English Dub Review: Dr. STONE “Stone World”

Two bros, chilling in the stone world, five feet apart, experimenting.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

The scene is set in a modern day high school, where a headstrong, head-over-heels teen (Taiju) declares to his best friend (Senku) that he is going to confess his love for his friend Yuzuriha. Senku — a calculating, genius-teen scientist, bets ten thousand yen that she’s into him, too. However, right as he’s about to confess to Yuzuriha, a mysterious green light flashes over the world — turning its people and certain creatures to stone.

In the rock, Taiju’s love for Yuzuriha keeps him conscious for 3,700 years. He is able to eventually break out of the stone, still alive and well. He traverses the earth — which has been completely taken back by nature — and finds Yuzuriha entangled in an older version of the tree he was going to confess to her in front of all that time ago. While despaired by her stone condition, he also finds a carving meant for him, directing him to follow the river downstream. When he does, he finds Senku, who explains that both of their wills were strong enough to break through the stone. In the months he’d spent awake, Senku developed a primitive lab where he’d tested different de-stoning concoctions. Over the months, Senku and Taiju live off the land naturally, while also perfecting cures. Finally, after creating a potion from distilled, nature-made wine, the boys succeed in freeing a bird from stone — marking the beginning of their journey to save the world.

Our Take

Sometimes, in order to succeed, it’s good to go back to our roots. The same goes for anime — which might be why Dr. STONE is hitting hard with quite a few anime fans. It combines aspects of new age anime with certain beloved nostalgic traits — mainly by doing some experimenting with plot and art.

Right off the bat, Dr. Stone’s art style is a lot different from many run-of-the-mill anime shows. There’s no big-eyed, same-face problem — every character is their own animal. It succeeds in doing this by implementing an “older” type of art style — one which has a big emphasis on wacky hair-dos and geometrical face shapes. As often as these tropes have been mocked, it’s very refreshing to look at something different — even when these different qualities are things we’ve commonly grown up with. That very reason is probably why it’s so nice to look at in the first place.

As for the plot — the big emphasis on science is done so realistically, the creators literally put a disclaimer at the end of the episode to warn viewers not to recreate the (real) natural techniques Senku and Taiju use without proper expertise. They’ve very obviously put a lot of thought and time into making sure the methods were realistic — and that kind of passion doesn’t go unnoticed.

Finally, Taiju is pretty lovable so far. His personality is 50% screaming and 50% love. Senku, while edgy, seems to be really interesting in the sense that he has a ton of drive to deconstruct the “fantasy”-like event with science. If it’s something truly fantastical, will science be able to explain it? If not, how will he react?

As the series starts to de-stone, we can only hope to break through the cracks of its mysteries.