{"id":13706,"date":"2015-07-27T00:01:20","date_gmt":"2015-07-27T00:01:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=13706"},"modified":"2015-07-13T00:54:40","modified_gmt":"2015-07-13T00:54:40","slug":"katamari-volume-one-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2015\/07\/27\/katamari-volume-one-book\/","title":{"rendered":"Katamari: Volume One (Book)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"KATAMARI1\"<\/a>A couple of years ago, Shifty Look, a site that hosted web comics, started featuring strips and other media like web animated series with various Namco game characters.\u00a0 Many of these characters were very obscure ones, like Bravoman, Klonoa, Wonder Momo, etc.\u00a0 I\u2019m a classic Namco game junkie so I loved seeing all this happen.\u00a0 I always wondered how they made money doing this, but I guess they didn\u2019t make enough because sadly, Shifty Look closed its doors about a year or so ago.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure if you can still read their comics online, but they did team up with Udon Entertainment to bring some of their Namco series to hardcover book collections.\u00a0 Last year I reviewed the books based on Bravoman<\/strong><\/a> and Wonder Momo<\/strong><\/a> (I got a press release a while back that the Bravoman book won some sort of children\u2019s book award in Canada).\u00a0 And recently I just got a book with a collection of comics based around one of my favorite Namco games: Katamari Damacy!\u00a0 So here\u2019s a review of the Katamari: Volume One book!<\/p>\n

The comic is based on the Prince\u2019s adventures and the writers did a good job keeping it focused on the games.\u00a0 The Prince would solve problems and save the day by rolling things up in a Katamari, but the comic also fleshed out other characters, too, such as the King of All Cosmos and the other cousins.\u00a0 Even minor characters made appearances, like Jumboman and the little girl who could \u201cfeel the cosmos.\u201d\u00a0 Anyway, here is a bigger picture of the front of the book.<\/p>\n

\"KATAMARI1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The first couple of pages have an intro to the comic as well as a bit of history of the Katamari games.\u00a0 I was impressed they mentioned all the games, including the ones on iOS.\u00a0 Unfortunately, I don\u2019t think you can download the iOS ones anymore, but I bet they\u2019re like the regular games anyway.\u00a0 I wish Bandai Namco would make a Wii U Katamari game.\u00a0 They kind of overdid it with the series a while back, but I think it\u2019s been long enough that a new one is due.\u00a0 Only problem with the book is that they didn\u2019t mention things like the Prince being a playable racer in Pac-Man World Rally (I think I might be partially responsible for that). But oh well, that\u2019s just being nitpicky on my part.<\/p>\n

\"KATAMARI2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Here is a sample page of the comic.\u00a0 You can see some of the familiar characters here.\u00a0 On every page they have descriptions and insights from the makers of the Katamari comic, and many of them are very educational and insightful.\u00a0 If you have kids who want to draw comics someday, this would be a good book to get for them to learn some things.<\/p>\n

\"KATAMARI3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Some of the Katamari comics were just one extra-long vertical panel, so they added an extra fold-out page in the middle to show them.\u00a0 I thought that was kind of neat that they did that.<\/p>\n

\"KATAMARI4\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And on the last few pages are some random Katamari sketches.<\/p>\n

\"KATAMARI5\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And that\u2019s all in the Katamari comic book!\u00a0 Only problem I had with it was how they did the text bubbles.\u00a0 They made them look how they do in the game, which is a neat idea.\u00a0 But they are so small and hard to read in the book.\u00a0 I imagine they worked a bit better online, but the print was too small in the book.\u00a0 But if you like Katamari games, you should try and track down this book anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of years ago, Shifty Look, a site that hosted web comics, started featuring strips and other media like web animated series with various Namco game characters.\u00a0 Many of these characters were very obscure ones, like Bravoman, Klonoa, Wonder Momo, etc.\u00a0 I\u2019m a classic Namco game junkie so I loved seeing all this happen.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":13700,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13706"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13708,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13706\/revisions\/13708"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}