I love Kirby, but this Kirby instrument is just wrong

Kirby is one of the loves of my life. I love that tiny pink puff ball like I love my family, my cat and my extremely good Spotify playlists. I will never hurt him in Super Smash Bros.; I will never hurt Kirby ever, in any way possible.

But today, Kirby has hurt me. It’s not completely his fault ... and yet, it will be hard to forgive him for consenting to this design crime. Maywa Denki, manufacturer of the strange, synthesizer-esque instrument the otamatone, has borrowed Kirby’s trusted visage and stretched it out into something horrifying.

The Kirby otamatone will be available in Japan this May, and I can only hope that it remains there. For this Kirby is not the Kirby I love. It’s a limbless monster with a Pac-Man face and deadened eyes; his features are left unrecognizable beyond that bubblegum pink skin and blushing cheeks. Worse: To play the otamatone, you finger the thin, protruding stem up and down to create different notes, all while squeezing the ball sack that lives shamelessly at the tail end, like so:

When you squeeze the Kirby ball, it looks like this.

Maywa Denki

Awful. I don’t care if it sounds kind of cool — unless this Kirby head sings like, I dunno, Maria Callas or Beyonce, there are no excuses. But hey, props to Maywa Denki for doing the most to convince itself that there’s nothing wrong here. The Google-translated version of its news release reads like this:

Everything is fine. There are cute stars and Kirby in the package. Even if viewed from an angle, it is a cute face from the front.

Keep telling yourself that, Maywa Denki. Everything is fine indeed.

Update: Forgive me for being blinded by this nightmarish Kirby and not giving the otamatone the proper explanation it deserves. I’ve got a better description of how it works above.

I still hate this, though.