Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Two Different Viewpoints on Queer Life in Japan

I Want to be a Wall (Vol.1) by Honami Shirono

X-Gender (Vol.1) by Asuka Miyazaki

by Leave a Comment

I’m very much enjoying the wider variety of manga that’s being translated now, especially the autobiographical and LGBT+ books. These two volumes are a combination of both and I enjoyed them for different reasons. I Want to be a Wall is about an asexual woman and a gay man getting married, seemingly due to societal or family pressures. No one knows that their marriage isn’t straight but them, and the book follows them settling into married life and getting to know each other more. Their […]

Something old and something new

Drrr!! SH x1 by Ryohgo Narita, Suzuhito Yasuda

by Leave a Comment

I’ve been away from the Drrr!! series for a little while; I honestly thought it was over. Apparently, the novels at least keep going and I just found the first one of the next sequence of the story. The original premise is still kind of there, but with some tweaks: there’s a series of interconnected characters in this one Tokyo neighborhood and mysterious goings on (some disappearances) that may or may not be supernatural. There is one character who is not human, although Celty the […]

The value of female friends over boys wins for once

Komi Can't Communicate, vol. 17 by Tomohito Oda

by Leave a Comment

Komi Can’t Communicate is mostly a cozy manga series about high school kids and friendship. It’s reasonably predictable with no real disasters and some occasional comic moments. The protagonist Komi is the class beauty but she’s got social anxiety to the point where it’s difficult for her to speak to anyone in public, but this is taken by most people as ‘cool’. Tadano is the totally average guy who seems to understand Komi and decides to help her work on her anxiety and make friends. […]

If the formula works, might as well use it

Jujutsu Kaisen, vols. 0-12 by Gege Akutami

by Leave a Comment

I’ve been seeing comments about the anime for Jujustsu Kaisen is the best thing ever this year, so when I saw almost the first 12 books in the manga series at the library, I decided to try it out. As it turns out the whole thing is relatively formulaic (enough that missing volumes 3, 4, and 11 didn’t seem to matter a whole lot) but still has enough personality to be interesting. The basic gist is that Yuji Itadori who has just lost his grandfather […]

Getting better but not by much

Kaguya-sama Love is War vols. 2-3 by Aka Akasaka

by Leave a Comment

Last time I continued a few volumes of a series I wasn’t sure about, it didn’t go that well; this time, with Kaguya-sama, Love is War (vols. 2-3), things actually improved. I still don’t like Kaguya herself, but everyone else gets a little more interesting and relatable. The basic gist is that the top two students at school, Miyuki Shirogane and KaguyaShinomiya, like each other but due to pride etc. they keep trying to force the other one to admit it first. That’s it, the […]

Dumb but Strong Gets Boring, or Enough with the Cream Puff Gags, or Why Harry Potter and Black Clover Don’t Mix

Mashle: Magic and Muscles, vols. 4-5 by Hajime Komoto

by Leave a Comment

Sometimes my curiosity gets the better of me and I pick up subsequent manga volumes from the library just to see if things get any better or interesting; sometimes this works out and sometimes not. With Mashle: Magic and Muscles, the first few volumes were essentially trope overload with a touch of the goof-ball. Volumes 4-5 don’t really get much better. Tropes include the clueless but good-hearted hero who has nothing but physical prowess to get by in a magic world, the girl he saves […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo