We've introduced you to the young robot boy Inochi before. He was spawned from the mind of artist Takashi Murakami.

Murakami is known for his work that ranges to t-shirt prints all the way up to super graphic Anime sculptures that challenge our comfort limits. Yes, that is a giant statue of a man lassoing his own, ummm... spunk (that pic is NSFW).

This is the first time we've ever seen the video of his creation Inochi come to life, and it's disturbing yet endearing. Poor robot kids have to deal with all the same issues little boys do as well, much to their humiliating dismay. Be it old or young, robot or organic life form, we all have to deal with spring fever.

Yayoi Kusama, godmother of contemporary Japanese art, is perhaps our best example of a person from the past who has a mind from the future. Her brain literally works like a computer—instead of seeing bits, she sees dots. All her artwork is inspired directly by her hallucinations. "She is probably the most well-known contemporary artist in her country," says William Stover, a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston who exhibited her work earlier this year. "She puts her visions down on canvas in a very physical way, and that has inspired a lot of younger artists." (Murakami's repetition of flowers and cutsey characters is one famous example.)

Kusama lives in a mental hospital near her studio in Tokyo because psychiatrists don't understand how her complex brain functions (she's obviously a genius). She turns 80 next year, but that hasn't stopped her momentum of obsessive, repetitive dot-drawing. Dot dot dot dot dot. That's what she sees, so that's what she draws. Abused as a child, suicidal as a teen, and plagued with OCD for the ensuing half century and beyond, she has often claimed that her objective in life is to obliterate herself and her world through art. The dots, Kusama has said, symbolize disease: she often covers herself in them, and when that's not enough, she covers museum walls, random objects, and public statues in them as well. Of course, her art is so famous and cool that nobody objects. Walking into a Kusama-dotted room really feels like walking into an alternate universe.

Kusama is also a feminist, and played an iconic part in the avant-garde movement in the fifties. She was friends with Georgia O'Keefe, exhibited work with Andy Warhol, inspired Yoko Ono, and had a love affair with Donald Judd. She moved from Tokyo to New York City when she was 28, and stayed there for two decades.

A 1999 interview in Bomb Magazine gives us a glimpse into her world:

As an obsessional artist, I fear everything I see. At one time, I dreaded everything I was making. The armchair thickly covered in phalluses was my psychosomatic work done when I had a fear of sexual vision. I glued male sexual patterns on women’s clothes and sprayed them completely with silver paint.

Now you tell me what human mind from the present could give an interview like that. Onto my next futurist fave, Mariko Mori.

Mori is a model-turned-artist who uses various high-tech media to portray how she experiences dichotomies like past and future, alien and human, fact and fiction. Nobody seems to be able to fit her in one category—critics have previously called her things like cyberchick-meets-Barbarella, geisha girl-meets-Gidget, goddess-meets-Princess Leia.

I like to think that Mori is the ultimate personification of the bipolarity of Japan. On one hand, the country is racing ahead of the rest of the world in applying technology to everyday life. But it is also a culture deeply embedded with tradition. Mori isn't afraid to combine aliens with Buddhas or to experiment with materials and concepts normally unheard of in the art world. She spent part of her thirties voyaging to historic sites across the world in a time-traveling alien pod. When she got back, she created the Wave UFO, a giant teardrop-shaped spaceship that shows visitors their brainwaves as projections on the wall while they sit in Technogel lounge chairs. "The past, present, and future exist in harmony in her work," says Stover. "It represents the space-ageyness of Japan."

Here, you see Mori surrounded by aliens reminiscent of Inochi-kun, the half-human, half-alien schoolboy in Murakami's mini-TV series.

Both Kusama and Mori have been internationally recognized and lauded for their amazing work. In 2006, Kusama became the first female to receive a National Lifetime Achievement Award in art from the Japanese government; Mori is still one of the most active and prominent Japanese artists in the world, and works out of her studio in NYC. Images by AP, Mariko Mori, Yayoi Kusama, and Jason Schmidt.

The @Murakami show in Los Angeles had huge numbers of visitors, were you surprised at the large turnout? The line on the final weekend stretched for blocks.

Yes, I was very pleased. It's all thanks to the chief curator Paul, as well as all the others involved. I'm praying that everything goes the same way at Brooklyn too. The expectations of the audience are exploding now, much like in the music industry in the 1970s. In order to meet their expectations, I've got no choice but to keep on running.

You've worked with many medium: sculptures, paintings, animation, the Vuitton purses, etc. What do you enjoy working with the most?

