Action, adventure and scantily clad anime bombshells are invading State College, and getting a piece of it is as easy as reading a comic book.

Manga is a growing trend in the area.

"It's Japanese-style comics with something for all ages," said Carsley Williams, a retail clerk at Comic Swap, 110 S. Fraser St.

"It can be very child-like or intensely and graphically violent," she added.

Manga has been popular in Japan for decades but has only recently taken off in the United States. Ben Bird, manager of Suncoast Motion Picture Company in the Nittany Mall, noticed the trend starting to pick up.

"It's been about a year since [Suncoast] started carrying manga, and we've gone from 40 or 50 titles to a few hundred," he said.

Bird believes the climbing popularity of these Japanese comic books is directly related to the rapid growth of the anime industry.

"A lot of anime started out in manga form, so people like seeing that perspective," Bird said.

"Anime has greatly picked up in the last year alone," he added.

While Williams said American comic books still dominate the market at Comic Swap, she believes manga will continue to grow over the years.

"I'm projecting that manga will make up over one-third of our sales over the next 10 years," she said.

Caitlin Collins (sophomore- Japanese, East Asian studies and philosophy) is excited about the manga trend.

"Whenever I wanted to read a series before, I had to get it from Japan and translate it myself," she said. "Now many series are published in English at the same time they're printed in Japanese."

With hundreds of titles to choose from, it may be difficult to find a series that really rocks your socks, but Williams said manga with the storyline set in high school is very popular.

"Battle Royale is about a school where every so often there's a lottery and a group of 21 kids is chosen to live on an island and battle each other to the death," Williams said.

She also said fantasy series like Chobits, a manga about a female human-like robot who can learn to feel emotion, are well received.

Bird said Love Hina is another very popular seller.

"It's a situational comedy about this guy who is the manager of a girls' dormitory and is trying to get into college," he said.

Those who are familiar with Cartoon Network's Adult Swim and the anime series Inu Yasha may find the manga version interesting.

"Inu Yasha is a historical drama/adventure series about going back in time and collecting pieces of a jewel," Bird said of the epic comic.

Those who like to relate more closely to their reading may enjoy MARS, which Williams said is a series about " a bunch of 20-somethings dealing with life."

Collins' tastes stray from the best-sellers lists a bit.

"I like stuff that's more gothic, like Paradise Kiss," she said. "It's about a normal girl who turns down a modeling job because she thinks the people in the business are strange, but then she realizes she doesn't want to be like everyone else."

Collins enjoys the fashion component in this series.

"[The protagonist] is a model, so there's a lot of really cool clothing and the art is just beautiful," she said.

Whatever an individual's passion or vice is, there's seemingly a manga series that will satisfy it.