Bad Kanji Tattoos (reply)

Yeah, it seems unlikely that it was a deliberate choice of Kanji to spell out "Matorikusu"  Though that is kind of cute, but "devil chicken in some obscure species of tree" doesn't really say much, not much commentary or humor value, so whoever did it probably just looked up a bunch of random characters in a Japanese dictionary, picked the one's that looked coolest (devil, meaning aside, and chicken, are pretty cool-looking as kanji go) and had them inked permanently onto their bodies (like morons -- how about inking some Arabic on and finding out later it spells "Down with Allah," genius?).
I have no idea how those characters would be read in Chinese.

Having said all that, it is a valid humor form, in Japanese, to make puns and double-entendres where the pronunciation of the characters and the literal meaning of the characters themselves mean two different things and has an ironic or humorous sense.  This can be using all-Japanese or with Englishy stuff, too.  A couple of ma-ma-ho-ho examples (let me know what you think!) are:

何故東京での新婚夫婦は、主人が大阪へ仕事で移動されたから子供が作られなかったでしょうか。単身不妊(単身赴任)だからさ。(^_^)

母が誕生日にケーキを作ってくれなかったら、不ケーキ（不景気)な誕生日だな。

However much you appreceiate the above, I think it's fair to say that "The 魔鳥楠 has you, Neo" is not an especially good one.  (^_^).