This book uses Osamu Tezuka’s “transforming heroines”—for example, Sapphire in Princess Knight, the wolf girl Ruriko in The Vampires, and the all-powerful android Olga in Phoenix 2772—to discuss moe, the driving force behind manga and anime’s world conquest, and probe the core of the Japanese culture which created it. What do Lupin the Third and Kogarashi Monjiro have in common? Who would win, Schwarzenegger or Kazuo Hasegawa? Why did Atom (“Astro Boy”) fly into the sun? What is the biggest reason for works made by Japanese people for Japanese people capturing the hearts of people worldwide? A revolutionary theory of subculture by a historical novelist.