Dr. STONE SCIENCE FUTURE ‒ Episode 37

For a writer, crafting a satisfying ending to a story can be one of the hardest parts of the job. Screw it up, and you run the chance of once-loyal fans turning on you and baying for your blood. As far as Dr. Stone's ending is concerned, I don't think it should make anyone too upset. We've ended at the point the series was always heading towards: Senku's triumph over the Stone World, his success in dragging humanity back from the brink and reinstating modern civilization. Surely no one ever imagined the story could end anywhere else? Sure, the final season has been pretty rushed, skipping over great long periods of in-story time in the pursuit of brisk pacing, but this structure was inherited from the source manga. As Senku says to the creepily skull-embodied Why Man/Medusa entities, they shouldn't write off humanity, considering they've advanced from simple stone tools to landing on the moon in the space of a single decade. Though some of that was spent re-petrified for a few years, so really Senku is selling us all a bit short there.

Regardless, the Medusas still aren't that impressed, and they all peace out en mass to seek out another race of unwitting meaty fleshbags to non-consensually terrorize. Without so much as a goodbye they all stream off into space. Good riddance, I suppose. Only a single Medusa remains behind, keen to witness the crazy, exhilarating stuff Senku promises for the future. The whole Medusa/Why Man plot contrivance has been a bit silly, but at least it's consistent with the daft world author Inagaki and artist Boichi conceived right from the beginning.

A jaunty time-skip halfway through the episode gives us a very sweet glimpse at what everyone's up to in the rapidly modernizing world. There are passenger aircraft now, modern motor vehicles, plus actual governments, diplomats and law enforcement. Some of our Kingdom of Science friends have gone back to university (Luna presumably to finish her medical degree, finally), while others have started businesses. I always like these kind of flash-forwards in final episodes that give the viewer a taste of these characters' ongoing stories.

Taiju and Yuzuriha finally get married, and Chrome's unprompted proposal to Ruri is sweetly matter-of-fact. Even though this show almost couldn't be less interested in romance if it tried, it's still nice for these four to have some kind of resolution. Senku's still hard at work on more scientific schemes, this instance planning the ultimate journey – time travel! Whether this is at all possible in this series' cosmology who can know, but it's very on brand for everybody's favorite leek-haired boffin. Saying that, we even briefly meet Senku's female doppelganger, complete with a heaving chest threatening her blouse buttons to pop like tommy gun bullets.

Readers of Dr. Stone's manga will realize this isn't actually the end. This episode adapts up to the conclusion of volume 26's final chapter 232, however there's an entire volume 27 epilogue (published two years later). The credits conclude with “the end, to be continued,”which suggests to me there will probably be some OVAs coming at some point to properly conclude the show. As it is, this is a lovely episode that gives plenty of closure, even while leaving a big, tantalizing plot thread for future exploration.

Dr. Stone: Science Future as a whole has provided some of the best episodes of the entire franchise, and I feel a little bereft now it's over. It's been consistently optimistic, educational, and entertaining since the outset, and maintaining that consistency over so many episodes has been a remarkable achievement. I feel a strange urge to go build a nuclear fusion reactor in my garden shed now.

Rating: 4 stars