While in Japan, a long-overdue meeting took place: I travelled with Noby to Bandai Namco headquarters, and finally got to sit down and chat with Keita Takahashi, artist, designer, and creator of Katamari Damacy, one of the most innovative and creative video games ever made.

Although I'd been working with Takahashi for over a year on the first run of Panic Katamari t-shirts, and felt like I knew him pretty well, we had never met in person — classic Internet style.

The main purpose of our meeting? To kick off planning our next round of Katamari Damacy t-shirts.

And what an excellent segue for a brief plug!

New Katamari Shirts For 2007, Now Available!

Hot blog! Hot blog! The new shirts are ready, today!

We just posted five incredible new Katamari Damacy t-shirt designs to the Panic Goods store.


I think these designs are even more amazing that the first set. We tried to experiment with alternate printing techniques, in addition to ink — we're using gold (and silver) foil, as well as flocked (fuzzy) printing. Both techniques are pretty amazing to witness — in the case of foil, a sheet of foil is literally pressed to a screen-printed adhesive, and the excess foil is removed. Flocking is even crazier, with millions of little charged fibers blowing around a chamber and electro statically attaching to a shirt while standing perfectly straight. The end result is all that matters: shiny shirts, fuzzy shirts, awesome shirts. Here's yours truly, shining away. The future is now!

The shirts are still a reasonable $24.95, and you can purchase them here!

We hope you, the Katamari fan, and even you, the non-Katamari-fan, love these new shirts.

The Story of the Katamari Shirts

Anyway. We still get asked a lot of questions about the Katamari shirts, and how they came to be. It makes sense, as we're supposed to be a Mac software company, yeah? The story, you'll find, is surprisingly straightforward, while being unimaginably unlikely, and yet somehow very totally Panic. It goes like this:

We all loved the Katamari game. And we had some t-shirt experience with our MacWorld shirts, and had started selling shirts online. My friend Jason Sturgill off-handidly suggested that we should make Katamari shirts. I half-jokingly suggested it via e-mail to Noby, our guy in Japan. Noby half-seriously looked in the phone book and called Namco Japan and, after a brief discussion, they scheduled a face-to-face licensing meeting that same day. Noby met with Keita Takahashi and Kei Umeki (Namco's licensing guy), and, after talking, permission was granted.

That's it. That's how it happened. Just like that, we were the first — and, to this day, the only — company to ever get a license to make Katamari Damacy goods.

You need to understand that Takahashi, to his infinite credit, is very protective of his creation. At the time we were speaking, Namco had huge success with their Taiko Drum Master series of video and arcade games, and the (very cute) characters and designs for Taiko Drum Master were being merchandised and printed on every possible product imaginable throughout all of Japan. It was a clear and vivid depiction of the extremes of licensing: your characters bordering on generic. I think Takahashi saw this, and felt that the over-commercialization of his game and idea would really dilute the beauty and uniqueness of it.

So why did he choose Panic, and not any other, er, "real" company? As Takahashi explained to us, we are primarily a Mac software company — in the t-shirt world, we're outsiders. Takahashi is primarily an artist — in the video game world, he's an outsider. With both of us working outside our expected zone, he hoped it would create the perfect environment of artistic freedom, one in which we would respect his vision and together we would create goods that are both awesome and artistic.

Admittedly, when I first started working with him on the shirts, I had in mind some very classic video game shirts. Mind you, I'm not talking about retarded and "hilarious" text-laden Hot Topic video game shirts, all the "DON'T MAKE DONKEY UP IN YOUR KONG" and "MASTER SWORD DOWN BELOW" and all that. No, I imagined Cabel-style shirts, cute depictions of Katamari characters in appealing poses with complimentary colors.

Therefore, his first incoming designs took me completely by surprise — they were really different, featured animals, and often didn't feature Katamari characters in prominent positions, if at all. So, Takahashi and I began our famous game of "artistic back and forth", making suggestions and revisions to each others' artwork, each pushing from a different direction.

