Infinite Dendrogram: Blue Blood Blitz

Leave a reply

By Sakon Kaidou and Taiki. Released in Japan by Hobby Japan. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Andrew Hodgson.

First off, it has to be said: that is a deeply ludicrous and yet amazing hat and cloak combo that the Princess is wearing while she’s out secretly saving the world – though it seems the only one who doesn’t figure out who she is is Ray. I’d mentioned in my last review that the Princess is set up as a sort-of-but-not-really love interest for Ray, and that holds true here: Ray continues to be almost asexual, and it’s made clear that his role in Altimia’s story is to get her to trust Masters again so that Altar might actually be able to defend itself in the upcoming war. That said, she and Ray do make a very good combo team, and I’m sure we’ll see more of her eventually. Also amusing in this volume is Ray and Nemesis taking down an extremely cliched villain from the “This-this cannot be!” school of acting, and the revelation about who he is in real life fits 100%.

The girl on the cover is another of Ray’s new weapons/abilities/allies, but in terms of this story she shows up, demonstrates her FIRE PUNCHING, then goes away again. More interesting are the revelations about Tom Cat, the clone-making adventurer that we met in the previous book. His actual identity is more of a surprise than I expected, but works well in the context of the series/world. It’s still unclear how much of Dendrogram is “this is an unusually complex game with a deep deep backstory” and how much is “this is an actual world that we have somehow made into a game”, but the author is enjoying making us try to figure it out. Hopefully next time we will have fewer doomsday weapons. That said, I did very much enjoy the weapon having slept for 2000 years and no longer able to recognize what humanity is till it sees something that is reminiscent of its former time. It was cheesy but very effective.

There’s an anime coming soon, and I really do wonder how a fandom that’s not familiar with him is going to deal with Ray. His chuuni tendencies aside (and we do get some more making fun of his Evil Overlord Outfit), he really is the ridiculously OP hero that most fans of fantasy works profess to hate. He has an easier time than he’s had in the last few books here – he may be pushed to the brink once or twice, but there’s never any real sense he’s in trouble, and it helps that he’s found out that his magical robot horse is also doing cool (if mysterious) stuff to save his life. Without the usual Altar masters around to show that there are people even better than Ray, he gets more of a big fish in a small pond book here. It works well for this book, but I hope next time we see him either in real life or the game getting shown that he has a ways to go.

Dendrogram is always fun to read, and this volume is no different. At times I can’t follow the worldbuilding (a wiki of some sort is likely needed), but it’s still definitely recommended.

The Asterisk War: Conquering Dragons and Knights

Leave a reply

By Yuu Miyazaki and okiura. Released in Japan by Media Factory. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Haydn Trowell.

Even if you hadn’t already figured out what the result of the Gryps competition, the subtitle of the volume may clue you in. Our heroes this time take on Jie Long’s Dragon Warriors, a team seemingly set up to look like they stepped off the screen of a videogame. The winner of that battle goes on to face Saint Gallardsworth’s team of Arthurian types, though I’m honestly not sure if Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table ever had an obvious princess-curled tsundere quite like Laetitia. Things are not helped by the events in the previous volume, which have left most of Team Enfield feeling particularly exhausted. Of course, this is exactly the time when a typical cliched shonen series would have its cast each reach the next level, pull new abilities out of their asses, and go on to crush the competition by virtue of being really, really shonen about it. And never let it be said that Asterisk War does not go for the easy answer, as this is exactly what happens.

Kirin has the cover image this time around, and while the author apologizes in the afterword for sidelining her from the final fight, I have a feeling that was meant to be partly ironic, as the fight against Jie Long is Kirin’s finest hour to date. Honestly, I was expecting Ayato to pull things off again, but to be fair, he was needed for the next fight along, and Kirin had not had a spotlight in some time, so it’s justified. Much as it’s talked about in terms of being able to see the way the fighter’s prana is behaving, her new ability essentially boils down to “can predict moves better”, which is fine. No one cries out for gritty realism in a magical academy fighting manga – at least I hope they don’t. Instead you ask for cool, and that’s what we get here… at the cost of Kirin being bedridden for the rest of the book. And possible getting yelled at by her family, there’s a cliffhanger involved.

We then go up against Team Lancelot, though not before we see Ayato meet a mysterious masked man who professes to be the one who put his sister in her coma. He’s a trickster mentor of the finest water, and his presence (and assistant) seems to hint that Ayato’s story will be tied up with Sylvie’s again pretty soon. That said, the best part of this second half was seeing Ernest finally give in and embrace his inner selfish asshole. His weapon involves being pure, noble and chivalrous, but doing so was clearly pressuring him in ways that were obvious to see. It was one of those things where the reader, who knows his character type, was waiting for the other shoe to drop. He also becomes far more interesting, even though it may be Percival who we follow going forward. (Sorry, Laetitia, you have “always a side character” written all over you.

In addition to Kirin’s family cliffhanger, we also get Ayato getting a call from his father right at the end. Still, despite that, I suspect that the next volume will be a lighter, breezier one to help relax after this arc. If you’re enjoying this beach read of a light novel, this is an excellent pickup.

I Saved Too Many Girls and Caused the Apocalypse, Vol. 14

Leave a reply

By Namekojirushi and Nao Watanuki. Released in Japan as “Ore ga Heroine o Tasukesugite Sekai ga Little Mokushiroku!?” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Mana Z.

There is a plot twist about 2/3 of the way through this volume that pretty much manages to make me drop my main complaint about the book, which is that it’s simply too short. Even by the standards of Little Apocalypse, not one for large page counts, this is ridiculously short. It’s also got a cliffhanger, making me wonder if it might originally have been combined with the volume after it. The first third is relatively sedate… for Rekka, not the reader. We know there’s a problem because the huge cast list of heroines we see at the start of each book has almost all of them scribbled out – including R. Only seven heroines make the cut for this book, leading us to wonder what it is about them that makes them important… or rather, unimportant, as it seems they’re what’s left over after most of Rekka’s memories of the last six months have been wiped.

Technically not a new heroine on the cover, nor is she played by Jodie Whitaker, but The Doctor is the creator of both L and R, and is interested in their welfare – as well as that of Rekka. Sadly, events in the future are reaching a turning point, with the extremists deciding now is the time to kill Rekka in the past, even if they have to use giant robots to destroy the town. And that’s what we get, as a baffled Rekka and his remaining heroines try to evacuate and figure out what’s going on. Fortunately, Rekka eventually gets his memory back, and we find out what happened to R, but the other missing heroines remain missing for the entire book, nor do we know where they are. (My guess is the future, where Rekka ends up heading at the end of the book.) Even his parents, who show up in this book for the first time since the start of Chapter 1 or Book 1, aren’t able to do much but slow the enemy down.

As I noted earlier, I really liked the twist we get here, which is that Rekka should NOT be having to deal with all these heroines at once. The gimmick of the series – that he uses one heroine’s problems to solve another’s problem – was never meant to happen. The seven heroines who aren’t mindwiped/kidnapped are there because they’re the heroines he was SUPPOSED to originally save. They’re the “easy mode” heroines. (Notably, this does NOT include his childhood friend, removed even from her parents’ memories.) They’re heroines that Rekka could save using only his own human abilities and those of the heroine herself – I mean, we do still have a shrine priestess and nun with very lethal weapons around. If nothing else this helps us to be impressed with what Rekka’s achieved. The question is, though, what changed everything? Does it have to do with Rekka’s “helper” being R, not L?

Again, readers need to prepare for being able to finish off this book in only an hour. But if you don’t mind the length, this is a suitably fun and interesting volume as we head towards the series’ climax.