YMMV / Infinite Dendrogram

• Audience-Alienating Premise: Well, sort of. While the actual novel/anime does have some unique and interesting concepts and a premise that, while quite common nowadays, isn't exactly off-putting, the official synopses of both the novel and anime make Infinite Dendrogram sound like a very generic video game world isekai without mentioning any of the the things that make it more unique, like the Embryos.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: Shu being the "King of Destruction" could more or less be deduced by anyone the moment it's first brought up. Not that it makes The Reveal in volume 5 any less awesome.
• Catharsis Factor: After kidnapping and murdering hundreds of children, seeing an absolutely TERRIFIED Lich Maise being hunted down by Ray like an animal gives an amazing contrast to the calm and collected demeanor he was introduced as.
• Complete Monster: Lich Maise and Gladiator Gouz are the leaders of the infamous Gouz-Maise Gang, a gang of bandits who kidnap children to extort their families, sometimes not returning the children even if their families paid the money. In reality, Maise—the brains of the group—uses the children as material to practice his necromancy skills to become the next King of Bones while Gouz—the muscle—mutilates and eats them to satiate his preference for child's meat and make them generate negative emotions for Maise's experiments. When Masters challenge them, Gouz sends his men to their deaths at Hugo's hands before telling Hugo that the duo planned to kill their men themselves before moving to another city, while Ray finds the animated corpses of over 100 children. Deciding that he already fulfilled the conditions to become the King of Bones, Maise tortures Ray and plans to murder the surviving captive children. Even after his death, Maise's experiment would fuse nearby bodies to create an undead monster with the intention to devour everything in its way.

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