CREDIT: TUMBLR.COM
Impressive art done by illustrative artist Taiki can be seen on the first volume cover of Infinite Dendrogram.

Infinite Dendrogram is a light novel, a type of Japanese novella, written by Sakon Kaido. Originally released in Japanese, the publisher J-Novel Club is now publishing this series in English.

The series takes place in the year 2043, two years after the release of Infinite Dendrogram (Dendro for short), the first ever true-dive VRMMO (virtual reality massive multiplayer online) game. Known for perfectly simulating the five senses and other amazing features, the game promised to offer players a world full of infinite possibilities. Our main character Reiji Mukudori finally has his chance to embark on his own journey in Infinite Dendrogram, along with his partner Embryo, and into a world of incredible realism and infinite possibilities.

Since our main character Reiji is experiencing the world of Dendro as a newbie, we the readers get that kind of experience as well. Unlike novels that have main characters who are veterans of the game and know everything already, we get explained Dendro’s world and system through mostly character conversation. For, example, a conversation can go – “What’s this item do?” “Oh, that’s [blank] that does this and this…” – instead of a huge internal monologue of information that could overload your brain with new terms and other things.

One of the major appeals of this series is Dendro’s game system. The creators of the game did not lie when they said that there are infinite possibilities in the game as seen with its main feature, Embryos. Embryos are gifted to players, or Masters as they are called, that take form and gain abilities based on a player’s actions, behaviour, experiences and more while playing the game.

Each Embryo is unique to that Master with some being similar, however, never truly the same. There are many types of Embryos such as the common ‘Type: Arms’ that are wielded by the Master with things like weapons to body parts, like arms and legs.

There is also the ‘Type: Maiden’ that are a female humanoid form with another typing, such as Type: Arms. A player’s Embryo abilities can be matched to at least one of the versatile classes available to choose from, including the classics, such as paladin, to some unusual ones like journalist and pimp.

In most ‘going to another world’ genre light novels that take place in a video game world, the characters are stuck in the world and can’t leave for whatever reason, such as Sword Art Online. Infinite Dendrogram differentiates itself in that the players can just log out when they want or when they die. They don’t die for real, it’s just a game.

An interesting way to learn about someone is through battle, and that’s how some character backgrounds are revealed throughout the series. When having battles with multiple characters, new and old, sometimes there are brief backgrounds mixed into the fray, kind of explaining how that character got to this point in their life. But, this is done in a way that doesn’t seem too intrusive and drawn out for too long that it takes away from the action itself.

Speaking about characters, since the story takes place mainly in massive online game there is quite of number of characters in the story. This includes some peculiar characters that have interesting personalities, such as one of the character’s brother who wears an interesting outfit and makes a lot of puns based on the outfit. These characters make interesting comment in the afterword section of each the volumes that are enjoyable to read after you’re done the main stuff.

Infinite Dendrogram may be part of a recent trend of fantasy novels that we’re getting from Japan. However, just as the game world of Dendro has infinite possibilities, Infinite Dendrogram as a series might be able give you an endless amount of a good time while reading it.