Slashdot Mirror
We Love Katamari Review
Balbanes writes "Tim Rogers reviews We Love Katamari. He calls it Katamari Damashii: The Videogame." The original is probably my favorite non World of Warcraft game in the last year or two. I can't wait for this game. This article has a lot of commentary on the gameplay, the music, and more. And really, if you haven't played it the original you owe it to yourself to try. The infectious music and hysterical gameplay are a serious treat.
I can't get over the fact the guy basically wrote a book here to review a video game. That's one long review!
Finance tutorials and more! Understandfinance
Y'know it'd be great if the original was released in the UK, since I hear it was a real classic. AFAIK it's not even available anywhere in Europe. What are Sony smoking? Surely with all the great reviews the game(s) would sell here.
I ask because that was the longest-winded, most self-indulgent review I've ever read of anything.
I'll sum it up:
"Blah, blah, I have rarified tastes in J-pop, blah, blah, I know the producer's name, blah, blah, the game is more of the same and it's good, blah, blah, the game succeeded because of Japanophiles with less knowledge of Japanese culture than me, blah, blah, the game is more of the same and it's bad, blah, blah, I suggest that the producer drop his name in connection with newer projects that have nothing to do with Katamari."
The review was incoherent and was 20-30% about the author of the review more than the game. I smell blog.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I'm a Japanophile, too, but there's something about that culture that really attracts some creepy (or at least unsettling) gaijin.
I think it's the fact that nobody obsesses like the Japanese. Think about it. The culture prizes knowledge but excludes people outside the norm. Both forces push those with obsessive tendencies way further out over the edge than in many other countries. You don't get otaku and hikikomori in other countries to the level that whole industries cater to them.
Because of that our own obsessive and socially outcast people get the false impression that obsessing over their entertainment and so on is socially acceptable there. Therefore, it's not bad to be like that. Other people understand. Listen, covering your walls in anime posters and keeping figurines of female characters is even more of a turn-off for women there than it is here. It doesn't help that (much like tabletop gaming and first-person shooters in the states) anime fandom has been tarnished by a few murders by fans Where the media latched onto their hobbies as the cause of their mental degeneration.
(FYI, otaku is not a nice word. It inherently carries connotations of creepy, socially-stunted hermits. The term use for obsessed geeks comes from its use by such people who would use it to greet each other (as a polite form of "you") because they couldn't remember other people's names. Don't wear it like a badge of pride.)
I think if more people realized that the Japanese didn't like their creepy fanboys anymore than we do, it might lose a bit of its sheen. As for the other factors, I'd say that, yes, technology, kid-like spirit, obscurity, and sexual undertones in addition to action and escapist elements strongly influence anime fandom. For those of us that gain no joy from reality television, sit-coms sports, or other drivel, anime makes a nice escape. The problem is the people who don't know how to come back to reality afterwards.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
There has to be something fundamentaly wrong with the slashdot-iverse when I get more information from those few lines than the entirety of the article to which the front page links. Surely things cannot be MEANT to work this way.
That was the most incomprehensible body of text I've ever attempted to read.
I got tired of him imagining the girl singing the music (in the video game?) after about 3 paragraphs, so I skipped closer to the end only to find out he was still talking about her and relating the game to Armageddon the movie?
Question everything