Welcome all, to another episode of Dr. STONE! This week we reach the island, meet the locals, and get absolutely rolled by an unknown force. What? Oh, the last one? Don’t worry we will get to that. Now lets dive right into it!
Starting off, this week we finally reach the island! Dr. STONE walks us through a whole introduction for it, from the basic geography to local tensions. Of course part of this is introducing us to some locals and their politics. Setting up the main conflict of the arc. However more then that, what Dr. STONE does is completely shatter our expectations of what’s going on here. It makes it clear that, whatever you thought, this place isn’t just going to be a simple walk in the park with some stone-age yokels. And personally? After the slower first half of the season? I find this to be a welcome change of pace. Mostly because of the mystery of petrification.
What do I mean by mystery? Well obviously I’m talking about how the entire ship got petrified. It feels clear to me that this was an attack of some kind. And Dr. STONE seems to reinforce that with the locals talk of petrification. Honestly? I think this is awesome. It makes the islanders and incredibly dangerous foe, easily on the level of Tsukasa if not higher, purely because they have a ranged weapon that can take out multiple people at once. What makes it really work though is how it’s not lethal. I mean, yeah, if everyone gets stoned it’s game over. But petrification lets Dr. STONE take out entire swathes of the cast, really selling the danger, while not removing them entirely since petrification can be cured. As far as power systems go, I think that’s a pretty good one.
Speaking of the locals, the primary one we meet this week is Amaryllis, the “most beautiful girl on the island”. On the surface, this could be pretty annoying. It’s just a standard pretty girl trope. But Dr. STONE makes it very clear that she’s more then just her looks. In fact her looks are a calculated part of who she is, built up for the specific purpose of baiting the “Master” of the island, the one in control of the petrification device. We learn just how cunning and dangerous she is, willing to blatantly lie and mislead people for an opportunity to stab them in back. It’s pretty nice! Hopefully she has a lot more scenes to come, as I quite like her interactions with Kohaku and Gen, both of whom are very amused by her antics.
As for this “Master” stuff, he appears to be the primary antagonist. The one in control of both the petrification beam as well as the island as a whole. Ruling through fear and threats of “death”. While we don’t know much about him just yet, one thing we do know is that apparently Soyuz looks like him? Is that the implication? Amaryllis at least seems to think he looks similar, immediately latching onto him as either the Master himself or one of his men. Is the Master Soyuz’s father, or perhaps uncle, and that’s why he had to be taken from the island? I don’t know, but it could lead to some interesting interactions down the line, both depending on who Soyuz sides with as well as how they react to him returning. At the very least it gives us a bit more personal connection to the island.
All that said, there is one thing I think was a tad overdone this episode: The science tracking. Don’t get me wrong, this was fun. I enjoyed watching them piece it together and use Kohaku as a centrifuge. However while the core of their reasoning might, in some small way, be justified, it still felt like a stretch. Figuring out someone’s height and weight off of a finger print? Their age by how many seashells were dropped? Dr. STONE tried really hard to sell this, talking about old people being good at being lazy, or using flies to track how much time had passed since they were dropped. It makes you want to believe it. But this is one of the few moments where I feel like Dr. STONE went a bit to far with adapting it’s science. Still, at least it was fun.
So yeah, all in all a fun episode of Dr. STONE. Nothing terribly emotional nor incredible, but it was fun and it sets up the conflict on the island. I of course remain concerned about the pacing, and where the season is going to end. I don’t think it can do the entire island arc in the episodes remaining, not in a satisfactory way at least. But I will give Dr. STONE the benefit of the doubt and assume they have a plan. Only time will tell I suppose.
