Dr. Stone

Episode 6

Senku lives! This isn't much of a surprise considering the show would certainly struggle without him, but overall I'm still impressed with the reveal behind his quick death and rebirth. Many shows like to play with sidelining their protagonists only to completely remove all the stakes that facilitated their disappearance. Dr. Stone manages to avoid this by using the opportunity to move the plot forward in an interesting way.

We're also treated with a heartfelt segment in which we see that Taiju's current pleas for Senku to awaken match up identically with Senku's numerous attempts to revive Taiju. These little flashbacks coloring in the relationships are still welcome, though it feels like we'll be seeing much less of them soon. Not one to dwell too much on the past, Senku quickly starts to formulate a new plan, but there is some special attention paid to the petrification itself. While some fun and goofy possibilities are shown, the key turns out to be the healing effect that just saved Senku. While doomsday scenarios both natural and weaponized come to mind, there is the possibility that whatever has afflicted humanity was meant to help it. There's no current way to verify this, but this option adds more to the mystery behind this new Stone Age. All of that will have to wait though, as Senku's current plan is to continue playing dead by sending the others back to Tsukasa and seeking out the natives who responded to the gunpowder smoke signals.

Speaking of which, we've got our first encounter with the new generation of humanity! Kohaku is immediately an impressive character, introduced pressuring Tsukasa and displaying a level of morality that clashes with his actions thus far. We also see yet another divide in how Tsukasa and Senku operate. While Senku is hopeful that the humans he finds can become allies and mutually benefit from his humanity revival plan, Tsukasa takes Kohaku's primitive knowledge as proof they can be easily conquered and subjugated by his planned empire. This is an interesting prospect, as technological development has historically been more on the side of the conquerors in history, but it's not an unwelcome change on expectations, especially considering how quickly Tsukasa has adopted a policy of justified violence.

Thankfully, Kohaku's encounter with Tsukasa doesn't prove fatal, and more importantly provides an excuse for our science lesson of the week! This episode is about simple machines, featuring the pulley! While a rather easy lesson, it's more than fitting as a way to demonstrate Senku's efforts and intelligence to Kohaku, acting as a proxy for the native humans. Now somewhat ingratiated with them, Senku's plan to secretly build up and oppose Tsukasa has a great starting point, and I'm looking forward to meeting whatever new characters and challenges it provides.

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Dr. Stone is currently streaming on Crunchyroll and Funimation.