Infinite Dendrogram (Episode 4) - Like a Flag Flying the Reversal

Ray’s quest takes a turn when they come across another party being attacked by goblins. They rush in to help, but soon find much more than they expected when a giant red ogre drops from the sky!

What happened?

It turned out that the giant red ogre was none other than Gardranda, the dangerous quest from the adventurers guild. With no way to escape, Ray and his party were forced to fight. Gardranda, however, unleashed a number of attacks, one of them poisoning Ray and making him weak. Marie Adler tossed a potion at him that would hold back the effects of the poison for a period of time. All he had to do was defeat the giant powerful ogre that also had a giant roc as its stead. Luckily, Rook and Babi occupied the roc, leaving Ray and Nemesis to focus on Gardranda. Then, a strange countdown begins in the middle of the battle and neither Ray nor Nemesis know what is going on!

Infinite Dendrogram Episode 4 Ray versus Gardranda

What was your favourite element?

The fight was pretty exciting and took up most of the episode so that was good. It meant that the chance for the characters to sit around and eat was severely diminished. Nemesis’ powerup was obviously fairly convenient with its timing, but then it does make sense that the weapons are evolving as they gain experience so I’m not that concerned about that. I would question the logic of a sword upgrading to a halberd. That’s a completely different skill as far as weapons go. There was almost a nicely dropped hint at the state of the world where Ray was commenting about the NPCs that had died. He found himself questioning whether this was really a game. Ooooo! That would have been great had the next scene not shown us some sort of demon looking at screens who then said, “And you think it’s just a game!” Wow! That’s a little heavy-handed.

Infinite Dendrogram Episode 4 Exposition Overseer

What have you learnt?

Let’s talk about exposition and how some storytellers don’t seem to have any faith in their audience taking in the hints. This second moment that basically confirmed that it isn’t a game was far too obvious. We would have been fine with Ray’s question and you could leave it at that. Then, just give us more hints as time goes on. We really don’t need to start questioning what’s going on and then tell us straight away. Sure, we don’t know exactly what it is, but that was some really lazy exposition. I was really enjoying the episode, but at that point I found myself shaking my head at just how badly that was handled. It would be like reading a murder mystery where the narrator confirmed the detective’s first suspect is the killer. This is a good idea and it’s something that could be drawn out to great effect.