Videos of anime conventions in America greet visitors to Tokyo's Museum of Contemporary Art at this summer's "The Power of Manga — Osamu Tezuka and Shotaro Ishinomori" exhibition. Looped footage of attendants in cosplay at the Los Angeles Anime Expo and other similar events play, while a "prologue" banner nearby declares in Japanese and English, "Manga is a cultural genre of which Japan can be proud of."

It seems as if you are just steps away from a grand manifestation of "Cool Japan" — the country's way of spreading "soft power" via pop culture. And since Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry assisted with putting this together, that actually is one of the show's objectives.

Yet "The Power of Manga" impresses more as a history lesson than a sales pitch. The exhibition focuses on influential artists Osamu Tezuka and Shotaro Ishinomori — regarded as the "god of manga" and the "king of manga," respectively — highlighting each artist's work and style, and using the two individuals as a way to simultaneously lay out the history of manga and its influence on Japanese pop culture.