English Dub Review: Dr Stone – Science Future “The Escape”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Senku’s team close in on their target, the estimated origin of the Petrification Beam, but are in hot pursuit by Stanley and his group.

OUR TAKE

Dr. Stone keeps going strong, though this episode is pretty much just an extension of the last one, so while a lot of its strengths are also the same, a lot of its weaknesses are as well. One of its unique strengths, however, is that the running from Stanley becomes much more involved. Everyone is still on the run from Stanley, so they all have to think on their feet to reach the Amazon, the place that they have pinpointed must have been the start of the big petrification, before he can catch up and probably kill them while taking Xeno. Xeno himself continues to be a model prisoner, though that doesn’t stop them from tying him up whenever they get the opportunity. With their new friend Chelsea’s assistance, the crew steer towards the Panama Canal in order to make tires, which they then use for motorcycles out of parts of their ship once they hit land. They try sending a smaller ship as a decoy, but Stanley sees through this and continues his pursuit. While his group does start to close the gap, Xeno is used as a shield, forcing Stanley to only end up hitting Tsukasa and Hyoga. They also attempt to use a repaired plane of theirs, but Senku sabotaged the engine with sugar water.

As opposed to last week, which mainly was about the introduction of Chelsea and her newfound contributions to the team, this week is part snappy improvisation and a chess match between Senku and Stanley as they both move ever closer to their target. Which is cool and all, and I’m glad they managed to make this considerably more exciting than last week, but I am really more interested in them getting to the Amazon than a lot of this conflict, for reasons I have already gone into at great length. Still, I do have to admit that, even if this stretch of the chase has gone on a bit too long for my liking, it continues to be firing at all the usual cylinders in both the animation and writing, to at least be consistently entertaining. But I would very, VERY much like for us to get a move on, which is a weird thing to say when the past few episodes have been pretty much ALL about moving very fast, but this is meant to be same day shipping and we’ve been at this a few weeks now. Hurry up!