Dr. Stone
ドクターストーン
After five years of harboring unspoken feelings, high-schooler Taiju Ooki is finally ready to confess his love to Yuzuriha Ogawa. Just when Taiju begins his confession however, a blinding green light strikes the Earth and petrifies mankind around the world—turning every single human into stone. Several millennia later, Taiju awakens to find the modern world completely nonexistent, as nature has flourished in the years humanity stood still. Among a stone world of statues, Taiju encounters one other living human: his science-loving friend Senkuu, who has been active for a few months. Taiju learns that Senkuu has developed a grand scheme—to launch the complete revival of civilization with science. Taiju's brawn and Senkuu's brains combine to forge a formidable partnership, and they soon uncover a method to revive those petrified. However, Senkuu's master plan is threatened when his ideologies are challenged by those who awaken. All the while, the reason for mankind's petrification remains unknown. [Written by MAL Rewrite]
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After five years of harboring unspoken feelings, high-schooler Taiju Ooki is finally ready to confess his love to Yuzuriha Ogawa. Just when Taiju begins his confession however, a blinding green light strikes the Earth and petrifies mankind around the world—turning every single human into stone. Several millennia later, Taiju awakens to find the modern world completely nonexistent, as nature has flourished in the years humanity stood still. Among a stone world of statues, Taiju encounters one other living human: his science-loving friend Senkuu, who has been active for a few months. Taiju learns that Senkuu has developed a grand scheme—to launch the complete revival of civilization with science. Taiju's brawn and Senkuu's brains combine to forge a formidable partnership, and they soon uncover a method to revive those petrified. However, Senkuu's master plan is threatened when his ideologies are challenged by those who awaken. All the while, the reason for mankind's petrification remains unknown. [Written by MAL Rewrite]
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mpdissonance
December 18, 2019
Dr. Stone is an anime with a fascinating premise and a very intriguing world. On first pass, it looks competently animated, the plot progression is quite enjoyable, and hints at fascinating themes. With all those features, surely this series had to be quite great and I’m writing a rave review of it. Right? Well, in this stone world impossible things are possible. Despite all this series had going for it, it was wildly, ridiculously flawed. Dr. Stone is sophomorically directed, cartoonishly over-acted, and the largely decent soundtrack is used incorrectly. It’s childishly written, and its characters were unbearably cliché and plastic. It’s somehow simultaneously annoyinglypretentious and crudely constructed. I will start with on positive note. The premise is incredibly intriguing. One day, some cataclysmic event causes every human being on earth to freeze in stone. Over 3,000 years later, a genius-level teenager, our main character Senku, and his brutish friend, Taiju, become unfrozen. Senku is now tasked with using all his scientific knowledge to rebuild human society from scratch. However, they unfreeze our main antagonist, Tsukasa, out of necessity. Tsukasa decides that a premodern world without scientific knowledge and liberal ideologies surrounding it would be better as the strong could survive, and evil people from modern society couldn’t corrupt the purity of the strong. This premise, to quote Senku’s overly repeated catchphrase, has the potential to be “exhilarating.” We have themes explicitly discussed about the relationship of scientific knowledge to social progress and political ideologies, pitting modern liberal egalitarianism against a radically inegalitarian critique of individualism of modern society. As well as the potential for a fascinating, rewarding, almost RPG-like plot for the trials and tribulations of building scientific advancements out of nothing. Instead of fleshing out those themes and premise, we get subjected to a cliche battle shounen/comedy replete with the most obnoxious of shounen tropes. Our main protagonist comes off like an obnoxious, pretentious Rick and Morty fan. He has little to no personality outside of the fact that he’s a stereotypical ‘genius science guy’ that is minimally built up using the most annoying tropes. He has no need for personal relationships and views everyone instrumentally, which just contradicts the whole thematic contrast that is explicitly brought to light at with his early arguments with Tsukasa. I can put up with unlikable main characters, but Senku is unlikable in ways that contradict the themes the anime pretty much throws in your face. As a result of marred execution, the themes this anime pretends to have just make absolutely no sense. Further, like most other characters in this anime, Senku’s development is non-existent and his entire development is unsubtly thrown in your face with the most obnoxious, predictable tropes (eg., he literally wears a shirt that says E=MC^2 for Christ’s sake, which might as well be from Big Bang Theory). Taiju is a typically bland shounen protagonist, driven only by love for a girl thousands of years ago at first that is quickly resolved, and then is just a rather useless energetic idiot. But it’s not a big deal, because he’s essentially entirely forgotten after about the tenth episode. Tsukasa, meanwhile, is just not sympathetic in anyway and is built up to just be a stereotypical badass with a stiff-to-non-existent. Taiju’s love interest, Yuzihara, is about as poorly written as a shounen female character could possibly be. She has no personality at all, and seems to only exist as a cheap excuse for occasional trashy weeb fan service. As the plot progresses, Senku gets separated from Taiju and Yuzihara and he comes across a primitive village full of the descendants of the only survivors of the freezing. Senku starts using his rather unbelievable level of scientific knowledge to make the village more scientifically advanced, while Tsukasa goes off to unfreeze those he deems worthy to build his own somewhat anarcho-primitivist society. Little attention is given to Tsukasa