In reply to larry hosken.

Well, to remove any ambiguity: my intent was absolutely to make a tanuki who'd transformed his balls into taiko drums. The tanuki ability to transform when they have a leaf on their head is the most interesting part of the folklore, and they're often shown stretching their scrotums out to make gigantic things. (You should see Pom Poko if you haven't already; it's one of my favorite movies!) Without getting too pretentious, I like how it's just part of the folklore in statues and children's comics and movies, without any need to apply human sexuality to animals.

I think my bigger issue with it is that a real taiko drummer carrying a drum would typically have only one of them held parallel to the ground, and strike each side of it with a different hand. But I don't know how to make a mechanism that would do that in a small amount of space.