From comics to cartoons to movies, Asian pop culture has surged.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

MIAMI _ In a west Miami mini-mall sits Anime Hurricane, a shop full of toy boxes and comics stacked on tables, in corners and underfoot. A TV blares Japanese cartoons and the high, dark walls are festooned with posters and scrolls depicting Asian cartoon characters ranging from obscure to "Pokemon": drawings of men with hair like the jagged edges of a broken bottle and women with waists ranging from itty to bitty and eyes like fishbowls _ it's a mosaic both foreign and familiar.

Yet the greatest testament to the tightening grip that Japanese cartoons, called anime, have on the American psyche rests on the glass countertop a few feet from the cash register: synopses of the 291 episodes of the cartoon series "Dragon Ball Z."

The lists come to the rescue of the store's employees because kids often rush excitedly into the shop, requesting tapes of the episodes that follow the one they just saw on cable.

Manager Pat Pungpee, 26, is struck by the enthusiasm, but as a fan who used to have to buy untranslated Japanese tapes underground, he loves it.

"I thought that maybe I would be able to catch the odd TV show that they brought over," he says. "But people are really taking to it. In two years' time, it has exploded. Way beyond what I would have expected. Way beyond."

But Pungpee is not alone. In fact, he's on the frontlines of the latest cultural incursion. Asian pop culture _ from movies to TV, comics to cooking shows _ is everywhere in America these days. The tiger is through crouching, the dragon has come out of hiding. After decades on the margins of the American mainstream, the Eastern cultures that gave the world tofu and futons, tai-chi and Tae Kwon Do, Maoism and Taoism, Szechwan and sushi, have surged into the spotlight:

_A Chinese movie, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," has grossed $140 million (the most ever for a foreign-language film in the United States), won four Oscars, and last month became one of the fastest-selling DVDs ever.