SPOILERS FOR S1 OF DR. STONE

A couple of months ago I watched the first episode of Dr. Stone with a friend one night and…it was amazing. I thought the concept and setup were pretty fascinating and unique and I really loved the extremely comedic banter and slapstick between the two main characters. I immediately added Dr. Stone to my anime watch list but haven’t thought about it since. That was until the start of last month when I finally decided to watch the whole thing and…it was ok.

Don’t get me wrong, Dr. Stone was still good, but it was not as good as I thought it was going to be. I think a huge portion of why that is stems from how the story unfolds, particularly throughout its middle section. I think it’s better if I just explain the entire story from beginning to end in order to understand where I’m coming from.
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# PART I: #A Great Beginning The story starts with a mysterious green light that turns every human on Earth into stone. We then follow Taiju, a high school student who wakes up 3700 years into the future to a world overrun by nature where all signs of human civilization have banished (outside of statues of petrified people everywhere). He then reunites with his best friend, the scientific genius Senkuu Ishigami, and together they plan to bring back human civilization and solve the mystery behind the green light and humanity’s petrification using science.

As I mentioned earlier, this is one of the best and most unique concepts and setups for an anime I’ve ever seen, second only to Assassination Classroom (subject to change as I have not seen a lot of anime at the time of writing this). What really sold me were Senkuu’s words at the end of Ep 1:

“I’m going to beat fantasy with science.”

Senkuu

I’m not into science, but you can’t convince me that did not sound cool. All this is only strengthened by our great cast of characters.

First there’s Senkuu, the real protagonist and, so far, one of my favorite protagonists. He is highly intelligent (when I say highly I mean HIGHLY, like "keeping track of time by counting every second you have been alive in stone for 3700 years straight" HIGHLY). He also has a sly, cunning, and devious personality along with a “doesn’t give a shit about anything” attitude that all make for some really funny moments. It all sounds awful on paper, but behind that devilish personality, Senkuu has a heart that shows how much he cares for others regardless of how much he tries to hide it and regardless of whether the other person is his enemy or ally. Of course, because of his intellect, the real meat of the anime is watching Senkuu use his vast knowledge of real-world science to achieve the impossible goal of rebuilding a technological civilization in the so-called “Stone World,” a world where all records of human knowledge, science, and technology have been permanently lost to time.

There’s also Taiju, Senkuu’s best friend who, unlike Senkuu, is not smart but is incredibly strong. These two characters not only have great chemistry with each other, but their interactions throughout the first part of the story result in some of the best comedy I have ever seen in any anime. Also worth mentioning is Yuzuriha, Taiju’s crush. She mostly serves as Taiju’s main driving force until Senkuu and Taiju eventually release her from her petrified state, but her inclusion afterwards contributes to more funny interactions as well as some genuinely heartfelt moments between the three of them. There’s also one more character introduced that deserves to be talked about in full detail: Tsukasa (aka “The Strongest Primate High Schooler”).

Just like the others, Tsukasa is another outstanding character. He is a combination of Taiju’s strength multiplied by two and Senkuu’s analytical thinking and deductive reasoning. He was brought back by Senkuu and Taiju to save them from a wild lion, which he instantly kills with one punch to the face. No, I’m not kidding. Not only that, he shows compassion to the dead animal by skinning it, wearing its fur as a coat, and promising to put every part of its body to use. His strength alongside his compassion and understanding makes him an interesting addition, but then he slowly shows his true motivations.

He tells Senkuu how he believes that they should only bring back the strong and youthful because he believes that the adults have ruined their old world and will eventually ruin this one too before. He then proceeds to destroy a statue of a petrified adult man…right in front of Senkuu. This is an insane turn of events foreshadowed by Senkuu’s suspicions of Tsukasa that turns Tsukasa into a pretty intimidating threat that Senkuu can only hope to overcome with the power of science. It also helps that Tsukasa is not stupid as he can easily read other people and use it to deduce whatever Senkuu is thinking and planning. This makes Tsukasa into the perfect counterpart to Senkuu and is a great setup for a great conflict between brain vs. brawn, a very unique take for a Shonen anime.

