English Dub Season Review: Infinite Dendrogram Season One

Based on the Japanese light novel series written by Sakon Kaidō and illustrated by Taiki, the show takes place in the future of 2043, where the eponymous virtual MMORPG “Infinite Dendrogram” is released, which features the ability to perfectly simulate players’ five senses. Nearly two years later, Reiji Mukudori enters the world of the titular game and assumes the name “Ray Starling”, and upon his arrival, he is joined by his more experienced brother Shuu and his Embryo companion Nemesis. As Ray explores the world of Infinite Dendrogram, he learns to make a life for himself there and begins to have random and bizarre encounters with all kinds of players within this game’s universe…

From a technical standpoint, the art style and character designs are colorful and passable in that particular department. however, the show was littered with problems during both production and the English Dub process as the show took a long break during the early portion of the Covid19 pandemic, in combination with a substantial lack of character development especially with the lead protagonist Ray which hurt the show a fair bit and made the personal growth of his character felt unearned and at times, meaningless.

It’s a shame because the world was interesting and some of the side characters had nice backstories. But of course, Ray had to be the poster child of the generic boy scout hero archetype. Also, the story-structure either felt the same and kept repeating with almost no actual story to pick up on. This series also spent too much time telling us things and not showing them.

For me, giving a shit about the protagonists and what’s at stake is usually the most essential part of a good narrative in regards to story elements, it’s fine to be ambiguous with somethings, but you also need to know what the audience absolutely must know. Also as a villain in the story, Franklin isn’t much of a threat and it progressively begins to strain the viewer’s suspension of disbelief. I get that he must present himself as a really big threat to be taken seriously, but he feels more like an obstacle for the protagonist to overcome and not some upper-tier cosmic scale antagonist.

Overall I think Infinite Dendrogram is passable but nowhere as memorable or profound as its other Isekai contemporaries such as “Overlord” or “Rising of the Shield Hero“. It wasn’t terrible, but it didn’t achieve its full potential. It had serious character flaws and the delays often disrupted the flow of the narrative. Some of the show’s ideas were pretty interesting and ambitious, and the fact that this show was able to finish after the constant COVID delays is possibly one of the biggest achievements it managed to have.