Oh, umbrellas – you dirty scourge, you.

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We conclude our fall impressions with Kannagi, Tales of the Abyss, Tytania, Yozakura Quartet and the final breakdown of my top picks for the season. Ready, steady, go!

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Welcome to Part II of our fall anime impressions. In this edition we cover Chaos;Head, ef – a tale of melodies, Hyakko and Kurozuka. So pull up your easy chair and let’s get down to business.

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There are a lot of new shows this season, so we’re here to help make things easier for you. Our first batch of fall season impressions includes Akane Iro ni Somaru Saka, Casshern Sins, Kemeko Deluxe, Shikabane Hime Aka, Toradora and To Aru Majutsu no Index. Take it easy! Kick back with a beer (or strawberry milk if you’re not old enough to drink) and read on.

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Touhou is a phenomenon in the realm of otaku and has rejuvenated the dying shoot ‘em up (shmup) genre. It’s hard to believe that Touhou had such a humble beginning and has been already been around for 12 years. The series has become such a juggernaut that even people that don’t normally play shmup games have dabbled in the depths of bullet hell.

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EarthBound: King of the cult classics

Was this Super Nintendo RPG really so good I named myself after it? Oh yes, yes indeed. Earthbound’s solid fundamentals, unique setting and bizarre sense of humor have kept it fresh a decade later, and if you need any evidence just take a look at the fan community. Loyal legions of Earthbound fans are still alive and kicking after years of letter campaigns, call-ins and other ventures that have tried to bring more of Mother (as it’s known in Japan) to the West.

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I guess this is something of a follow up to my Social Networking post, in which I mentioned how I tend to mostly lurk around the internet. I notice the blogging community is something of a circle. Or an ellipse. Whatever. Everyone knows everyone and they all leave comments for each other at their own blogs. So why don’t I be more social and leave comments at other blogs to expand my circle? Being quiet has always been a major part of my temperament and it’s hard to change your ways after you’re set in them.

I’m just not inclined to leave comments at big blogs. I enjoy reading all the different comments but don’t have anything valuable to contribute to the conversation most of the time. On that note, I prefer to leave comments at small blogs when I do decide to say something. Big blogs with several commentators remind me too much of message boards, which I’ve all but left behind. The whole aspect of message board and IRC communities never appealed to me very much. To me it feels like getting suffocated in a crowd of uniformity. That’s not to say the big forums and IRC are bad. They just feel very constraining. You may see me around on these mediums every now and then. I probably won’t say anything though.

I like blogging because of the individuality it affords. I like seeing all the different themes and writing styles out there. Was this personal post about anything or was it just another of my mini rants? If Wolf Hurricane starts to regularly get 20 comments per post, will I stop commenting back…? I’ll still comment back, because I love getting feedback. Your comments are my blogger Prozac after all.

Super Robots are one of the oldest and most well-loved genres in anime and manga. You’ll be hard pressed to find a serious anime fan who doesn’t have a favorite super robot or someone who didn’t grow up as a child cheering on their favorite bot as he wrecked the aspirations of some evil king every afternoon. You might a super robot fan and not even know it as many of the old Japanese shows made their way to the U.S. under different names such as the Force Five cartoon anthology which featured the American versions of Getter Robo G, Gaiking, UFO Robot Grendizer and Dangard Ace, and of course there’s the American classic Voltron which has just been released in its original form of Beast King Golion. The novelty even spread to other shows like Transformers as the idea of “combining” into a greater force became a mainstay of the toy line and eventually the show as kids had to hunt down every Constructicon, Stunticon, Aerialbot, etc. to make giant Transformers that towered over the rest of their collection. Even now, the super robot genre is alive and well as some of the most popular shows of the day feature hot-blooded protagonists and their mecha and hardly a season of anime goes by without a TV or OVA remake of an old classic. But what about this genre makes it so popular?

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Social networking is everywhere you go on the internet. It doesn’t matter whether it’s between otaku, gamers, or MySpace/Facebook/LiveJournal/DA fanatics; There’s no escaping it. Love it or hate it, social networking is an essential part of helping your blog grow. In the otaku world, blog growth is linked to how well you network. The better you network, the faster you grow.

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Here’s my short list of manga that I’d like to see get anime adaptations. I don’t feel like writing an exposition for this article, so just click the jump to see my picks.

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