Like with all my reviews I like to begin with a little story about my relationship with the series I'm reviewing and what to expect from my review. Here is a little background information on my relationship with Dr. STONE and why I'm so late in the game when it comes to watching this series. As some of you may or may not know I work in a field that involves working with children a lot. During one of my days at work this summer I overheard two of the kids I'm in charge of speaking about Dr. Stone and how similar it is to Minecraft. As someone who has never enjoyed Minecraft that sentence alone was enough for me to write off this series entirely. Looking back on it that was obviously a very closeminded thing of me to do. It wasn't until recently that one of my good friends on AniList (@Arikarikita) recommended me this series. Still feeling a bit cautious about whether or not to actually take on watching 24 episodes of a series I may not even enjoy I decided to put it off. That being said, once he began to watch Golden Kamuy (another series I've actually done a review on) due to my recommendation I felt obligated to do the same for his recommendation of Dr. Stone. From that point on there was no turning back!
As with all of my posts and reviews I will be keeping things spoiler free so read on without fear of anything being spoiled for you. Along the same notes my rating are primarily based upon overall enjoyment of a series. With that being said I will be explaining some of the things I loved about Dr. STONE and some of the things I didn't enjoy quite as much!
To put it quite simply the story of Dr. STONE is stellar! It is not at all what I expected it to be. Dr. Stone takes place in a world where all humans have been petrified due to an unknown supernatural event. As a result of this phenomenon the entirety of Earth is uninhabited by humans for 3715 years! This is the case until our main character Senkuu escapes his petrification and begins to revive the human race from their stone prisons. The way in which humans are freed from the stone is quite the ass pull by the creator but I realistically can't fault him due to there never being a situation like this in the history of mankind (obviously). From there Senkuu and his companions begin to revive the human race and look to advance technology back to where it was 3715 years ago through scientific advancement!
This is the portion of my review that is going to be EXTREMELY bold and will likely piss off a lot of people that do not enjoy Dr. STONE. I think that Dr. STONE has the best worldbuilding in any anime or manga that I've encountered outside of One Piece! The way that the world in Dr. Stone continues to evolve as technology continues to advance throughout the series is incredible. Portions of the world that were previously unobtainable due to a lack of technology become present as the story progresses along with the technology. This is what Dr. STONE does so brilliantly as a series! Dr. STONE shows the viewer how numerous inventions and advancements in human society impacted the world we live in today! As the world of Dr. STONE advances the characters in it do as well. As Dr. STONE slowly moves away from the prehistoric era it begins in and progress closer and closer to modern society the ideologies of many different characters evolve along with it. In summary, the world of Dr. STONE serves as a teaching mechanism for the viewer and clearly demonstrates the impact science has had on the history of mankind and the world that we know today!
Once again, nothing much to write home about here. The animation in Dr. STONE is on par with all the other shonen airing around this time period. The characters are well designed and animated well but it's not anything that blows you away. I honestly don't have too much to say outside of that the character design from Dr. STONE is actually quite good. Many characters are very unique in their appearance and a detail I especially enjoyed was that characters have cracks in their skin from being petrified in stone for thousands of years. This is an attention to detail that I would not expected from a shonen anime.
This is where majority of my criticism for Dr. STONE comes in. The characters in Dr. STONE are, to put it bluntly, average. Thus far, there isn't much of anything that makes them stick out for your generic shonen cast. I will say something that I especially didn't enjoy about Dr. STONE was Senkuu's overwhelming brilliance. I completely understand that this is the whole point of his character but I felt it held us back from being able to see growth from the other characters. Senkuu is the driving force behind everything that happens in this world (and rightfully so because he's one of a few number of people with scientific knowledge) but what this causes is for us to see very little actual growth from the surrounding cast of characters. Anything that is a problem in this world is seemingly overcome by Senkuu solving the problem for everyone. Furthermore, throughout the series, there was never once a problem I felt that Senkuu couldn't overcome. As a result, he feels incredibly overpowered. I will say that one character that I really did enjoy was Tsukasa. Tsukasa holds a very interesting ideology and has a very interesting vision for what the stone world should become. I am very intrigued to see how his vision alters the world in the next few seasons to come! Overall, I felt as though the cast of characters were extremely average in terms of the grand scheme of anime and manga. In a series that nails everything else I look for in anime/manga it's a bit disappointing to see a cast of characters that ultimately aren't anything too special.
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