Now, from everything that I said so far, you think that you’d have a pretty good idea of how the rest of the anime would play out, but…
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# PART II: #A Middle Portion At This Village That Drags On Too Long Yeah, so turns out the first six episodes of Dr. Stone were just a prologue. The real story starts once Senkuu goes off on his own to build a “Kingdom of Science” and recruit people to his army to fight against Tsukasa while Taiju and Yuzuriha join the “Tsukasa Empire” as spies. This results in Taiju and Yuzuriha being absent from the rest of the season. As you can imagine, this is already a completely different direction from the story that the first six episodes were setting up because you’d think that Taiju and Yuzuriha would stick around longer as main characters, but now they’ve been reduced to background characters, and it’s not just them. Tsukasa is also absent throughout this middle portion of the story, and I was not a fan of this since I thought these three characters added some great comedy, drama, and conflict to the story. Then I thought, it’s all fine as long as the new story they give us is just as entertaining as the last one, right?

So Senkuu is taken to this village by a girl named Kohaku. Upon learning that the village priestess, Ruri (Kohaku’s older sister), is sick, Senkuu, alongside a new cast of characters from the village, attempts to use the power of science to create antibiotics to cure Ruri and sway the other villagers to join the Kingdom of Science. This is how the rest of this middle portion of the story plays out. It sounds good on paper (and it is), but I personally was not a fan of it.

For starters, the new story feels very stereotypical thanks to the usual tropes that come with the “cure the sick girl” type of stories. There’s the mysterious sickness that no one but the main character knows how to cure, the chief who does not approve of outsiders until an outsider cures his daughter, the guy who wants to cure the girl because he loves her but feels like he can’t marry her because he is not strong enough like the other men, etc. This, coupled with a small tournament arc that had its moments but felt unnecessary, made the whole story seem to drag on too long for me. In defense of that tournament arc, though, it’s fairly unique compared to other Shonen tournament arcs as this one was clearly more played for laughs, despite its serious moments that still hit for me. Then, there’s the new cast of characters.

Senkuu is still his intelligent, sly, comedic, and caring self and I was all in for it. There’s also Gen, a mentalist who was brought back by Tsukasa to locate Senkuu to see if he was still alive. Despite his trickster personality and only looking out for himself, he was pretty entertaining to watch and his reactions to Senkuu’s inventions were sometimes funny and sometimes dramatic. It’s also nice that Gen gets a sort of character arc and ultimately choses to join the Kingdom of Science (though all it took was to give him a cola). Aside from those two, the rest of the new cast is not that outstanding to me, all of which are just new characters from the village.

There’s Chrome, a Senkuu admirer, collector of rocks and minerals, and wannabe scientist who I have a strong love-hate relationship with. On the one hand, he is genuinely pretty funny and has a good character arc and plenty of moments to shine, but on the other hand, his voice is also kind of annoying. This is in no way, shape, or form any fault of Chrome’s VA, who I think does a great enough job of voicing Chrome, but I do blame whoever made the decision to make him say all his lines in a screaming voice and say everything is “so bad” every five minutes. Other villager characters like Kohaku, Suika, Kinrou, Ginrou, and Kaseki all have plenty of funny moments and some good character arcs that I liked, but to me, they ultimate serve as stand-ins in order to incite the audience into feeling amazed by Senkuu’s inventions...except Ginrou. I fricking love Ginrou. Funniest one out of all of village characters.

Speaking of which, I did still enjoy the comedy throughout the middle portion of the story. Not every joke landed, but the ones that did made me genuinely laugh more than most anime I’ve watched. It’s arguably funnier than the first portion of the story. As I mentioned earlier, I also liked a lot of the new character arcs, which made for some heartfelt moments. There were also some genuinely breathtaking moments throughout like when Senkuu brough back electricity and when Suika was able to see for the first time thanks to the new glasses Senkuu made. However, there is one more major thing I need to bring up, and for that we need Senkuu back on stage.

