English Dub Review: Infinite Dendrogram “Superior”

Overview (Spoilers Below)

As Ray, Nemesis, Rook, and Babylon discover that the people who are killing online players within the game are stalking the four corners of the Altar have been eliminated. Marie Adler, a journalist working for the Dendrogram Information Network, confirms the story and shows the group a video depicting three of the top players in Altar, Figaro included, defeating the Taking their asses out.

Marie also confirms that the player killer stalking the north is the one responsible for killing Ray in the last episode, who later escaped and is still at large, giving Ray and Nemesis the opportunity to get even. Later, as Ray and Nemesis survey a destroyed forest, they come across Cheshire, who was running maintenance in the area and informs Ray that Maiden-type Embryos like Nemesis surprisingly share the same functionality as administration AIs.

With the player killers defeated, the roads across Altar are now open and Ray and his allies accept a quest to transport goods to Gideon, with Marie offering to come along, However, the episode ends on a cryptic cliffhanger as Unbeknownst to Ray and his allies, an ogre-like creature also stalks the road to Gideon…

Our Take

This episode was leaps and bounds better than the previous two. We get to see the top players of Altar in action and Ray gets some information about how Maiden-type Embryos are similar to admin AIs, which implies that Nemesis has some sort of hidden talent. With Ray’s decision to become stronger, I can only hope this means the show can finally kick into high gear. I’m looking forward to seeing how Ray and friends will undertake their new quest, especially since they have a big enemy standing in their way.

Overall If I have any major complaints, the animation and pacing felt bad in places and often times this felt like a filler episode as the only progression we got was hinted potential within Nemesis, but everything else was lacking a bit of aesthetic quality which could be the result of rushing the episode into production. Hopefully, these issues are fixed in later episodes as I see some level of potential in it, even if the show at times feels like it’s riding the coat tails of other popular Isekai-based anime shows such as “Overlord”, “Sword Art Online” and “Rising of the Shield Hero”.