Infinite Dendrogram (Episode 8) - Clash of the Superiors

Ray is thinking of betting on Figaro in the Superiors fight when he spots a strange person carrying a girl. He arms Nemesis and prepares to fight, but he should be more careful who he picks a fight with!

What happened?

Luckily for Ray, Shu stepped in at the last second and despite his claims to just be a passing bear, the opponent knew all to well that wasn’t the case. It turned out that the person that Ray had just picked a fight with was none other than Figaro’s opponent in the Superior Clash, Xunyu. Once Ray realised who is was, he asked what they planned on doing with the girl. Xunyu explained that she was its travelling companion and laughed at the idea that Ray was trying to save her. Xunyu leant in and spoke to Ray with her normal voice before heading off to the fight.

The fight went back and forth with each fighter landing significant blows on the other, however, it looked like Xunyu had the upper-hand. That changed quickly though, when Figaro’s embryo kicked in. Having landed the final blow, Xunyu disappeared from the arena, but someone had frozen the fight. Dr Flamingo appeared, walking on top of the barrier and addressed the crowd. He removed his penguin costume to reveal that he was Mr Franklin, the one responsible for killing their king. He then revealed that he also had the princess.

What was your favourite element?

The fight was fun and had some interesting moments, however, the main problem here was that there really wasn’t any connection for the viewer. Sure, we’d met Figaro briefly, but certainly not enough to really care about the outcome of the fight. Then, on top of that, we spent a lot of time with Shu explaining stuff once more. They really don’t have any faith in the viewers putting together stuff in this series. In one way it’s annoying because they are over explaining stuff that we could easily be shown and then with things like Mr Franklin where we have zero context whatsoever, we’re left to work out what is going on and it’s impossible.

Infinite Dendrogram Episode 8 Marie Adler Nemesis Ray and Shu

What have you learnt?

I think there’s a really interesting story at the heart of Infinite Dendrogram, but the way we’re being told the story is making it hard to see. The delivery of information has been boring and offers us no chance to put things together. As a result, it plays out like a lecture on the subject and lectures tend to be boring. The characters have spent a lot of time sitting around and not really doing much which is increasingly frustrating because when they do stuff it’s a hundred times more interesting. Ray was sat down watching the fight for pretty much the entire episode. That’s not the best use of the main character, especially when we should be seeing their adventure and developing an interest in them.