damacy is also a subject of 161: Accident and 851: Na.

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Discussion

I do not know if Randall was the first to come up with this idea, and King of Cosmos' comment in the Alt-Text, but it is one of my favorite remarks about Katamari. Tryc (talk) 14:55, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

My take: Girl asks boy to pause game so he can help her. Boy doesn't want to, because he is closed to completing a level. However, saying something like "wait until I complete the level," will never fly with girl and boy would lose 'relationship points.' His solution: stall girl by giving a super-romantic speech while continuing to play. The girl obviously fell for it, and boy reached his next gaming level while girl is googly-eyed. Mountain Hikes (talk) 04:09, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

You know, this kind of reminds me of a song by a band called Devo. The song is called Snowball, and it uses a sort of similar metaphor. But then people thought it was secretly about cocaine. To be fair, the band was pretty much high on cocaine for the better part of their heyday from 78-83. Look them up. RedHatGuy68 (talk) 06:02, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

WTF is a katamari ball? This explanation fails to explain. --Calion (talk) 12:01, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

The link to the game explains it as meaning "clump" (hence a "ball of clumped stuff", is one probably awful but fairly accurate rewording) but I couldn't quickly find another usable place to use to explain that via a link on the isolated word itself. If you feel it lacking, you can try to find a better wording/link yourself (to satisfy your own need for information) and make the change so that nobody else finds it lacking. 172.70.86.127 13:56, 28 February 2023 (UTC)