The Dr. Stone anime is a well-made production and all, but they clearly don’t have the largest animation budget. Much of the animation is stiff, they use a lot of stills, looks rushed, inconsistent, and occasionally the drawings are just plain bad that don’t even get body proportions right. I was hoping they would have saved up some of their budget for this fight scene that demands detailed movements and is the climax of the whole Stone Wars arc. But when Tsukasa and Hyoga fight the villagers, the animation is still choppy and mostly consists of still images. There are some exciting moment between Hyoga and Kohaku, but they are so short. Looks like the budget went towards the CGI steam gorilla.
The anime has expanded a lot on Tsukasa’s background. In the manga, this flashback only covered 6 panels. This new scene shows us more of Mirai and her spending all of that time in the hospital, and how helpless Tsukasa felt at first. We see how much he cared for her with his routine of visiting her, talking to her, and bringing her gifts. For six years, Tsukasa spent his days training, fighting, and visiting his sister. We also see how alone Tsukasa was. He’s the only one seen visiting Mirai. There’s a glimpse of his other family who doesn’t seem to be anyone he can turn to. It’s a haunting thought to think his family would have given up on Mirai if he hadn’t taken action.
Tsukasa chose fighting as a way to earn money, but it’s still not clear why he chose this path other than wanting to get back at the man who beat him up. When we see Mirai surrounded by all of Tsukasa’s gifts, one of them is the first broken seashell he gave her as a child, secured in a bottle. This might represent the promise he gave her that he will find a way to save her no matter how long it takes. He did so much to take care of her, and I’m glad they added this scene to show that. When it’s Mirai’s turn to take care of Tsukasa, it will have that much more of an impact.
For some reason in one of his first fights, he’s put up against a grown man and his emotions push him to unleash his strength. He didn’t want to get beat up again. As he gets older his emotions don’t show anymore, until Senku mentions his sister. Tsukasa’s sister mattered more than anything to him back then, and he was so committed to saving her. In the stone world, even if he found her statue, they wouldn’t be able to keep her alive. So when Senku offers the possibility of healing her brain, Tsukasa can’t pass on that chance.
Near the beginning of the story, Tsukasa gave Senku a tough decision – to keep the revival fluid recipe a secret, or to save Yuzuriha – and we see on his face that this decision is painful. During that scene, there is a long flashback that shows how Senku grew up and his dedication to science. This upbringing leads him to the decision he made to not abandon science, even if it meant his death. Now at the moment Senku offers a truce, Tsukasa is faced with a tough decision and we see the same visible pain on his face. Again, there is a flashback that shows the childhood events leading up to why Tsukasa must choose to give up his empire to save his sister.
After the battle scene and the truce, there are some added scenes that seem to be wrapping up the story as the Kingdom of Science celebrates their “victory”, returns to their base, and Ukyo is healed. Then we get a very interesting talk from Tsukasa as they head for the location of Mirai’s hospital. It seems like something Inagaki wanted to add, and it may have to do with the timing of the current manga chapter (I’ll discuss the many parallels in a bit).
First of all, Tsukasa isn’t wearing his lion skin anymore, and looks more gentle in a white shirt. The Kingdom of Science learns about Tsukasa’s background and Ukyo gather’s the courage to ask Tsukasa his reasoning for wanting to purify humanity. The explanation he gives is that not everyone can be revived, because of resources or sustainability, so we must choose who gets to live. He directly asks Ukyo what he would have done, but surely Ukyo can’t forget how awful and wrong it felt to see Tsukasa destroy those statues. Tsukasa knew that Senku wouldn’t budge from his commitment to revive every human on Earth, and that’s why he went to war.
An interesting thing he mentions is that his goals haven’t changed, and they never will in the future. The current situation in the latest chapters of the manga makes you wonder if that is still true or where he stands now. It seems this speech from Tsukasa was purposely timed with what is happening in the manga, but it still leaves some uncertainty about how his goals might have changed. In the manga he’s shown remorse for smashing statues, but he’s also now face to face with the weapons of destruction he desperately wanted to keep out of the new world. He hasn’t made any reference to when he told Senku about the evils of allowing weapons to arise again. These weapons are coming from a different science kingdom, and Tsukasa might have realized he had no control over their development of weapons, even if he had won against Senku. He might still feel that we must pick and choose who should be revived.
Ending this episode on them finding Mirai was great, and next episode will start with her revival. The only other revival moment we saw this season was Ukyo (we didn’t see Yo’s or Nikki’s revival). We have two episodes left and a lot of exciting things left to cover. It’s building up to an end of the season that should make fans go wild.
Some other interesting parallels between this episode and recent manga:
We now have Tsukasa’s lion punch pose in 3 different scenes (lion, Maya, and MMA).
Hyoga calling Kohaku a mush-brain (translated differently but the Japanese is the same).
There’s a clothing brand named “Clarke” that makes both MMA fighter shorts and fancy dress shoes.
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