As I mentioned earlier, the main appeal of the anime is watching Senkuu as he uses science to bring back modern-day inventions to the Stone World like soap, glass, electricity, ramen, and antibiotics. That is why a lot of the episodes revolve around Senkuu and the other characters gathering the materials and resources needed to make these inventions. It’s a very unique plot, especially for a Shonen anime, but it does bring into view the biggest and most personal problem for me regarding Dr. Stone: the subtitles.

I started watching anime in sub only a while back, but because a lot of the characters in Dr. Stone, particularly Senkuu, talk fast, it causes the subtitles to come-and-go a lot of the time. It’s especially annoying because I’m someone who tries to keep up with the subtitles so I can understand everything that is happening. Plus, I watched Dr. Stone on Netflix and for some reason Netflix has the subtitles indented to the left side of the screen. It got to the point where I would get constant headaches from watching the anime and I eventually ended up not watching it for a whole week because of the headaches. I still watched the rest of the season in sub, though, and even watched the next season in sub too. Honestly, I kept watching mostly because of the comedy and the first OP, which you should listen to because it's a banger (I didn’t like the second OP as much, but I guess it's starting to grow on me a little). Speaking of which, the soundtrack is another positive. The best way I could describe it is it’s very similar to the My Hero Academia soundtrack with its inspirational-sounding beats, great battle music, and occasional rap-like vocals. It’s good, but I would say the My Hero Academia soundtrack is still better.

I know I’ve just mentioned a lot of negatives with some positives sprinkled here and there, but all of it is only towards the middle portion of the story. So, how did the rest of the season turn out?
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# PART III: #Everything Changed When The Tsukasa Empire Attacked The Saving Priestess Ruri Arc (as I like to unofficially call it) lasted for ten episodes (which I think could have been a bit shorter for my taste). Then Ep 18 comes along and I'm starting to see why Dr. Stone is considered a Shonen anime. After Senkuu cures Ruri and becomes the new chief of the village, Tsukasa’s forces invade and attack the village. It’s a surprise that manages to tie the first and second parts of the story together that does not seem to come out of nowhere as it was heavily foreshadowed that the threat of an invasion from the Tsukasa Empire was imminent. Oh yeah, that reminds me, the whole point of his mission was for Senkuu to recruit people to the Kingdom of Science to fight back against Tsukasa, but you already heard enough complaining from me.

It's honestly very hard for me to describe what made this final portion of the story so enjoyable for me in a way that makes sense. To summarize, I’ll just say that it raises the stakes higher than they’ve ever been before because before we only feared for Ruri’s life (outside of the Sulfurina episode, which was a great episode), but now we fear for the lives of everyone in the village, including Gen and Senkuu. You wonder how Senkuu and his friends are going to beat them since Senkuu has been too preoccupied making medicine to make weapons and, knowing how strong Tsukasa is, it’s a fair assumption to say his forces would be almost equally as strong. In the end, though, the Kingdom of Science prevails and the ways in which they beat and outsmart the Tsukasa Empire using science are a very creative, refreshing, and unique.

Alongside the return of Tsukasa and his view of an ideological Stone World into the anime and a final teaser of Taiju and Yuzuriha at the end (which I would have preferred if we gave them more screen time instead), we also get introduced to new characters on Tsukasa’s side: Hyoga, his second-in-command who is a beast with the spear, and Homura, Hyoga’s aid who sets fire to the village and keeps watch over Senkuu and his forces. They are both great characters with interesting dynamics, personalities, and designs who add more stakes to the story. I will say, though, I do have a problem with how some of Tsukasa’s minions look like adults despite Tsukasa hating adults (or maybe it’s just because they’re too buff or something).

Also, for anyone who did enjoy the science and the character arcs from the middle portion of the story more than I did, there’s plenty more of that throughout this final portion of the story as well as more extremely comedic moments. We even get character arcs for more characters from the village this time around. The one I’d like to mention is Magma, a brute who originally wanted to marry and kill Ruri to become chief, but then we see him start acting more protective towards Senkuu despite everyone not trusting him and growing into a more caring person. It’s actually a good redemption arc that made me grow a little towards Magma of all characters (and also because his stupidity is pretty funny). Also, just a small nick pick with one of the characters, but Kinrou just shows up with glasses in one episode and stays that way throughout the rest of the season. I mean, they did establish earlier that he had the “fuzzy sickness” like Suika and his fight against Magma was pretty hype, but they just like never explain where and how we got those glasses and I can’t stop thinking about it.

