Series Overview

Infinite Dendrogram (<Infinite Dendrogram>-インフィニット・デンドログラム-) is your typical, trash-tier, isekai, fantasy series. Since yesterday’s review was on a masterpiece, Promare, I figured a good way to follow that up would be with a horrible anime, Infinite Dendrogram.

Back in the day, game-centric isekai anime involved getting stuck within a game — think Sword Art Online. But there’s been a more recent trend to game-centric isekai series in which the characters aren’t actually stuck within the game. So, does this still count as an isekai? Yes; it’s still another world.

However, what’s interesting about these series is that the whole idea of “if you die in the game, you die in real life” is missing. For example, if someone dies in Infinite Dendrogram, they’re simply locked out of their account for something like 48 hours.

How does a series without any real penalty for dying keep viewers engaged then?

It actually does this in a pretty clever way. While players are locked out of the game for 48 hours, that’s something like a week in in-game time. And for a significant number of players, the game is more real to them than their actual lives — so missing a week is a pretty big deal.

This is compounded by the fact that NPCs are basically just as emotionally real as the players themselves are — and if they die, they don’t come back. So if a player dies, then comes back after a week, there’s a fairly good chance their NPC best friend will be dead because the player wasn’t there to protect them.

And that’s the real plot of Infinite Dendrogram. It’s a story about a young man who views this virtual world as real and wants to protect the friends he’s made within it.

Characters

Ray Starling is the protagonist of the series. In typical isekai protagonist fashion, he’s an absolute white knight without any other personality traits. He also has a bunch of overpowered abilities, again, like any other isekai protagonist. There’s not really much else to say about him than that.

Nemesis is Ray’s “embryo,” which is basically a summon. Every player in Infinite Dendrogram has an embryo which themselves separated into different classes and rarities. Nemesis is a “Maiden”-type embryo, which I guess just means she can take the form of a cute anime girl. But her true form is that of a weapon (the exact weapon changes throughout the series).

Shu is Ray’s older brother who has been playing Infinite Dendrogram since it released two years prior. I’m just going to spoil this because I don’t think you should watch the series anyway: he’s what’s known as a superior — someone who’s overpowered by nature. Shu also constantly wears a bear costume and says “kuma” (bear) a lot.

Rook Holmes and Hugo Lesseps are two friends Ray makes within the game. as with Ray, there’s not really much to say about these two. Rook isn’t as strong as Ray, but his embryo, Babylon, seems to be on the same level as Nemesis. Hugo has a less powerful embryo but has more natural talent.

The last character I’ll mention is one I really don’t understand at all: Dr. Franklin. Dr. Franklin is a superior class player (like Shu), but I’m not sure why. He’s not strong and even acknowledges this, so it’s unclear why he’s a superior. Franklin is also the antagonist of the series, and even after he was defeated I don’t know why he was evil in the first place.

Why is Infinite Dendrogram so Bad?

Perhaps you don’t think Infinite Dendrogram seems that bad based on what I’ve said about it. If this is what you’re thinking, then allow me to correct that mistaken understanding you have.

Maybe some people like this, but my first issue with the series is that it doesn’t seem to know what kind of series it wants to be. Some characters use swords and magic, like Ray, which is what you would expect. But then there’s also Shu, a bear who uses a chaingun, and Hugo, who literally pilots a mech to fight.

The next issue I have is with the stakes of the series. I mentioned earlier how the series gets around the low stakes associated with death in-game, but it doesn’t go far enough. Just because Ray doesn’t want to die in-game doesn’t mean most players feel the same way. And due to this, we get people like Franklin who are just evil because why not?

Continuing on with Franklin, I also just think his character makes no sense. In the final episode Hugo randomly refers to Franklin as his older sister, so I guess Franklin was a girl all along? This was never explained and actually goes against a lot of the build-up of the relationship between Hugo and Franklin.

Then, of course, we have the power system. The Infinite Dendrogram game is rigged from the start. When a character is created, they get random stats and a random embryo — which usually mirror each other in strength.

What this means is that those known as superiors are simply superiors because their characters rolled good stats and skills — and they also got a good (and rare) embryo. Strong characters are strong because of RNG, and weak characters are weak for the same reason. That’s all there is to it, which means there’s no room for development.

Conclusion

Infinite Dendrogram is a 2/10 because it has bad characters, bad plot, bad series mechanics, bad animation, and boring art. The only reason I haven’t given it a 1 is that it at least attempts to have interesting sub-arcs at times — like the superior tournament.

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