Ultimately, I came to understand and quite respect what Takahashi was trying to do — treat the characters and the world he created as an artistic endeavor, not a necessarily a commercial one. A bold call, and an amusing thing to come to grips with when your goal is to, you know, actually sell t-shirts. But he was right: there was no reason to take the easy way out with this project, and just create what was expected, because, for both of us, this was a fun side project, not our core business. So, what was there to lose?

(That said, I still push towards commercial appeal, much to his bemusement. Lest we forget, the Balloon shirt, the one he didn't even want to do — and hilariously referred to as a shirt "for babies" — wound up being the biggest seller. It's safe to say we balance each other nicely.)

Anyway, the Katamari Shirt Project was a huge and much-needed creative break for me, a great way to stretch a bit in between the usual GUI design and web work, and I will forever be grateful to Takahashi for the opportunity. Heck, even the bonus postcards we attach to the shirts were super fun to design. (I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what exact spot-gloss printing techniques EDGE magazine uses on their covers — ultimately, their printer in the UK wrote me back! — and even more time designing a unique reversible "address area" for the postcard back that could be used both in the USA or Japan, two countries with very different address formats, by just flipping it over. If you buy a shirt, check it out.)

Japanese Chinese Food and Electronics

So, back to Japan!

Takahashi, Noby, Umeki and myself met at Namco HQ, and talked a little business. I showed him our new "printed label" shirts, and we talked a bit about the plans for the next round of shirts. We then headed to an indoor mall (almost all of Japan Tokyo is an indoor mall) and got some Chinese food. We had a really nice time talking about consoles, games, systems, Takahashi's work, and the like.

When you read translated interviews with Takahashi in the American press, you get the impression that he brashly hates everything. In reality, this is only partially true. He's actually pretty shy person, and you quickly realize it's not "I hate everything", but honest, thoughtful opinion — his vision is so specific, and many things don't live up to his expectations and their potential. What also doesn't come across in the press is his dry sense of humor and mischievousness — his critiques are generally said with a sly smile and a laugh, as if he knows he's being marginally ridiculous by admitting, for example, that he didn't really like Mother 3.

That's not to say I have him fully figured out. We know he has a low tolerance for anyone who takes the "safe road". So, you'd think he'd be a huge fan of the convention-shunning Nintendo Wii system, right? Wrong! He's currently playing the GameCube version of Twilight Princess, intentionally avoiding the Wii version! Why? Who knows! The lesson? Takahashi will keep you guessing, but in a good way: you'll be suprised, confused, and delighted, just like when you play his games.

Anyway, after lunch we headed to a brand new Yodobashi Camera store, still smelling of fresh paint.

It's really not hard to understand why nerds are crazy about Japan: it's everything we love in the world, concentrated into a few small islands, and then whipped up into a rich lather of absurdly beautifully epic proportions, creating things beyond our imaginations. Food? Music? Snacks? Toys? Computers? Games? Comics? Movies? Television? Bigger, crazier, nuttier, better, awesomer.

Yodobashi Camera is a perfect demonstration of the magic of Japan, particularly the new stores (like the giant one in Akihabara, and the one we visited), which will liquidate your mind. If you live in the USA, try imagining a Fry's Electronics, except actually good, not all gross, way bigger, and with significantly more real cool stuff. And without 75% of the things having been returned.

The easiest way to demonstrate the wonder and magic of Yodobashi Camera is by showing you one picture. It's a picture of the "Capsule Toy" aisle. One aisle. Now, surely you've seen capsule toy vending machines before, right? Probably not like this:


I didn't Photoshop that. Japan is awesome.

The Future

I bid goodbyte to Takahashi and Umeki, and we headed back to the trains , but not before learning a little about Takahashi's future plans.

First off, more Katamari Damacy games are coming! The games are no longer being worked on by Takahashi ("We Love Katamari", the sequel, was as far as he wanted to take it), but Namco is soldiering on without him, and I'm still very excited about what's to come. Look for some new Katamari titles possibly as soon as later this year.

So, Takahashi is now working on something totally new.

What is this new video game project? What platform is it on? When can we see it?

Sadly, I can't say. But, as with all things Takahashi, it's safe to say you'll be surprised, confused, and delighted.