Dr Stone – Review – Episode 1

After including this in my wish list of anime for the Summer Season of 2019, it’s only fair I should produce a review too.  And I’m pleasantly surprised and happy to do so!  This first episode was really good.  Well produced, I’m not impressed by the style of animation but it was ok I guess, voice acting excellent and story was good too.  Overall cool/fun/sexy factor was high too.  I’m probably going to watch each episode of this series judging from the first episode (I know it’s too early to tell yet, but this is that good).

The episode kicks off with an introduction to the two main characters Senku and Taiju.  They are two senior school students.  One is an egg head who seems to be excited by science (Senku) and the other (Taiju) is and airhead who seems to be excited by a lovely girl at school with a very short skirt called Yuzuriha.

Taiju and Senku are friends but when Taiju tells Senku that he is off to confess his love to Yuzuriha, Senku stays in his school lab and continues his experiments.  He later takes a sneak peak at Taiju about to make a fool of himself to the pretty Yuzuriha.

Just as Yaiju begins his confession a green light appears and would you credit it, everyone turns to stone!

Taiju can actually think and is aware of his feelings and thoughts but he can’t move.  He is encased. Time passes, not just a few hours or days or weeks or years or centuries but millennia! The city where they lived and went to school gradually returns to countryside. there are a few scattered statues still around but most are in pieces or just plain rubble.  Amazingly, Senku’s stone body manages to survive the elements and he is finally revived after 3,700 years.

He’s very happy of course and not the slightest bit different in his mental capacity, approach and outlook on life which is complete rubbish.  If me and you had survived for 3,700 years trapped in a piece of stone we would be in a very bad mental shape indeed.  Senku attempts to explain how he has survived by recounting how his love for Yuzuriha had kept him going.  Yeah right!  To be honest, I think this plot hole is probably going to wind me up during the series, I hope they don’t dwell on it.

Taiju visits the stone version of Yuzuriha and finds that she is still intact and notices a message from his old friend and buddy, Senku.

The message says, “Follow the river downstream big oaf”.  Charming!

They meet up and we learn that Taiju has been free for 6 months already.  He has no idea why they escaped their stone encasement or why. Senku believes that they are the only ones free from petrifaction in the world.  He also thinks it’s very suspect that only the two of them, close friends, are free.

Senku shows how he has been able to survive for the last six months and Taiju promises to help by being the brawn to Senku’s brains. They make a plan to try an revive/free others as a priority.  Senku considers lots of different ways they can achieve this and one is to experiment using various liquid concoctions on petrified birds.

For nearly a year, the boys experiment with all sorts of concoctions to try and revive various birds.  Apparently the science that they discribed in the episode is pretty accurate and this will be a theme in the series (i.e. that the science will be accurate).

Eventually they succeed in causing the stone casing on a bird to crack and free the perfectly preserved bird which flies away.  They should now be able to free everyone else.  Presumably this will include the much admired Yuzuriha.

And there the show ended. It went really quickly and was different from the way I expected it to pan out.  I thought this was going to be a wilderness show with two boys trying to survive against all odds but it’s more about how the two boys will revive humanity.  I’m looking forward to the next episode which will be called, “King of the World”.

By the way crunchyroll which is where most of us watched this, gave the series a big promotion at the Los Angeles convention centre yesterday (5th July). There was even a black truck with screens on either side showing trailers of Dr. Stone. I can see why they are putting such faith in it.

I feel compelled to rate this a huge 8.8 for awesomeness!  What did you think?  

Discuss this in the Dr. Stone Thread in the Anime Forum.

This review is copyright Tony Fawl and not for reproduction without permission.

The characters, pictures, story and everything else associated with the show is copyright  TMS Entertainment Co., Ltd. and Crunchyroll.  All rights reserved.