Girl With Balloon artwork cutely followed by Udon With Balloon.

Earlier this month, elusive street artist Banksy rocked the art world by shredding his “Girl With Balloon” artwork moments after it was sold for 1.04 million pounds (US$1.36 million) at a Sotheby’s auction in London.

▼ Banksy shared this picture of the shredding on his Instagram account, aptly titling the moment, “Going, going, gone.”

The unexpected turn of events made headlines around the world, and here in Japan there was a rather unusual character drawing inspiration from Banksy’s bold move.

Udon-Nou, which translates to “Udon Brains“, is a mascot from Shikoku’s Kagawa Prefecture who literally has noodles for brains.

As soon as Udon-Nou’s team laid eyes on Banksy’s Girl With Balloon being turned into long shreds of paper, it brought another image to mind: long pieces of udon noodles. That’s when the character’s PR group got together to create a shredded artwork of their own, complete with a heart-shaped balloon on the side as a nod to Banksy’s work.

▼ When you shred a bowl of udon, it conveniently turns into noodles.

People in Japan quickly fell in love with the cute image, giving it thousands of likes and retweets, and leaving comments like:

“I’d pay millions of yen for this!”
“They should sell these as souvenirs!”
“This is genius – it made me laugh out loud!”
“This idea deserves some sort of prize for creativity.”
“Um…I hate to say it but now you look more like a jellyfish.”

Whether you see a shredded jellyfish or a shredded noodle-brain head in the image, it’s definitely a creative marketing idea, as it now has us craving a big bowl of udon noodles.

Source: Twitter/@udonnoww via Japaaan
Featured image: Twitter/@udonnoww