English Dub Review: Dr. Stone – Science Future “Future Engine”
OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
Senku and Xeno pool their collective massive brain power to begin work on their rocket to the moon, as well as plans to unpetrify the rest of the world. In response to humanity’s resurgence in activity, Why-man sends a chilling new message.
OUR TAKE
This year’s parade of conclusions to long running anime continues with the beginning of the final batch of episodes for Dr. Stone! We already saw the flame out finale for Fire Force (reviews coming for that soon, hang tight) and we’ve still got a few months to find some decent alliteration to describe the last episodes of Bleach coming in July, so for now, let’s see what Senku and the rest of the Kingdom of Science need to do to finally put the threat of the mysterious Why-man to rest and fully revive all of humanity to resume civilization. Last time we saw everyone back in September, Senku’s team were forced to go with the proverbial nuclear option to defend themselves against the assault from Dr. Xeno’s right hand man Stanley as he tore through most of Senku’s team, resulting in the whole planet once again being petrified and only Suika, who was revived thanks to a back up plan, able to get things ready to bring everyone back. Once Senku and a few others were back, the team came to an unsettling discovery: being petrified and revived can even bring back the dead, which was good in the moment for Hyoga, who died, but probably not good in the long term when they need to focus on rebuilding human civilization.
In the meantime, they still have to settle things with Why-man, the enigmatic being they’ve determined sent the Medusa devices and petrified humanity the first time thousands of years ago. And with Xeno fully on board to help them, it should be much smoother sailing getting their rocket going to the moon to finally confront him. As such, this episode basically just continues off from last time like no time has passed and gets to work splitting the present characters up into specific tasks to complete their overall goal. Though there is a nice acknowledgement that we are in the story’s end game now, as a new message from Why-man goes over the radio waves in morse code: “Do you wanna die?” On its face, that sounds like this guy wants to start a fight, but if there’s anything we’ve seen consistently across this series, it’s that we can’t just be going off assumptions. And we’ve got about a dozen more episodes to determine what the last few mysteries of this story are as we head off to see how Dr. Stone wraps up.
