English Dub Season Review: Dr. STONE Season One

 

Spoilers for Season One below!

Truly the Minecraft of animes, Dr. STONE is one of a kind. It’s a survival with some sci-fi elements, and for fans of the manga, it seems to have become a swift success. After an unexplained phenomenon that turned all humans to stone, Dr. STONE is set thousands of years into the future, where a teen genius named Senku manages to emerge from his stone encasing. Here, he finds that nature has reclaimed the whole world. Using these (now abundant) natural resources, he frees his best friend, Taiju, and his friend, Yuzuriha. With the extra help of an entire village, Senku must stop Tsukasa — a foe who wants to keep the world pure by halting Senku’s scientific advancements in order to stop history from repeating its catastrophic mistakes.

This show brings a lot of intelligent commentary to the forefront. It’s Man VS Man, Man VS Nature, and Man VS Technology all wrapped up into a package where any audience member can see where each individual character is coming from. Senku is a scientist whose goal is to use science to de-stone everyone in the world. His reasoning for doing so is that he feels society needs to be reformed, and that because everyone is equal, everyone should get to live again. Tsukasa feels that science and society are the reasons war, famine, poverty, and corruption were able to prevail. He wants to keep the world completely natural and equal by making sure he halts Senku’s scientific progress. He believes that people in former positions of power should be culled in order to prevent them from rising to power again — therefore, he doesn’t believe everyone should be brought back, and doesn’t believe in re-establishing society.

A story where both the protagonist and antagonist’s points of views are completely understandable is hard to pull off, but Dr. STONE does it in a myriad of philosophical ways. In addition to presenting its philosophies in an equal way, it also winds up educating the viewer on…well, science. The scientific experiments and facts presented in the show are often laid out in a fun, engaging way that could actually wind up being useful in real life. Basically, you come for the show, you stay for a lesson. In this, it separates itself from a run-of-the-mill anime.

Even though the show has quite a few characters, all of them are laid out equally for the audience to engage with — not to mention, they each have a distinct and fun voice that lends a hand in creating who they are. Taiju and Yuzuriha seem to exit the show just as soon as they begin developing, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, considering how three-dimensional all the villager characters are. The only flaw that comes to mind in the show is Senku’s ability to always know what to do in a situation. We get it — he’s a genius. This doesn’t mean he’s a machine — in other words, he’s a bit too quick on his feet for it to be realistic. When characters are worried, he instantly knows what to do while standing in the background going “heh,” like a stereotypical anime trope.

Don’t get us wrong, though — we stan Senku.

The animation style and overall tone of the show are balanced incredibly well with one another. There are heartfelt, sad, nerve-wracking, and hilarious moments that stay in harmony with one another. With this, it is definitely worth the recommendation.

By the way: there’s going to be a season two, so get excited!