Another difficulty is that the government seems to be confused about what it thinks is cool. It would like to define “Cool Japan” as encompassing far more than edgy anime and manga, which already enjoy global appeal. It would be a mistake to focus too narrowly on these areas, reckons Takashi Mitachi, the head of the Boston Consulting Group in Tokyo, who has advised the government on the strategy. One reason for the fame of the manga-and-anime complex is its blend of cutesy yet pornographic or otherwise disturbing images—which often adds up to being something more like weird than cool per se.