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The Takashi Murakami retrospective could not have come to the Brooklyn Museum at a better time. Right now, around the grounds of the grand beaux-arts building, Japanese flowering cherry trees are in full bloom, hyper-real in their bountiful beauty.

Inside, amidst Murakami's giant superflat canvases and Japanese manga (cartoon)-inspired sculptures are his Cherry Blossom handbags created for Louis Vuitton. Boasting smiling faces that burst forth from the brown-on-brown monogram leather, these flowers are not remotely realistic but they sure are cute.

At this intersection of high art, animation, fashion and design is ©Murakami, an appropriately titled exciting exhibition of more than 90 works from the internationally renowned artist's prolific career.

Spread out across 18,500 square feet of gallery space, the paintings, videos, wallpaper, sculptures and other kooky bric-a-brac are the product of popular culture and commerce as interpreted through the bespectacled eyes of a traditionally schooled artist and PhD scholar.

Many have noted the appropriateness of including the copyright symbol in the show's title. Far more nuanced - if not purely serendipitous - is that the artist's initials are TM.

Seen in the context of a retrospective beginning in 1993, Murakami's work reveals a trajectory that does not initially aspire to mass-materialism ideals. But it is his more recent experimentation with highbrow status symbols as a motif in an almost silly context that drew people in droves when the show first opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles last year. In October, ©Murakami will be on view at the Museum fur Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt; then it travels to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in February, 2009.

Greeting museum-goers in the Brooklyn Museum's airy main entrance, the Rubin Pavilion, is Tongari-kun (a.k.a. Mr. Pointy), a 7-metre fibreglass and steel character that could best be described as part Hindu god (multiple mannequin arms), part Buddhist alien (spiritual otherworldliness). Positioned around him like points on a compass are four comparatively smaller sentinels whose names are Zoucho-kun, Koumokkun, Jikokkun and Tamon-kun.

Although it first debuted at Rockefeller Center in 2003, Mr. Pointy required two more years to be considered complete. As far as making a statement, this piece is as enormous and elaborate as Murakami gets.

And yet, the show is anything but anticlimactic.

The sculpture Second Mission Project ko2, for example, renders a highly sexualized woman as three variations of cyborg nymph. Jet Airplane Type shows her genitalia at eye level with the viewer and her limbs twist backward in aerodynamic formation. Upon close inspection, there are small warning messages stamped all over her body such as "Caution: Air Exhaust." Such attention to detail bolsters Murakami's credibility; he wants people to spend time with his work as opposed to treating it like a 30-second ad.

This Terminator tart is not the only time that Murakami explores pornographic subject matter. For some, the room featuring Hiropan and My Lonesome Cowboy may be the highlight. Facing each other, these larger-than-life, nearly naked boy and girl sculptures - often compared to Adam and Eve - are encircled by streams of their own body fluids (her "jump rope" emanates from watermelon-sized breasts). Titillating, yes, but really, this registers as Murakami tapping into an adolescent fantasy.

Same goes for Inochi, an E.T.-esque adolescent who, through a series of short films, isn't quite sure how to control his sex drive. He goes bonkers when a female classmate sips from a carton of milk and ponders: "What does first love taste like?" (Incidentally, the exhibit speaks to an audience of all ages. Under some of the titles and background details is additional interactive information aimed at students. One panel reads: "How does Tan Tan Bo make you feel?" referring to a grotesque and bloated monster.) Tan Tan Bo is a version of DOB, the alter ego that Murakami first created in 1993. As it reappears and evolves through his canon, the Mickey Mouse doppelganger becomes increasingly maniacal, exposing a jagged-toothed smile and eyes that multiply like bacteria.

Aside from DOB, the rabbit-eared Kaikai ("bizarre") and three-eyed Kiki ("elegant") are among the creatures that turn into mass-produced merchandise, from computer mouse pads to furry pillows. Kaikai Kiki is also the name of Murakami's corporation that is based in Tokyo, Saitama, Japan, and New York. Kanye West's most recent album cover is a Murakami original; for now, however, it's not worth more than its suggested retail price.

Murakami's ongoing collaboration with fashion designer and Louis Vuitton creative director Marc Jacobs is such an integral part of his artistic identity that, midway through the exhibition, there is a stand-alone Louis Vuitton retail boutique selling a wide selection of handbags, wallets, scarves and a series of printed canvases dubbed Monogramouflage. By placing many of the pieces in a large glass vitrine (including the Cherry Blossom handbag series), the room blurs the line between artistic worth and fashion price tags.

Indeed, Murakami's visual language speaks to more than just classical 19th-century Nihonga style and modern-day anime (Japanese animation). His biomorphic "jellyfish eyes" motif and mutating creatures have the DNA of Joan Miró. The metallic leaf applied to the Daruma series is oh-so Gustav Klimt.

But it is especially easy to understand why Murakami is often referred to as the Andy Warhol of Japan. Along with his Kool-Aid hues and preoccupation with pop, he fools around with notions of branding.

Tamiya is a well-known Japanese producer of scale models and toys whose logo consists of two white stars in front of red and blue blocks. With Signboard Tamiya, Murakami applies a red-hot iron to the plywood, which yields a "branded" effect. The follow-up is Signboard Takashi, in which he substitutes in his name, changes the block colours to yellow and green, and does not apply the branding iron. Note that Tamiya's slogan is "First in Quality Around the World."

The atom bomb and mortality are darker issues that come forth in the Time Bokan series, where a stylized skull emerges like a mushroom cloud. Even his technique of sanding down layers of paint in 727 (1996) and 727-727 (2006) makes a bleak, post-superflat statement where all his default cutesy flowers, mushrooms and amoebic forms have given way to an acid-washed landscape. Here is where Murakami proves he can play with the big boys.

The final gallery presents Murakami's most recent work and introduces Daruma, a sixth-century ancient monk known for bringing Zen Buddhism to China. It is the most historically literal art of his career and hints at a new direction that is both contemplative (the names of the two paintings are complicated riddles) and less commercial.

In the museum's official shop, there are affordable Kaikai Kiki gewgaws in addition to four lithographs of Daruma (with a print run of 300 each) that, according to a museum spokesperson, sold before the retrospective even opened. And no wonder. At $1,250 (U.S.), they are a relative bargain and the same price as some of the larger Vuitton purses.

All of which is to say that even people who are not moneyed collectors can own a bona fide piece of Murakami - a sweet taste of genius with a smiling cherry on top.

©Murakami continues at the Brooklyn Museum until July 13 (http://www.brooklynmuseum.org).