Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Body Shifting, Acceptance, and Change to Save a Friend

The Ancient Magus' Bride vol. 17 by Kore Yamazaki

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Bingo 7: Bodies, Bodies In The Ancient Magus’ Bride (volume 17), there are quite a few bodies, many of them unusual, unique, and/or not original for their inhabitants. Given that many of the bodies belong to teenagers (roughly high school age), it’s sort of fitting there’s going to be a lot of change and confusion. First, Chise (MC’s) classmates: Philomela has been infected by a nasty powerful ancient magic book and transformed into some kind of briar demon thing, but Chise still sees her classmate […]

Slime-y Politics

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime vol 21 (manga) by Fuse, Taiki Kawakami

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Bingo 6: Politics In the world today, I don’t want to have to deal with real-life politics, so I won’t. I’m going to have a look at a manga volume that emphasizes the treachery of fantasy politics. The general premise of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime was initially an almost middle age ordinary guy being reincarnated in a fantasy world as the titular slime (weakest of beings). It quickly transitions to the slime (who takes the name Rimuru) becoming a leader of […]

The popular thing I don’t get

Tower of God, vol. 1 by Siu

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You know how when there’s all this hype over a story and then you finally get to it, and it just doesn’t seem that special? That’s Tower of God vol 1. Granted, the anime is the thing that really took off and I’m looking at the comic strip version that the anime’s based on, but still. This seems so generic, I don’t get it. Basically, there’s this mysterious tower, and if you get in (and apparently only the chosen usually are allowed) then you have […]

The Neverending Battles Get Old

Black Clover vols. 28-31 by Yuki Tabata

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I hadn’t realized how long I’d kind of ignored the Black Clover manga series until I was in the library and saw that I was at least 4 volumes behind; this seems to happen with shonen fighting-based series an awful lot – the pattern of lots of fights with sudden power-ups that feel preprogrammed because the user automatically knows what and how to use the newly developed ability. I’ve gotten behind/bored with quite a few series where this happens; at least Yugi-Oh! had the sense […]

A spy, an assassin, and a telepath; meet the Forgers! Bingos #8 & 9!

Spy x Family: volume 1 by Tatsuya Endo

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CBR14 Bingo: “Font” – I love all the different fonts used for sound effects in comics. Spy x Family is written and drawn by Tatsuya Endo.  It’s the story of an elite spy, known only by his handle, Twilight.  He is an agent for an organization in Westalis and master of disguise.  The agency has learned that a far-right group in the country on their Eastern border, Ostania, is wanting to start a war with Westalis.  Twilight is dispatched to discover what the East is […]

Two works from the same author, two diametrically opposed opinions from me

Dramacon by Svetlana Chmakova

Nightschool Collector's Edition Vol. 1 and 2 by Svetlana Chmakova

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Dramacon was one of those foundational comics for me and it’s been years since I read it, so I decided to get the 15th anniversary collector’s edition, as my original copies have long since vanished. Then I decided to get the two Nightschool collector’s editions since I’d never read them. Dramacon held up and I’ll be keeping it, but Nightschool didn’t connect with me and I found it to be the weaker of the works. I know this is in large part because Dramacon so perfectly captures the mid-2000s experience of being at […]



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