On Netgalley the other day, after checking off I reviewed The Book of Strange New Things, I mosied on over to the Graphic Novels or Comic section or whatever it’s called. I don’t think I’ve ever really looked there before, since there is really no point in reading comics on my teeny kobo and I generally can’t be bothered to read things on the iPad. So I wasn’t expecting much, but then:
A Katamari comic! (NB: this picture is not from the comic but from deviantart.)
Even better, a Katamari comic that I didn’t even have to request. It was free free free to anyone who wanted it. You better bet I was going to roll that comic up into my life.
(For those unfamiliar with Katamari Damacy, it’s a series of Japanese video games in which one is a diminutive green prince with a sticky rolling ball that collects objects on Earth under the watchful eye and abusive tones of his gigantic king father. It’s quite Japanese and beneficial to play prior to visiting any place in urban Japan. I’m pretty sure the only thing that got me through my first two jetlagged days of Tokyo was pointing out, ad nauseum to Geoff and Lydia, objects that I had, at one point, rolled up in a Katamari game.)
The book brings together a collection of webcomics, a few story arcs, and a few one-offs (including flow charts on whether or not you are trying to roll things up with a Katamari or a blueberry). The stories are cute and very much in the style of the Katamari universe. There is the king, a cameo by the queen, many cousins, Michiru (the little girl who is always talking about feeling the cosmos in the first game), Jumboman, cutie animals, they’re all there. The colours are as vibrant and the corners, metaphorically and literally speaking, are as cutely rounded as they are in the game. Comics are a logical step to continue the Katamari universe; I can only imagine the sheer number of adjectives necessary to write a Katamari novel. There is a lot of detail in the panels, most of which I overlooked until I read the creators’ commentary; the book is structured a bit like a “director’s cut” with Culang and Castro writing little blurbs on most pages about the story or what is hidden in the panels. Generally, I don’t read comics correctly as I only ever read the text bubbles and never give the pictures more than a peripheral glance, so having reminders to actually look and see what is happening is helpful to text-intensive lovers like me.
The commentary, however, ends up a double-edged sword. One joy of Katamari is how genderless it can feel. There are a slew of male characters, but, outside the story line, the game is not testosterone-driven, angry, or violent (other than the cops that shoot at your Katamari and a few Hey’s, no one quite seems to mind being rolled up). It’s just a colourful, fun, way to spend a few hours. But the commentary of the creators lends a definite lad feel to the whole comic, likely not in an intentional or an exclusionary way, but there’s definitely a more masculine feel to the comic than to the series. While there are some girl cousins chosen to go on the adventures (Daisy and June in particular) and Michiru is around, I still get the default to male feel, i.e. that anything that isn’t specifically gendered is masculine. Then, once I started thinking that, I couldn’t stop. Then not even the colours of a Royal Rainbow could cheer me up.
As for reading it on my iPad, not a fan. I have one other comic I got to read on my iPad, and then I think I’m done. The font is too small for my firmly-ensconced-in-my-thirties eyeballs, and it’s a hassle to have to keep zooming in and then zooming back out to turn the pages. It would seem that an iPad is a perfect container for comics, but maybe the ratios just aren’t right yet, or trying to smush a webcomic meant to be read on a big monitor into a tiny one is beyond the capabilities of current aesthetic technology. I think this book deserves to be big and glossy and coffee-table size for optimal viewing.
Still, KA-TA-MA-RI!
Katamari Volume One by Alex Culang and Raynato Castro went on sale January 2, 2015.
I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.