I'd say the best way to describe Dr. Stone in a nutshell, is that it's pretty much the anime version of playing one of those Minecraft modpacks where you start off in a primitive world, make primitive tools,keep upgrading them and making contructs, and eventually after putting a lot of work in you get to a futuristic setting. If you love games like that, there's a damned good chance you'll love this anime. It also has a lot of elements that DIY makers, and maybe to a lesser extent, people into science would like too.
When I say lesser extent, I say that because when watching this show, one needs to remember that it's still a shounen jump title. It still has many of the dumb stuff you'd expect from shounen, and that's made very clear in the first couple episodes. We start the anime off with the main character in the past before the apocalypse happened. The main character is in science class and still has his dumb yugioh hair that you see in the promotional posters, and he also ridiculous science setup that in a realistic setting probably wouldn't be allowed at the school. Since this is a shounen series, naturally the main character is a super genius who has answers for damn near everything as long as it involves science. Going forward a bit, a green light envelops the earth, turning all humans and swallow birds to stone. Somehow, someway however, the main character stays conscious for all that time (partially petrified?) and counts the seconds for 1000+ god damned years, never changing as a person, nor going insane, until he unpetrifies a millennium later to find that the land around him has changed to a rather unrealistic extent, and almost all of mans constructs have rotted to non existence. His highschool friend also stays partially conscious as well because he really wanted to confess to his high school crush. Yeah, I wish I was making that up.
Fortunately, that's one of the weakest parts of Dr. Stone because once they wake up, the anime immediately shows off it's strength, and we get to watch the characters build primitive tools. This is because the main character wants to rebuild society from the ground up, and because he's a power fantasy Mary Sue, he has a shit load of knowledge and a good idea of how to accomplish that. This is the majority of what Dr. Stone is about. Getting to see the main character and his allies build cool stuff from what they have, and working up from there, and the cherry on top is that there is quite a bit of realism thrown into what they do, enough at least that the episodes have to put a disclaimer to not try the stuff they do without expertise in each episode. That being said, they kind of take liberties here and there, and while this series tries to be science fiction, it often delves into shounen and science fantasy. Especially with the antagonist of the series, so lets talk about him:
Because I guess every story needs an antagonist, their first mistake after learning how to revive petrified humans is reviving a man who against their goals, and wants to make a fascist new world that is governed by strength. His motivations are far from original, but it's the motivations you'd see from a teenager who doesn't fully understand how the world works. To top it off, he's 10 times stronger than the other characters, experienced in combat, and has unrealistic reflexes that you'd see from other shounen series. After he tries to kill the main character and unknowingly fails, a new goal is set for the main character of the story: Make a nation of science, and build weapons of science that can kill or dissuade the currently untouchable antagonist and his forming tribal nation ruled by physical domination.
If this sounds interesting to you, keep in mind that this is all the anime is. The characters themselves are decent at best, and the story is minimal. But this series knows what it wants to be, and if you are part of it's niche, you'll love it.
