Dr Stone Anime First Impressions
Dr. Stone Anime Debut
A new take on a Post-Apocalyptic world.
For all you fans of the Dr. Stone Manga out there! As of July 5th, 2019 the anime has debuted for premium users on Crunchyroll. This is pretty exciting because this adventure anime takes place in a post-apocalyptic world that is different than the normal post-apocalyptic trope. The world of Dr. Stone was frozen in stone for thousands of years, instead of being destroyed by nuclear war.
Dr. Stone follows Taiju Ōki and Senku as they try to figure out what happened with the light that turned everyone and some animals to stone 3,700 years prior to the events of the narrative. The pair of friends do their best to use their knowledge of a civilized world and science to race through the ages, starting from the stone age, to rebuild civilization.
Episode 1 has aired but as of now there will be 24 Episodes for the season according to the Dr.Stone Website and will be available on Blu-Ray and DVD later on. Episode 1 can be found at Crunchy Roll and will soon be on FUNimation. An English Dub is not out at this time, but if it keeps it’s popularity up, there will assuredly be some dubbed episodes out in the near future.
So what is Dr. Stone Episode 1 about? Well to get that out, I should probably say that the remainder of this article will be pretty spoiler heavy.
Dr Stone starts off in modern day Japan with Taiju Ōki and Senku talking about Taiju confessing his love to his childhood friend Yuzuriha Ogawa. Senku and his classmates place bets on if he really will confess after five years of not doing so when a bright light shines over the sky and begins to turn everyone to stone. Once everyone has been petrified, it is revealed that Taiju is still conscious inside of the stone and is fighting however he can to break out.
The show then breaks into a montage of the world changing around him and civilization becoming overgrown with vegetation. Taiju is then shown in a cave breaking free from his stone shell and realizes that many, many years have passed. He stays true to his reason for fighting and goes to find Yuzuriha first thing. He finds her being protected by the tree they were talking under as the light engulfed the world in stone. He finally confesses his love and swears to save her only to find a message from Senku telling him to go downstream.
The pair meet up and begin working on their survival situation so they can start researching how to save everyone. Senku Tells Taiju that they will race through the eras starting from the stone age to rebuild civilization with Taiju using his muscle and stamina, and Senku using his intelligence.
This is an science fiction adventure (not the typical Sci-Fi like Alien or Predator) anime with heavy notes on crafting, set in a theme of a post-apocalyptic world. This first episode establishes an absolutely wonderful musical score! The beginning starts off with modern sounding anime music at times, but once the world gets petrified the score changes to this amazing adventurous tone similar to something like Jurassic Park, and only includes instruments that give the sounds of a tribal beat. Drums, Woodwinds, Rattles, etc… No guitar, or synths here. This takes a great adventure even deeper.
To top this off as well, the animation looks pretty stunning and seems faithful to the manga. We also get a pretty good opening theme, “Good Morning World” by BURNOUT SYNDROMES. As well as a solid ending, “Life” by Rude-a.
So far most ratings of this show put it in the 4.5-5 star review range, with some caveats from reviewers that the show may start slow, but that is easily how the world worked in the stone age and that the characters are building everything from the ground up. There is a lot of promise in this first episode and we can only imagine how great it will become once major conflicts and decisions arise.
Dr. Stone premiered in Shōnen Jump; It was written by Riichiro Inagaki, illustrated by Boichi, and published by Shueisha. The anime features music by Hiroaki Tsutsumi, Tatsuya Katō, and Yuki Kanesaka. The anime directed by Shinya Iino.
Sources: Anime News Network
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