for the rest of the series, as well as Taiju and Yuzihara who join his society as informants to Senku. They are largely ignored for the rest of the series, which brings to mind one of the worst traits of series like HunterxHunter and Naruto: forgetting important characters and plot points for extended lengths of time that makes everything in between feel like filler. It would’ve been better served if it would’ve shown what was going on with the antagonist and given a chance to develop the rest of the characters. The rest of the season is essentially just an expository build-up to the inevitable war between Senku’s Kingdom of Science and Taiju’s Kingdom of stone which will happen in season two. The cast of characters in the village is notably better than the cast we started with for the first ten episodes. There’s Chrome, a curious villager who becomes Senku’s protégé and is essentially a smarter version of your typical Shounen protagonist. Ginro, a boisterous and vain guard. Kohaku, the younger sister of the village cheif who is essentially the only somewhat well-written female character in the series. Run, the village’s princess and a cliché damsel in distress. Gen, a vain mentalist from modern society who was unfrozen and decided to join Senku because he wants modern conveniences. Kaseki, an ever-resourceful craftsman who helps Senku in his inventions. Magma, who has ambitions to be village leader and distrusts Senku for potentially taking that away from him. As well as a host of others. None of them are particularly well written, but some of the dynamics they have are at least passably entertaining and minor characters, though understandably underdeveloped, are less cliché and stiff than the main cast. Most of the middle portion of the series involves Senku earning the trust of the villagers by building modern conveniences for them. Things from simple frivolities like decorative spears and ramen, to unbelievable advancements like electricity generators and antibiotics. Here, the writers really stretch your willing suspension of disbelief. Sure, the basic premise does a bit and unbelievable feats are forgivable in a shonen, but for a show ostensibly about science it is wildly unrealistic. The idea that Senku as a teenager is an expert on every single aspect of modern technology is ridiculous, a lot of the ways they build the technology are wildly crude for the precise results they get (like vacuum tubes, prescription glasses, and chemical antibiotics). Heck, in the first few episodes we are told Senku somehow stayed conscious every waking moment of 3,700 years, and Tsukasa (an 18-year-old, mind you) can somehow kill a lion in one punch. I suppose I can forgive it for a little unrealism, but it comes off as pretty damn corny most of the time with its over-the-top theatrics. That’s not to say the invention phase was devoid of entertainment value. Probably the best part of the series was watching the villagers come together to build impossible inventions, at times learning to innovate themselves. The sense of discovery and accomplishment from watching them made this series far more enjoyable than its aesthetic merit would predict. Further, the background story and lore for the village was well-executed in well-placed flashbacks and was one of the best points the story had going for it, even if the idea behind was a little ham-fisted and not believable. The world-building, setting, and sense of history were strong points. But beyond the “invention of the week format,” the key plot points were developed in ridiculous, formulaic ways. We have the annoying cliché of a Shonen battle tournament to determine the village leader, which is interrupted in the dumbest of all possible ways. We have annoyingly over-explained battle techniques and tactics and overly liberal use of flashbacks. Most of the ugly features typical of battle shonen are omnipresent, which is extremely disappointing given the compelling premise meant that they were entirely unnecessary. No sense of subtly given to any writing at any turn. Worse yet, it introduces humor at the worst most annoying of points when it could have a modicum of emotional engagement. Sometimes, the jokes are funny, but most of the time they’re just childlishly rehashing the stereotypical actions of characters in predictable, unfunny ways. Often times, the humor is just the same few jokes told repeatedly. The scenes that were supposed to have emotional impact were largely just Senku repeating the same few inspirational lines about science over and over with over-the top animated representations, indicated how low-quality the direction was. The animation quality itself looks fine at a glance, but when the only way anything could be conveyed was with unfunny chibi lines and over-the-top diagrams, you really get the sense the directors had no clue how to convey anything without feeding it to the viewers on a silver spoon. No sense of originality was given to the direction at all, despite the talent in just drawing pretty scenes that was present. The soundtrack sounded fine and the basic instrumentation of the main themes was mostly fitting, but it would often introduce musical interludes at the most predictable of times. Like the music was just some sort of applause card for a live studio audience or something, worsening the overall ham-fisted nature of the direction. The voice acting, meanwhile, usually over-acted especially with the main cast, again feeding the theme of a lack of subtly, and unremarkable. At least the OPs were quite good. To conclude, this was a deeply flawed anime. I’ll admit, it’s quite enjoyable to watch, but in the way that eating cheap junk food is enjoyable. It’s just designed to formulaically hit dopamine receptors in the most conventional, safe and predictable manner possible, and not really do much else. It feels like a series with remarkable potential that was wasted by a studio that just wanted to callously cash in on a marketable IP. I suppose whether the themes will make sense will depend on where it goes in the second season, I have not read the manga. I will probably watch it just like I will probably eat potato chips despite knowing they’ll ruin my dinner, but I wouldn’t recommend that you do it as well. Story: 3/10 Art: 3/10 Sound: 4/10 Character: 1/10 Enjoyment: 6/10 Overall: 3/10
