Japanese artist captures the thrill of playing a UFO catcher crane game in short animated video

This hilarious clip shows a crane game we hope to never encounter in Japan.

One of the most enticing games you can find in a Japanese game centre is the ubiquitous crane game, otherwise known in Japan as a UFO catcher. With brightly lit interiors housing a number of unusual plushies and exclusive merchandise, it’s hard to resist feeding your yen into one of these machines in the hopes of snaring a cute and expensive item for the price of a few bucks.

One Japanese artist, who goes by the handle @purinharumaki, recently took to Twitter to express this sentiment in a short animated video that’s got everyone around the country laughing. Sweet, cute, and then suddenly bizarre, this is one clip that needs to be watched until the very end.

UFOキャッチャー https://t.co/LxBKFahpUn

—
からめる (@purinharumaki) December 27, 2016

That’s one crane game we hope we never get sucked into playing while in Japan. Or is that exactly what happens, to some extent, with every crane game we play? However you choose to read into the story, it sure starts sweet, with an adorable little kitty peeking out from inside the machine.

▼ Then, the strongest pair of crane arms we’ve ever seen lifts kitty up, only to reveal what the smiling cat really looks like.

Let’s face it, it’s an awesome feeling to win anything from a crane game, no matter what it looks like, so we can understand the elated rush of joy from these two winners.

Twitter users are loving the cutely weird clip, leaving comments like:

“I smiled from beginning to end watching this!”
“That was frightening!”
“I couldn’t stop laughing!”
“OMG that was unexpected!”
“I can’t get enough of your hilarious videos!”

It’s true that @purinharumaki‘s Twitter account is filled with hilarious little hand-drawn clips like this. The requests for other animated versions are already rolling in, and if the artist needs any further ideas, we’d love to see what the crane-game-loving character would do with this onion game or these cute toys featuring Pikachu!

Source, images: Twitter/@purinharumaki

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