Oh my, how bold to release another VRMMO anime at the same time as Bofuri. Stacked the deck against you, you have.
As I sit here, watching this Alicization-wannabe, I can’t help but think of how much better SAO is. Not to veer too far off-topic, but SAO does a lot of wonderful things that it doesn’t get credit for. If you’re trying to capitalize on the popularity of this genre, you can’t slack off. You’re facing steep competition on all sides.
Reiji enters the VRMMO “Infinite Dendogram”, where supposedly anything is possible. The NPCs have human intelligence and personalities, and die when they are killed. Reiji ends up getting a quest to save a famous NPC’s sister from danger.
It’s like watching someone else play a boring video game.
There is nothing interesting going on at all. I suppose the stakes are supposed to be that the NPCs are like people and can die permanently. But I can’t find it in myself to care about the NPCs, so there are functionally no stakes.
The reason I don’t care is that the game world is absurd. Half the players would protect NPCs, and the other half would be griefers. I swear, I think this is an isekai anime that’s been disguised as an MMO anime so the author has an easy way out of problems. It’s nothing like how a game would be.
In my post about Bofuri, I mentioned that I can forgive the necessary suspension of disbelief because the show aims to be cute and funny. This is what I was talking about. Infinite Dendogram's contrivances ruin any suspense it tries to make. I don’t feel worried about the characters because it’s done so many stupid things to create this situation that I’m just thinking about how stupid this all is.
Go watch a better MMO show, or go play one instead.
