Katamari Damacy/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Awesome Music: So many it has its own page.
    • As great as the entire soundtrack is, A Song For The King Of Kings is a definite chart-topper.
    • Katamari on the Rocks definitely qualifies. It plays during the opening sequence and last level of the first game.
  • Broken Base: Touch My Katamari introduces new stretching and squashing mechanics for the katamari. However, it's also short, has most of the cousins going on vacation, and gives those who do appear makeovers that weren't well-recieved.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Out of all the cousins, Marny gets a lot of appearances in official art, wallpapers and the like. This is probably due in no small part to his simple, yet very distinctive shape; the obvious implications of which in this universe have been acknowledged, as seen here.
  • Freud Was Right: Odeko's distinctive shape has spawned many a cheap joke at his expense. The fact that he's explicitly proud of his long head, and is prone to exaggerating its length, doesn't help.
  • MST3K Mantra: You're rolling up living things (either one at a time, or in entire cities) and turning them into stars and stardust. You can even roll up the entire Earth itself. Yet they're alive and well and still on Earth if you retry the challenge. Indeed, sometimes the fans themselves ask you to roll them around, and they enjoy the experience and want to do it again (until you reach the top limit, at least) The moral? Don't worry too much about these people and animals. The entire concept is more concerned with Rule of Funny than Fridge Logic.
  • Scrappy Game: For some reason, Beautiful Katamari was hated by the critics.
  • Squick: If the premise doesn't throw you off, managing to roll up both the King of All Cosmos and the Queen in the same katamari in the second game will warp your mind.
  • Surprise Difficulty: Yes, it's a brightly-colored, wacky game with an addictive J-pop soundtrack. Doesn't mean the game won't utterly humiliate you on a few levels.
  • Tastes Like Diabetes: "This is the happiest game I've ever played."
  • That One Level:
    • "Ursa Major" and "Taurus" in the original game, and by extension, the COW♥BEAR level in the second. Anything related to bears/cows that you pick up finishes the level, and you want something large. However, it's easy to get anything from a "WARNING: BEARS" sign or a milk bottle to finish the game, and even easier to have a larger moving object knock you into small items. At least the second game allows you to immediately restart the level, without having to listen to the King berate you for the small item like he did in the first (the same cannot be said for the COW♥BEAR level in Katamari Forever, unfortunately).
    • The COW♥BEAR level gets kicked Up to Eleven in Katamari Forever 's Drive Mode, to the point even the King himself questions your sanity when you begin the mode.
    • And at least picking up a tiny item passes the level; the same can't be said for the hot-cold level in Beautiful Katamari and Katamari Forever. You'll never look at a fire extinguisher the same way again.
      • For those who wonder, one level requires you to pick up hot stuff (hot meal, camp fire, etc) to accumulate 10000 degrees. The problem is picking up something cold (like an ice cream) your temperature drops immensely. And the cold items fell out from nowhere, usually directly on your path. And the bystanders will kick you into them. Oh, if you were thinking "take your time and plan out your path", your temperature is also constantly dropping (the higher it is, the faster it drops). Good luck.
    • To make matters worse for those who are planning 100% Completion, several items (such as the infamous Cowbear) can only be found on these levels. As a few of these items are really quite large (again, such as the Cowbear), they are not easily obtained.
  • This Is Your Premise on Drugs: Take Bobobo-Bo Bo-bobo, FLCL and Excel Saga, and distill them into a drug form. You could probably call the result "This Is Your Drug On Games".
  • Unfortunate Implications: The King's description of the peach: "A butt-shaped fruit that is more tasty than butts." The implication being that the King knows what butts taste like.
  • Viewer Gender Confusion:
    • Figuring out some of the cousins' gender can be difficult, especially without reading the King's profiles. This definitely isn't helped by the point below.
    • For some reason, tends to cause a lot of "Wait, Dipp is a guy?!" reactions.
    • This Troper freaked out when she found out Beyond, was indeed... a boy.
      • One could say that the information was BEYOND comprehension.
  • What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?: "Katamari Damacy: not LSD, but an incredible simulation!" Lampshaded by VG Cats.
  • The Woobie: Opeo.
  • Woolseyism: Believe it or not, the ridiculous dialogue is completely intentional (and in some cases, an accurate and direct translation of the idiosyncratic diction used in the original game).