It’s Nyango Star!

It’s impossible to describe Nyango Star with mere words. This video will do a much better job:

Nyango Star is a mascot for Kuroishi City in Japan’s Aomori prefecture, on the northernmost tip of Honshu (the main island), and Japan’s largest producer of apples. In a design decision that makes perfect sense if you’re Japanese, Nyango is:

• An apple (therefore a perfect mascot for Aomori)…
• possessed by the spirit of a dead cat (???)…
• who in the fusion was granted awesome metal drumming superpowers.

The name also makes perfect sense if you’re Japanese:

• “Apple” in the Japanese language is “ringo”.
• “Nyan” means “meow”.
• And, of course, the name is a pun on Beatles drummer Ringo Starr.

Here’s a Vice documentary about Nyango Star:

Here’s a great video — Professional vs. Beginner Drummer — in which somehow Nyango, a mascot in an apple/cat costume with fixed facial features is displaying more emotion than the human:

Here’s Nyango doing a drum cover of the Japanese pop tune Futon no nakakara detakunai, which translates as “I don’t want to leave my futon”:

And I’ll close with this observation: Only in Japan can you assemble a crowd of seniors at a concert hall to watch an apple/cat mascot drum along to Slayer’s Raining Blood: