Episode 16 – Dr. STONE SCIENCE FUTURE

If there was ever a “standard” episode of Dr. Stone, then this is it. Light, frothy, fast-paced, and not overly focused on any one subject, its main purpose is to move a bunch of pieces around the proverbial stone world chessboard while generating as many gags as possible along the way. Senku and pals continue to Mad Max their way across South America,
aiming to motorbike across the enormous Andes mountain range to reach the Amazon basin. Once there, under the cover of jungle, Senku states they’ll have less worries in terms of aerial attack from the increasingly Captain Ahab-like Stanley.

Stanley’s group have discovered Senku’s tar-like sugar/fuel gloop that gummed up their aircraft engine, yet seem to rebuild their plane lickety-split, commencing the chase once more. We don’t spend much time with our terrifying purple lipstick-wearing pursuer, however, as we check in with the characters left behind in Corn City. Using their long
distance radio, Senku instructs them to disassemble the “Medusa” (the little metal petrification device that looks like interlocking 3D Möbius strips) using any means necessary, but doesn’t explain his reasoning for doing so. Knowing Senku, there are probably multiple reasons.

The already enormous cast expands once more when the Corn City crew use their revival fluid on the CEO of the conveniently nearby “Rodex” watch corporation, who directs them to the petrified body of their top engineer. Most “genius” characters revived so far in this show take their thousands-year petrification and sudden revival in their stride, but in this
case watchmaker Joel’s reaction of confusion and horror about his nakedness is much more normal. Sadly, it seems he’s a freak in different ways. Around male characters he acts superior and snarky, but he can’t cope at all when interacting with females. Although this is kind of funny the first couple of times, the joke could get old real fast with repetition.
There’s little likeable about him to round out his sharp edges.

Dr. Chelsea, however, continues to be a delight, with her (deliberately?) weaponized obtuseness. I suspect she knows all about social niceties but chooses to completely ignore them for expedience’s sake. Take for example her interrogation of Luna in regards to her weight, the unwitting Senku’s poor pink-haired love slave still claims to weigh only a waif-like 40kg. Not only does she delude herself in terms of her beloved yet indifferent beau’s intentions towards her, but as her male admirers point out, there’s no way she can fill out those curves with such a low BMI… unless she’s part balloon animal?

The side plot about the manual fax machine is offbeat but kind of clever, and exists mainly to torture Gen and Yuzuriha, and we leave things off with Senku randomly announcing he’ll build a cable car to transport the motorbikes up a particularly steep mountain. I kind of love that Senku has an insane plan for every eventuality, that he believes he can solve any problem the world throws at him. I’m intrigued to discover what he’s scheming this time.

Rating:

Dr. Stone: Science Future is currently streaming on
Crunchyroll on Thursdays.