I don't exactly see Roberta Smith huffing and puffing to describe the work. It is well within her powers as a critic. Like Peter Schjeldahl in the New Yorker, she is not altogether sold on the show, but hits many of the same notes in her review: infantilization, jellyfish, nihonga, Hiropon, DOB, parents who drummed art into him, Warhol as market model, anime, manga etc. Both find the Vuitton boutique, with its white-enamel cases and recessed lighting, a visual high point.

Schjeldahl goes on:

"He offers us relief from the worry, if also the odd reward, of thinking and feeling as individuals -- a blissful submersion in mechanical affect, the same for everybody...
Murakami seems temperamentally averse to a cardinal obligation of artists that Warhol, Koons, and Hirst accept: the duty to seduce. But to actively woo the eye and tantalize the mind implies the possible existence of resistant viewers. Murakami assumes —- or posits, as a ruling fiction —- that we are all already spiritual putty in his hands, whether we admit it or ... not. There is power in this... It invites vicarious identification with the artist’s project —- an intellectual rooting interest..."