Dr. STONE
Genre: Sci-fi, drama, action, comedy
Fanservice: some stone-age bathing suits and cleavage-baring dresses
Premise: One day, a mysterious wave of green light thunders across the world, instantly petrifying every human on earth. Thousands of years later, the world has been reclaimed by nature. Eventually, a string of coincidences causes the first few human statues to become depetrified. As it happens, the very first human is a scientific genius named Senku, who quickly deduces what happened to depetrify him, and how to replicate it. He undertakes his own personal mission to save the entire human race from petrification and return humanity to its lost glory.
However, it's a nasty, brutish, stone-age world... and Senku's smart but not tough or strong. Naturally, he thaws out his best friend Taiju first, who is his complimentary foil - he's a tireless worker, who is more than happy to do all the grunt work that brainy Senku abhors. And next, to protect them from the dangers of the wilds, they depetrify an incredibly strong fighter named Tsukasa.
But there's a snag. Tsukasa hates the bygone "modern" world run by corrupt, greedy adults. He's of the opinion that only young, untainted humans should be depetrified, and the Boomers can get smashed. Literally. He even breaks a few statues, murdering the people petrified within, to demonstrate his resolve. An irreconcilable rift develops between Tsukasa and Senku - Senku wants to save every human through the power of science, and Tsukasa wants science and all other vestiges of the old modern world snuffed out forever in favor of making a new, smaller, untainted utopian society of young humans who live simply without advancing beyond the stone-age.
The stage is set for a war to determine the future of the human race.
Commentary:
I really enjoyed reading this manga, so I was looking forward to seeing the anime. It does not disappoint. Overall it's an excellent production with good voice work, good characters, a decent story, and a nice twist in that (much like How Heavy are the Dumbbells You Lift explained exercises) it explains the underlying scientific processes and methods Senku uses to advance his cause and achieve his goals, while wowing his adoptive village of stone-age-humans that are the great-great-great-grand-descendants of the only humans who didn't get petrified: astronauts who were in orbit when the petrification event happened.
Verdict: 3.5/5. Definitely worth watching. I look forward to season 2. It'd be a solid 4 if not for some banal edutainment bits by "robo-senku" that were a little trying.
