English Dub Review: Dr. STONE “Stone World The Beginning”

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Just as Tsukasa promised, he swiftly severs Senku’s cervical nerve — causing him immediate death. Senku falls lifelessly to the ground while Yuzuriha weeps. Taiju arrives too late and cries over Senku’s body. Tsukasa is prepared for Taiju to retaliate and attack him, but instead, Taiju throws a boulder into the air. The distracted Tsukasa doesn’t consider Yuzuriha a factor in this action, as she runs over to the jar of gunpowder. She throws it at Tsukasa, who shatters it, and the boulder — which was just a huge sulfur rock — sparks onto the scattered gunpowder and explodes. This doesn’t kill Tsukasa, but gives Taiju and Yuzuriha time to escape with Senku’s body.

While the two haplessly try to revive him, they discover a mysterious piece of stone left on the back of his neck, indicating that Senku may have been guiding Tsukasa to attack him at the neck by subliminally bringing attention to it. Yuzuriha and Taiju decide to pour the de-stonifying liquid on the piece. During this, a flashback occurs that shows Senku’s first moments in the Stone World. He saves his stone pieces, learns to make fire, and crafts all sorts of tools for survival and science — all in front of an audience of curious monkeys.

Our Take

Once again, Dr. Stone delivers the unexpected.

The popular theory, to most viewers, was that Taiju was going to stop Tsukasa, or that Tsukasa would have somehow been stopped from killing him at all. Instead, we got the full neck snap — squelching sounds and all. As it stands, it seems nearly impossible to deduce Senku’s death plan — which is just so refreshing and exciting. When was the last time a plot had the ability to genuinely carry a surprise? The intelligence in this show seeps through its pores by combining its science-based mechanics with its narrative ones. It’s thrilling to know that there’s either some scientific explanation for how Senku survives or, that he’s actually dead and that the narrative is about to go wild. Either way, not knowing is the best part.

Taiju’s passionate yelling will never get old — which says a lot, considering how most characters who scream that much get old very quickly. There’s something about the wholesomeness of Taiju’s character that winds up making it all the more endearing. Watching him and Yuzuriha act as a team was another great part of this episode. It really underlined the bond that they all share. Knowing that there’s a timeline where Tsukasa could have been a part of that adds an even thicker layer of emotional investment.

The second half of the episode dragged on a bit in comparison to the action-packed first half, but this flashback with Senku clearly has something to do with his possible revival. Considering how he collected his stone pieces, could his experiments on them have given him some sort of secret info?

Just as Senku tells us to, we can’t help but get excited.