What would you do if you got stuck in time for 3700 years and wake up to a post-apocalyptic world that resembles the stone age with humans no longer being at the top of the food chain? No electricity, no easily available food, no internet, no smartphones et cetra. All of life’s luxuries taken away from you replaced with the brutal rawness of mother nature’s bosom.
If your answer is to, err, panic while you desperately try to maintain your sanity in the absolute hellish circumstance you’ve found yourself in. And then, once you’ve overcome that mental barrier, try to think of ways to survive in this wild world, then yeah, that’s probably what most would do. What you wouldn’t think of doing is to embark on a journey towards the utilization of science to rapidly blitz through the entire timeline of human evolution and take stone age humans to modern age in one lifetime. I think it is safe to say none of us is gonna be that ambitious considering the situation. But then again, that’s exactly why we’re not the protagonists of a shounen series either.
Today I’m covering Dr. Stone — a series that makes you truly appreciate what a momentous achievement it was for the human civilization when Edison lit up the first light bulb — yes, it truly made me stare in awe at the light bulb I just switched on a while ago. ;)
No but seriously, that brief tidbit of information I just dropped? That’s the hook. That’s what makes this anime unique— it makes you really appreciate the insane amount of work that went into the creation of these articles you use on a daily basis and probably take for granted — everything that you see around you is a byproduct of steady evolution that took place over the course of millions of years. To blitz through all that time and achieve crude, yet functional implementations of modern-day equivalents of these items while under the constraints of being limited to stone-age era resources — you’ve got a formula for something truly exciting. And Dr. Stone knows that.
The series always knew that — which is why it eventually focuses purely on Senku’s scientific revolution and race to modern civilization— with the key word being eventually. Because it doesn’t get to it right from the get go. And that’s the only negative — it takes a while to set things up. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t like the first 6 episodes or so are bad or anything — its just that they pale in comparison to the stuff that comes later. I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about the series till I hit episode 7. While having a relatively slow start is usually fine, taking almost 6 episodes out of a 24 episode series to get there is a little bit on the slower side and there’s a very good chance a lot of potential audience may just tune off before they reach that point. There’s no dearth of entertainment in this day and age, after all. Why would you bother to stick to a relatively slow paced series set in the stone age when you can, say, immerse yourself in a post-apocalyptic world in The Last of Us (especially with the Last of Us II coming soon) or experience the supernatural world of vampires and witchers in Castlevania and The Witcher, respectively?
Because when it gets going, it goes pretty goddamn hard. While you’re not being thrown plot twists every single episode and the relative pace of the anime still stays the same, the shift to focusing purely on the scientific inventions marks a stark improvement in the general quality of the series. I’ve tried to emphasize it before, and I’ll try my best again — there’s literally nothing else out there that can make you feel what Dr. Stone does simply by the virtue of its unique setting. By just letting you see primitive humans react to the wonders of science and be completely blown away by the sheer utility that each single advancement brings to the table, Dr. Stone really does effortlessly carve its own niche among the rest of the shounen series out there.
Just in case you’re wondering though, it is 10 billion percent for good reason that I focused so much on the primary hook and nothing else for a majority of the time I spent on this article/review. Because every other aspect just acts as seasonings and spices to the main dish — the science, and the excitement of seeing things get created from scratch. We can discuss how it doesn’t reach the heights of series like Attack on Titan when it comes to its soundtrack (although it is pretty fucking good) or how it is, visually speaking, nothing to write home about. Or about how the characters aren’t deep or complex enough.
All of that, at the end of the day, is fine because Season 1 acts as a setup for a much grander tale. But even if that were not the case and this is all we ever got — the main dish here, as an independent entity, is as delectable as they come. It is a solid series that any science nut should most definitely watch. And even if you’re not one, chances are that you’re still gonna have a great time with it. All said and done, this is how you’ll probably end up feeling about this series — “Sosoruze, Kore wa” (This is Exhilarating).