The collaboration I did with Mr. Marc Jacobs was really fun. "Monogrammoflauge," the most recent collaboration, came out of a conversation that I had with Marc Jacobs where I said that I'd like to do something original for the retrospective. The exchange of idea; the process that yields something real in the end. Everything is exciting.

There is a chance to experience an unfamiliar work process when you collaborate with a different industry, and therefore it is extremely exciting. I'm having fun working on my animation right now. That's because I'm excited about the completely new working process of controlling time. Work that takes you into worlds of new media or products. In that moment, as a creator, you are able to experience the pleasure of synapses in your brain linking together in a matter of seconds.

Do you have any specific science fiction influences to your work? Any movies or television shows you grew up watching?

I loved "Galaxy Express 999". When I saw the scene depicting Planet Maetel's collapse, I was moved from the bottom of my heart, and made the decision to work in the field of anime. Also, the amount of influence that the appearance of Star Wars exerted on my generation is tremendous.

I felt sympathetic to the revolution that George Lucas started, and my work has become a re-enactment of that sort of revolution in the art scene.

The S.M.P.ko² piece looks very anime-inspired. Did you draw from any particular project for that?

S.M.P.ko² was a continuation of my figure project, which included Miss ko², Hiropon and My Lonesome Cowboy. All of these characters were thickly wrapped in what I see as particularly Japanese psycho-sexual complexes.

The Tan Tan Bo piece is huge in scale, how did you conceive that piece and finally finish it?

In New Year's of the year that I finished this piece, I was struck with my first spasm of gout. The joint in my toe hurt so much it felt like it had been struck by a hammer, and I truly felt death and the aging of my muscles.

In that moment, I saw the art world's insistence on contextualization as something completely unnecessary, and felt that I needed to make a more honest work that was closer to me, and decided to project myself onto DOB, my imaginary character, and express living pain through him.

The My Lonesome Cowboy and Hiropon pieces stand out as shockingly sexual among your other works. What has been the reaction to them?

It was so positive you'd be surprised. I feel that the fact that I was able to make my debut in America is thanks to those pieces.

Has there ever been any talk of adopting any of your pieces of art into film or tv projects?

I'm already working on one right now. It's an animation called "Kaikai & Kiki." Two episodes of the animation are now on display at Brooklyn Museum as part of the exhibit. I'm also working on a live action movie.

What artists do you enjoy?

Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, J.J. Abrams, Hayao Miyazaki.

Where do you do most of your work?

I work at both Kaikai Kiki's office and studio in Japan, and at our office and studio in Queens.

Has anything changed in the show from Los Angeles to Brooklyn? Will anything be different?

There is a new episode of the Kaikai & Kiki animation, new designs in the Louis Vuitton shop, and some new wallpaper and floor paper, created especially for the Brooklyn space.

Main image is:

727-727, 2006
Acrylic on canvas mounted on board
3000 x 4500 x 70 mm (3 panels)
Courtesy Blum & Poe, Los Angeles
©2006 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Murakami seems determined to remind us that cartoony characters aren't innocent. His massive sculptures Disney-esque characters include a sculpture of a woman with enormous breasts squirting streams of milk from fist-sized nipples and a man who looks like Cloud from Final Fantasy shooting a swirling plume of jizz into the heavens. But you'll also find Murakami's tamer t-shirt designs, wallpapers, animation (including a Kanye West video), and the Louis Vuitton bags he designed. One massive wall contains a stunning piece called Tan Tan Bo Puking (pictured up top), which features the dying moments of a bizarre Japanime god as he voids his stomach and bowels during death.

However, what really caught our eye was his Second Mission Project ko2 Advanced (Human Type) piece. It consists of three different sculptures, each one of a female mecha in the stages of transforming from a humanoid into a fighter jet. It's nearly life-sized and contains a ton of stunning detail. If there's any way you can get to this exhibit I'd highly recommend it, even if it's for this piece alone. Watch Murakami discuss it in the video below, and you can check out the other parts of his video tour here.

The MOCA didn't allow photography, but that didn't stop some people (including us) from sneaking a few camera phone photos, which you can see in the gallery above along with some NSFW images. You can also check out Eric Nakamura's Flickr set, which documents almost the entire exhibit. Just as a bit of a tip, though... the museums sell the book/catalog of the exhibit for $65, and it's tempting to walk home with it while you try to digest all the art you've just seen. However, you can snag it for only $40 at Amazon, with free shipping. If you can't make it, or the exhibit won't be traveling anywhere near you, it's the next best thing.

Top image is Tan Tan Bo Puking - a.k.a. Gero Tan, 2002 ©2002 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved.