SPOILERS FOR S2 OF DR. STONE

format(webp)) My last review was on S1 of Dr. Stone (which you can check out here if interested), so I figured: why not do my next review on S2 of Dr. Stone? In case you haven’t read that review, I liked S1 of Dr. Stone. It’s definitely not my favorite anime and it has its fair share of problems, but I nonetheless liked it. That’s why I decided to watch S2 afterwards, and also since both seasons are on Netflix. The question is: how do I think S2 stands in comparison? Oh, its peak.

As someone who thought the first season was good but with its fair share of problems, Dr. Stone: Stone Wars (which I will refer to as just Stone Wars from now on) not only felt like an improvement over last season, but also a nice change of pace. This time, I’ll tell you all why I think that is by going over individual aspects of Stone Wars rather than looking at the entire story as a whole like I did in my previous review. This review will also be a bit shorter since I have not much to say about Stone Wars like I had with the previous season.
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# PART I: #Science Vs. Action As I mentioned in my previous review, the final portion of last season made me start to see why Dr. Stone is considered a Shonen anime. I say that because this season finally made me understand the full spectrum of why that is right from the first portion. Now yes, I’m fully aware that the term “Shonen” just refers to anime/manga that is aimed at young boys, so it isn’t exclusively action oriented. I’m also aware that most anime, especially the really big ones, that are listed as Shonen anime contain a lot of action. Examples include One Punch Man, Jujutsu Kaisen, and My Hero Academia, all of which I haven’t watched yet at the time of writing this (except for My Hero Academia) but plan to. In that regard, Dr. Stone is very different from your usual Shonen anime because yes, there’s some action, but the focus is more on the science than the action. It’s been that way since the beginning. Unlike its predecessor, however, Stone Wars shifts its focus a little more on the action than the science.

Of course, there’s still plenty of science this time around. I mean, you can’t have Dr. Stone without science. Right from the first episode of Stone Wars we get to see Senkuu, the protagonist, create space food/ramen, which he then slowly follows that up with an engine, a car, and a fricking tank!? At the same time, however, Stone Wars spends more of its time showing us the end results of Senkuu’s inventions rather than the process of making said inventions. Overall, I wouldn’t say this means we get to see more action than science this season, but rather we get to see a more equal amount of action and science. Now, that does open the floor to an interesting question (which in case you haven’t noticed it, I used it as the title for this section).

I’ve seen a lot of peoples’ biggest complain regarding Stone Wars is that unlike the previous season, there’s way less episodes focusing on Senkuu and his friends gathering the resources and creating the materials needed to make his inventions. Some people are just more into Dr. Stone for the science than the action, and that’s completely understandable. Like I mentioned earlier, Dr. Stone is first and foremost a science oriented Shonen anime. Its focus is more on the science than the action. Without the science, Dr, Stone would lose both its main appeal and the main aspect that differentiates it from other Shonen anime. As for me, I’m someone who wasn’t that much of a fan of those types of episodes.

I would say some of the best moments for me from last season were the ones where we did get to see the end results of Senkuu’s inventions, like the electricity scene and the glasses scene. I think it’s a nice change of pace that this time we get to see more moments like that this time around. In fact, I’ll confidently say that it’s better that we get to see more moments like that this season. For one, Senkuu probably has a lot of leftover resources and materials from last season, so it should be reasonable to assume that Senkuu will spend less time making his inventions. Also, I personally think having another season of just Senkuu spending more time gathering materials would not make sense not just because variety is key, but also because that time was used to set up for the war that takes place this season (hence the name Stone Wars), so it wouldn’t make sense to spend even more time on that. Speaking of which, the defining moments of Stone Wars, at least for me, are definitely when we get to see Senkuu’s new and even old inventions like the phone being used to their full potential all in the effort to take down the Tsukasa Empire. It's honestly very unique to have a Shonen anime where the protagonist doesn't rely on the power of friendship or a random powerup to win the day (which I will admit My Hero Academia is a little guilty of), but rather relies on his own intellect and superior knowledge of science to win battles that would otherwise be impossible for him to win due to the opposing side's superior physical strength. I guess this is also a good transition into the next section.
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# PART II: #A Great Beginning (And Middle) And Ending As someone who thinks that the story in the first season dragged on for too long, especially in those episodes where Senkuu was gathering the resources to create medicine for Ruri, I’ve got to tell you the pacing for this season felt like such a nice breath of fresh air. I might be in the minority here, but I firmly stand that Stone Wars’ story is much better than the previous season’s. After all, the story of the first season, like I mentioned earlier, felt more like a set up for the story in this season rather than its own separate story like in most anime I’ve watched. Ep 1 felt like the exact same formula as the previous season as we watched Senkuu and his friends make plans for how to beat Tsukasa as well as create the space food (which I just found out today it was an anime-only addition and thought it was cool). From Ep 2 onwards, thought, I couldn’t contain my excitement.

I was genuinely surprised by how Senkuu and his friends managed to trick and capture Homura, who was spying on them, in order to allow Chrome, Gen, and Magma to deliver one of the phones to Tsukasa’s base, and all using the power of science. From there it just keeps getting better. Watching Senkuu and Gen win over Tsukasa’s forces with the phone and record player as well as watching the Kingdom of Science storm the Tsukasa Empire with the Steam Gorilla (the name of the fricking tank) and Chrome escaping from Tsukasa’s base using his knowledge of science was peak Dr. Stone. The actual battle against the Tsukasa Empire doesn't even happen until Ep 8, but once it does, the whole sequence is genuinely great. I did say the best moments in Stone Wars were when we got to see Senkuu outsmart the Tsukasa Empire using his “weapons of science.”

Of course, a lot of people would still see this as a negative. Like I mentioned earlier, last season had a lot more episodes focusing on the process of gathering the resources and creating the materials needed for Senkuu’s inventions. As such, I’ve seen a lot of people say that the pacing of Stone Wars can feel rushed without those types of episodes, and I disagree. I mean, as someone who thinks the story in the middle portion of the previous season dragged on for too long, I’m happy this season doesn’t take its time with the story. I genuinely think that Stone Wars’ story is great from beginning to end (and yes, that includes the middle), and another reason why I think that is the way in which Stone Wars utilizes its characters.
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# PART III: #Out With The Old Characters, And In With The New Characters The characters in Stone Wars are just as good as they were in the first season, maybe a little bit better. Senkuu, Gen, and their delightfully devious and funny scheming are still the highlights of the Kingdom of Science. There’s also the other characters like Kohaku, Suika, Kinrou, Ginrou, Kaseki, and even Magma, who all have their moments, but don’t really get as much screen time as they did last season. The only other character who gets any sort of significance and character development is Chrome, who comes to his own as a scientist and manages to escape from the Tsukasa Empire after he was captured. I personally do not mind any of this. You could make an argument that outside of Chrome, the others’ character arcs have already been resolved in the previous season (for example: Kohaku’s main motivation was to cure her older sister, Ruri, which she did), so there’s no need for them to have a lot of focus this time around. Also, as I mentioned in my previous review, I preferred the stone characters over the villager characters and wished that those characters got more screen time last season. This season, they did. It’s weird to include them here since they’re both actually members of the Kingdom of Science who were sent by Senkuu to spy on Tsukasa, but I can’t tell you how happy I was to see Taiju and Yuzuriha back. They’re both still their delightful, funny, and emotional selves from the previous season and their chemistry still makes for some funny moments. If anything, I’m surprised by how much Yuzuriha’s character has improved. We get to see some more funny moments from her, and it was a surprise to see how she’s been trying to bring back the petrified people who Tsukasa destroyed. Speaking of which, the real standouts for me are the new characters from the Tsukasa Empire. Homura was still pretty great, and there’s also Yo, who was extremely funny. They both served as great obstacles, and I didn’t mind when they disappeared from the story once they served their purpose but was genuinely surprised when they came back in the end. I didn’t really care much for Nikki, but I did like her funny scenes with Senkuu and Gen. I also really liked Ukyo and how his mysterious nature and insane hearing actually made certain scenes more tense. At first, I thought he was going to end up being a traitor who wants to overthrow Tsukasa, but he was ultimately someone who just didn’t want to see more people die, even if they were statues, and every scene with him working with the Kingdom of Science afterwards if great. The promise he made Senkuu to make about winning without any casualties was also great, and I genuinely felt bad when I thought Ukyo had been killed by Hyoga. Speaking of which, I do think that Stone Wars’ weakest point is also one of the things I loved the most about the first season: the man himself, Tsukasa (and Hyoga to a lesser extend). Keep in mind, I still genuinely think Tsukasa is a great character in Stone Wars, but the more I think about him, the more he just doesn’t make sense to me. For starters, as I mentioned in my previous review, Tsukasa, despite hating adults, keeps bringing people back who look like adults. At first, I was just joking, and then this season we got Ukyo, who worked in a submarine, and Yo, who was a police officer, and started to think what the heck was Tsukasa thinking because those two are straight-up adults. I should explain that the reason behind Tsukasa’s hatred for adults is because last season, he tells a story to Senkuu about how he tried to collect seashells for his sick little sister, but was unable to because he got beat up by an who claimed to own the beach, thus his reason for why adults corrupted the old world, and they shouldn’t bring them back. At the end of Stone Wars, though, it’s revealed that this whole time Tsukasa didn’t really want to create a new Stone World without adults, he was just mad because his sister was sick, and he just wanted to bring her back. Senkuu dies exactly that as well as cure her condition, and now Tsukasa is a full-on good guy. I guess it’s fine, but I do wish there was some more foreshadowing outside of that one story from the previous season. Afterwards, they try to force a connection between Tsukasa and Kohaku as she went through a similar experience, but it just doesn’t work because of how the twist comes out of nowhere. I will say, I do like the scene that shows Tsukasa’s more human side as he shows his respects to the deaths of his fellow men, but can we also talk about how Tsukasa himself has been killing a lot of people (albeit petrified people) until this point in the story, and they try to brush it off with an apology after the twist.

There’s also Hyoga, who is a bit better, but not by much. We do get a little foreshadowing regarding his true colors and how different he actually is from Tsukasa when, unlike Tsukasa, he shows no remorse for the deaths of the men that HE CAUSED. Still, we only get this much foreshadowing for both Hyoga and Tsukasa right when the battle between the Kingdom of Science and the Tsukasa Empire starts. There definetely needed to be more foreshadowing. Once Hyoga does show his true colors, though, the excitement was back for me. The scene where Hyoga impales Tsukasa is actually intense and the ensuing fight between Hyoga and the combined forces of Senkuu and Tsukasa is fantastic. I loved how it took the combined forces of Tsukasa’s strength and Senkuu’s science to defeat the true big bad of Stone Wars. That brings me right back to Tsukasa and his final scene with Senkuu as they have a normal conversation while Tsukasa is being frozen in order to save his life. It was definitely emotional, but it would have been way more brutal if Tsukasa’s redemption was just more foreshadowed. Overall, I still like both of them, but man, it really does feel like Stone Wars downgraded two of the best characters from the first season.
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# PART IV: #Everything Else In Stone Wars Is Great, But… This section is not really about anything in particular other than just a small rant about other things I liked about Stone Wars. First, let’s start with the comedy. I praised the first season for being one of the funniest anime I have watched so far, and the funny moments in Stone Wars are just as great and still made me laugh (I will not give context to the image above other than it’s one of the first moments that made me laugh the most). However, I do think in terms of the comedy, the first season was funnier. In my previous review, I never mentioned the animation because I didn’t anything to say about it. I will say now that the first season’s animation was good, especially when the characters’ weird expressions, which made a lot of scenes ten times funnier. Since the animation in Stone Wars is the same, my opinion still stands for Stone Wars. The soundtrack is also kept the same from the first season and it’s good, but nothing that stands out. Same goes for the song "One Small Step.” It’s good, but it's not one of my favorite anime songs, so when it plays every five minutes in every episode as a part of Senkuu and Gen's plan, it starts to get old. I will say, though, that the OP and ED for Stone Wars are genuinely amazing, and you should listen to them. I didn’t think much of the OP at first, but for me it gets better as it goes on, and the ED is, in my opinion, the best Dr. Stone ED by far. ____ # CONCLUSION I might just be the only person who has Stone Wars rated higher than the first season of Dr. Stone, but I don’t care. S1 definitely has its strengths, but Stone Wars not only enhances everything that I think made S1 enjoyable, but it also fixes a lot of the problems I had with S1. Of course, that does not mean that Stone Wars is perfect or one of the best anime I've seen by any means. Really the only negatives I can think of and what keep Stone Wars from being rated higher than it is are that I just really wish that Tsukasa’s redemption and Hyoga’s betrayal were better foreshadowed because as they are now, they feel like they come out of nowhere and definitely made me see why some people complain about Stone Wars’ pacing. Speaking of which, while some people might have a problem with spending less time focusing on how Senkuu makes each of his inventions, I still think (which I know I said multiple times by this point) that Stone Wars shines the most in the moments where we get to see the fruits of Senkuu’s efforts and how his inventions and his weapons of science can turn the tide of battle in fights that would otherwise be impossible for him to win. Overall, I may be giving more praise to Stone Wars than other people think it deserves, but I think we can definetely agree that if you are someone who enjoyed S1 of Dr. Stone, then you are definitely going to love S2.