And we are back with more Dr. STONE! This week we Chrome gets captured, Tsukasa reappears and Senku builds a car of all things. So without further ado lets dive in!
This week was a bit of a slow one for Dr. STONE as its a bit of a transitionary episode. No big emotional gutpunches, just setup for future conflict and reintroducing our main villains. It also wasn’t that great production wise as we can see from the CGI mechanics and the return of still, sliding objects. About the only thing Dr. STONE did do this week was further its narrative a bit through the reintroduction of Tsukasa. This marks the first time we have seen him since the start of season one. We’ve heard plenty from Hyoga and the others but he hasn’t had much presence. So the question becomes: Can Tsukasa earn his place as the antagonist of Dr. STONE?
So far Tsukasa seems to be making a respectable attempt at it. My problem with him was always that he wasn’t terribly complex. He wants a world without the terrible modern day wars, the level of carnage brought by modern weapons. He wants a world without the old ways enforced by old minds. It’s a motivation I am sure many can understand in the… current political climate. But I have always found the way he goes about it rather simple and in season 1 he never got a chance to expand on that. So it was nice this week to have him meet Chrome and show he isn’t as simple as he might seem. He doesn’t hate all science, he is willing to let Chrome play with what little he knows and he respects his courage. Hopefully we have more of that to come in the remaining episodes.
While Tsukasa is slowly finding his place as a villain, the real mystery appears to be with Ukyo, the archer. What does he want? Why did he not tell the truth about where he found them? Does he want to replace Tsukasa, or perhaps he secretly wants modern day technology back? We saw with Nikki, Gen and Homura that Tsukasa’s forces still remember the luxuries, the joys, of the 21st century. Many of them probably follow him because they don’t know any other option. None of them can build cellphones or records after all. So what about Ukyo, the former submarine radio operator? It’s still to early to tell and while I know the answer as a source reader, I’m not going to spoil it for you. Suffice to say though that Ukyo becomes a rather interesting character down the line.
Moving on we come to Senku’s Science Corner, where we talk about this weeks invention which is: A car! I wonder how many of you guessed this. Quite the leap from cell phones huh? It was rather fun to see Senku get all giddy at this project. Between all of the trickery with Gen, the war with Tsukasa and the humanity such as with Nikki we forget that Senku just loves building shit. So to see him giddy like a school child, high on the prospect of building something new because he can? I was a good time. Nothing particularly deep here and since it reused a lot of material from previous builds we didn’t get much new science. About the only interesting new creation we got was brass casting to make more complex metal parts, nothing to complicated. All in all it was some simple fun.
So, short post this week for a straight forward episode, but how was Dr. STONE? I would say it was a distinctly average episode. Not terribly engaging, we didn’t get any big moments, but no big missteps either. The plot is still moving along at a stead pace and with the addition of the car Senku and Tsukasa are starting to get much much closer to each other. At the rate things are going we can probably expect the war to break out in 3-4 episodes maybe. Giving us enough time for some science shenanigans, any twists or turns and a few more “Humanity Fuck Yeah” moments. So all in all, not bad, not great, still a decent way to spend my time.