Also, I didn’t mention it earlier because I wanted to dedicate its own mini section to it right here, but before the invasion we do actually get to learn about the origin of the village from a story told by Ruri, and it’s a story that is oddly related to Senkuu.

Turns out that before everyone in the world was turned to stone, Senkuu’s father, Byakuya Ishigami, went on a space expedition with five others, so when the green light appeared, Byakuya and the other astronauts on the space station became the only people not affected by it. Once they returned to Earth, they tried everything they could to figure out the origin of the green light and how to reverse it to no avail. This was especially hard on Byakuya, who was driven by a desire to save his son. Eventually, they decided to build their own little village and start families together. In order to preserve as much knowledge about the old world as they could, they decided to pass that knowledge down through the generations in form of stories, which became known as the 100 Tales. They even managed to create a disc they used to record a song sang by one of the astronauts, Lillian Weinberg. In the final story, Byakuya held hope that his son Senku would one day figure out a way to break out of his petrification in the future and use his intellect to bring back civilization to the way it was. As the years went by, that village would eventually grow into the very same village that Senkuu is now the chief of, and the 100 Tales would continue to be passed down from one priestess to the next, eventually being passed down to Ruri.

It's a very tragic but touching story, and the emotion was amplified by Byakuya’s reluctance for him and his crew to give in to despair and holding onto the hope that Senkuu will restore civilization. So far, it was the most emotional moment in the show for me. I knew going into it that Senkuu’s father was the village founder (you can thank Netflix's episode descriptions for that one), but the things unfolded still surprised me. It also somehow manages to fit perfectly in between the Saving Priestess Ruri Arc and the Tsukasa Empire invasion without feeling out of place. After all, the questions were already there: if everyone was turned to stone, then how did this village come to be and how were the villagers unaware of modern science (although thinking about it now, maybe there should have been a few more clues to foreshadow it).

By the way, I should probably mention now that this is when we find out the village is named Ishigami Village (named after Byakuya and Senkuu).

Also, I know they talk about the implications of everyone in the village being related to Senkuu (turns out Byakuya and Senkuu are somehow not related despite looking awfully similar), but now I just can’t stop thinking about the potential implications of incest if everyone in that village kept getting together and they didn't allow outsiders.

Regardless, this sudden twist was a breath of fresh air compared to what came before it story-wise. It’s also worth noting that Lillian’s song, “One Small Step,” is indeed a good song. Huge props to Lillian’s singing VA, Laura Pitt-Pulford, and her amazing voice (although it's hard to imagine her voice coming from a character like Lillian based on her design and her JP VA’s voice).
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# CONCLUSION Dr. Stone is an anime that I ultimately did like and enjoy, but not as much as I thought I would. It has a great beginning and ending, even though they mostly serve as a prologue for the middle portion of the season and as a setup for S2. When you put it that way, the only real story this season has, which takes place throughout the middle ten episodes, tends to feel like a drag to get through, which might negatively impact your enjoyment of the anime. Also, I find that the stone/old world characters, who I think are better characters overall, are significantly underused or absent (besides Senkuu and Gen) as we instead spend most of our time with the villager characters, who are still pretty good characters on their own but not as great. Regardless, Dr. Stone is still a great anime from start to finish that is filled with good character arcs and breathtaking moments throughout. It’s also one of the funniest anime I’ve watched so far. Overall, despite my criticisms and despite not really being one of my favorites, I would agree that Dr. Stone is very much worth your time, and, hey, maybe you’ll end up liking it more than I did. Also, does anyone know if the Dr. Stone dub is any good or not? I'm gonna keep watching the series in sub, but in case I rewatch it in the future, I'm not sure if I can handle the S1 sub again.