English Dub Review: Dr. Stone – Science Future “Science Is Elegant”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Xeno sends a spy to infiltrate the Perseus and find Taiju so that Stanley can snipe his head off. However, the spy ends up getting a crush on Senku, and also lets slip something that makes Senku realize that Xeno was his scientific mentor.

OUR TAKE

We’re at the halfway point of this section of the season and we actually have some notable developments this time instead of just having the two sides gesture at making some sort of move. Xeno has sent in a spy, a pink haired girl, Luna Wright, to act as if she is escaping some sort of totalitarian regime, when really she needs to identify Taiju, who Xeno’s side still believes is the true scientist on their side due to Gen’s deception. But it seems, in her quest to find something helpful for her boss, that she’s formed a bit of a crush on Senku for his “surprising” intellect. Having members of the antagonist’s faction defect isn’t exactly anything new for this show, in fact it has happened every single time (Tsukasa Empire, Treasure Island, and now here) but I’m kind of hoping for there’s a bit more to it this time, especially since these guys are the opening act for the supposedly final season (that is being split into three parts). Not that I mind some of the new antagonist characters having a change of heart, since it gives them more opportunities to develop, but maybe immediately crushing on the main character doesn’t need to be the first option?

That said, we do have an important reveal at the end, which is that Xeno is actually Senku’s “science mentor”. What that means is not entirely clear just yet, as all we see is Senku looking at a screen that has “science is elegant” on it among some other notes. Whether this means that Xeno personally mentored Senku or Senku merely took some sort of lessons from him indirectly and was influenced by him in some way is up in the air at the moment, but we’ll likely know what it is by next episode. Either way though, this is another thing that can make Xeno a more unique opposition compared to what came before. He’s already set apart by being a human from the pre-Petrification era who is scientifically minded, but now he has a personal link to Senku that can be used for drama, as well as show that the two may know more about the others’ moves than it might have first seemed. A shame it took us until halfway through this part of the season to figure that out, but we’re here now and we can move forward knowing that things are about to escalate.