K-On! is an anime about cute little girls, yet it attracts some of the most hateful people on the internet. All Twitter users and forum goers live in fear of the K-On! pfp, and its unhinged takes on the world.

But surely this doesn’t make any sense? How does something so cute, so bubbly, and so pure attract such extreme views and maladjusted behavior? Let’s figure it out together, in this shorter video.

In modern international politics, it is just as important to win hearts and minds, in one’s own country and abroad, as it is to have power by force of arms. We call this power over hearts and minds: the power to sway people by persuasion rather than by force, soft power. And no country on Earth has mastered the art of soft power through cultural media quite like Japan has.