If modern art has a single defining characteristic that sets it apart from the efforts of previous epochs, it is that no era of art has so fully, so consciously, and with such studied diversity, embraced consciousness as its subject. The Mona Lisa of the industrial and post-industrial eras has been the psyche; the foreboding and bewitching horizons that stretch across our own minds. More than outer space, psychology is the final frontier of our time and the undiscovered country that art has only just begun to traverse.

But the most fascinating, bleeding-edge meditations on the subject have come from what some might deem an unlikely source: anime.

For those who are unfamiliar, the Japanese animation style is one most commonly associated ...