English Dub Review: Dr. Stone “Buddies Back to Back”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

After a long wait, Ginro finally gets his silver spear, though it’s with a purpose. The silver acts as a detector for a material they need to take medication: sulfuric acid. The spear will turn black, reacting with the hydrogen sulfide, when it comes into contact with the gas, which will be a sign that they’re close to the gas and need to get out. They soon come upon it and almost end up dead, so Senku starts developing gas masks so they can properly scoop some up. However, Senku tries keeping Chrome off the mission since he’s the only other real scientist besides him and he’ll need someone to carry on their work in case the acid job goes wrong. Chrome won’t be left behind, positing that they’ll do better as a team to back each other up.

Kohaku remembers her initial plan to make her father hate her in order to somehow keep Ruri alive but tells Chrome that they have the shared goal of helping her. Though their plan likely leads to someone who can fight, like Kinro and Ginro, marrying her, so Kohaku suggests Chrome marry her instead. Naturally, he turns her down.

They head on their next trip to the gas the next day, but Ginro is too scared to go. Kaseki sees that as a strength because it means he’s aware of the situation and is willing to fight anyway. With that pep talk, Ginro uses the “spare” gas mask to go help, saving Chrome from nearly falling into the acid, allowing them to obtain a sample with no casualties.

OUR TAKE
Ah, so we finally get to a Ginro episode! We’ve gotten to everyone else, I suppose it’s only natural. Although it also ends up that his development is only part of the episode, as the rest turns out to be about Chrome resolidifying himself as a member of the main characters. One might think that now’s a bit early to do that, but this series HAS dropped a large portion of its cast before. Luckily that’s not the case here, though I think they probably laid it on a bit thick with making us think that he might die. For one, this kind of show isn’t the right tone to start offing its characters for real (at least for now) AND they slowed down his seeming “death” a bit too long, which tipped me off that this wasn’t going to really land. Still, it did its job.

What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, Ginro. For a while now, he’s basically been the comedic sidekick for Kinro, who seemed to be getting the lion’s share of character growth between. Now he gets the time to shine (even partially) after finally getting a namesake-colored spear just like Kinro! Though where Kinro’s development seems to be mostly about overcoming his stubbornness to following rules AND coping with asking for help about his bad eyesight, Ginro’s is pretty simple in that he just needs to overcome his fear of dying in stressful situations. Having had to binge a lot of this show to catch up to this point, I’ve been able to parse out that a major theme of the story is keeping a clear head, but also having a full heart, which has been shown quite prominently amongst the characters we’ve come across (at least the ones that we’re supposed to like, at least).

And with the obtainment of sulfuric gas, it becomes a lot easier to create medicine for Ruri, which also likely means that the next step will be entering the Grand Bout in an attempt to get said medicine to her. Having been spoiled a tad, the title of the next episode, “Masked Warrior”, gets me pretty excited for a certain scene, but I’m also just really into Tournament Arcs, so this next bit seems to be pretty up my alley overall. Dr. Stone is definitely showing its stuff as one of the leading stories in shonen manga in this decade, so I look forward to seeing it continue to push that envelope.