Infinite Dendrogram: Volume 8 (Infinite Dendrogram (light novel))

by Sakon Kaidou

[sa090]

I do believe that binge reading this series is probably one of the worst ideas I have ever head.

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I will not say that the series is terrible; it has great things going for it. For example, the game in itself and its infinities in almost every aspect makes me way excited than I should be, the extremely colourful cast of side characters and the very interesting abilities almost all of them have. However, it also has cons that I cannot ignore the more exposed I get to the series, for example, the focus on human morality in a series that deals primarily with non-human entities. The focus on the side quests for 9 volumes (8 ended in a cliffhanger, so 9 should finish this… assuming 10 doesn’t) after blatantly putting hints of a hidden darkness in the first two volumes, the continuous emphasis of how different-than-other-masters Ray is and the convenience of the plot for the MC.

That last one is in almost every single Isekai I have seen so far, with the exception of Grimgar (So far anyway, only read volume 1), so I will not judge it too harshly on that bit regardless of how much it annoys me. What I will judge here though is how much they are trying to bring human laws to an entity that is not a human to begin with, i.e. the game. Tians are pixels, if they die, they will not come back…, I get, it does not change anything and more importantly, I do not care about said pixels whatsoever. Ray’s entire persona here and the fact that he has a maiden-type embryo (we cannot forget that), is that he cannot ignore those tians, he is not like other players who will prioritize their self-gain over the lives of zeros and ones. AND, let us not forget how amazing he is that by doing exactly that, he ends up in front of absurdly strong UBMs where he always has “something” to win the fight and end up getting even more broken equipment.

I don’t know about anyone else, but your truly is starting to get fed up with self-insert MCs. That goddamn awful progression route needs to be nuked out of existence, at the very least in series like this one where there is so much to work with when taking the world into consideration. Can you just imagine the amount of character development someone like Ray will get if he was given a small taste of defeat? Even though he was being noble? Wow, that could be amazing.

Excuse the above, like I said, binge reading this series is a really bad thing for me when I tend to focus on the things that annoy me and how they continue to do so without any changes. I keep hoping for the best, but it gets really hard when binging. Anyways, the volume is a setup volume for the upcoming struggle for the wealth of the ruins between Dryfe and Altar. In the process we get to meet new characters, visit new locations and read some bits and pieces of side things.

That is not so bad, I did enjoy myself when politics came into the picture, and when the lore of the world was mentioned. Sakon Kaidou has an awesome ability of world building the series, not exactly how he handles telling us about it, but more so on what he is including in his world. I definitely enjoyed that part and I continue to wish that it will take the main focus at any given point, but he’s building it very slowly so it’s going to take way too long to get the full idea on what Infinite Dendrogram is in its entirety. I’m sure however, that it’s going to be great in that regard.

Ray being the main character is something I consider to be a con, given that he’s this bland for self-insert purposes so having him walk around and try to investigate a few things wasn’t as fun as I hope it would be. Thankfully, he had other characters with him that spiced things up so now that the stage is set, this is hopefully going to be the final major arc before we start delving into the hidden darkness of the series in bigger detail.

Final rating: 2.5