Dendroposting 26.5.

[yvannairie]

I finished Vol 18 of Infinite Dendrogram, which means I have three more to go, and I honestly cannot believe what a good series it is.

Like. I knew from the start that I would be having fun, it's the kind of "take your lore and power scaling seriously" shonen that I really like, it's got that almost One Piece-esque type matchup system that makes all fights an interesting chess match rather than just a matter of "who has the higher numbers", and between Ray being a very grounded, sensible and calm-hearted shonen protagonist, with most of the wacky hothead energy being delegated to his older brother Shu, and the writer just having a really good sense for how to pace action, it's been a very brisk and interesting read.

Also Dendro has almost certainly spoiled me for other shonen as far as female characters go. Like, Kaidou has an almost Yoko Taro-esque "I just like girls" way of writing female characters that doesn't really take any risks, but also as a result of really liking girls, all of them have very distinct personalities, all of them have comprehensible motivations and relationships with each other, not just the male characters. Nemesis is a great lead who plays off of Ray in incredibly fun ways, Marie, Xunyu and B3 get to act as mentors for Ray (the main character!) and command a lot of respect from not just him, but the readers also -- girls get to be different ages, not all of them are in the age range to be potential love interests for Ray, and they get to take part in the fighting just as readily as all the male characters and there's nary a warrior/nurturer dichotomy in sight.

Man, like. I probably could not have picked a better series as my first ever light novel series, huh?