Episode 23 – Dr. STONE SCIENCE FUTURE

My old friends, the onion ninjas, attacked me multiple times while I watched this episode. I really should make sure my doors and windows are properly locked before sitting down to watch anime. Following on from the past few weeks’ high drama and violence, we settle down into a slower, more pastoral rhythm. After what seems likely to have been a couple of years petrified, tiny melon-headed, optically-challenged child, Suika is humanity’s sole survivor. It’s not an exaggeration to say the future of the entire world rests on her diminutive shoulders. Suika, of course, fully realizes this.

Despite being the youngest member of the Kingdom of Science, Suika can hold her own in terms of both determination and intelligence. Securing for herself several sources of food (such as vegetables, fruits, and freshly-caught fish), she embarks on a methodical, logical mission to revive all of her friends once more. While her discovery that no vials of revival fluid survived Stanley’s attack understandably bums her out, her plucky, motivated nature means nothing keeps her down for long.

She wisely locates the petrified bodies of all her friends, physically dragging them back to base. This allows her to engage in pretend conversations with them (probably maintaining her sanity) and even to hug her beloved Kohaku. It’s really tragic to watch this lonely little girl try to gain what comfort she can from inert stone statues, while she battles with the existential horror of being truly alone for the first time in her life.

Most adults would probably crack under this kind of pressure, but in the years it takes her to succeed in her goal, Suika never gives up. Despite repeated failures, she’s learned the right lessons from Senku. The great thing about the scientific method is that its results are reliably reproducible by anyone, given the correct procedure. It’s the correct procedure that proves the most difficult part, as Suika is faced with needing to harvest large quantities of animal and bird poop, clamshells, in addition to the unpredictable Amazon climate ruining her efforts to produce nitric acid, revival fluid’s most tricky-to-obtain ingredient.

Suika’s daubing of Senku’s signature “E = mc²” in blood on her clothes is powerfully emotive, cementing her determination to succeed, no matter how difficult her path may be. She’s a testament to human ingenuity and willpower, and her eventual success when she awakens Senku after seven years of petrification seems more than deserved. His kind smile as he congratulates her on a job well done, and the way she tumbles into his arms for her first real human contact since her own awakening, may be one of the most emotional moments in the show so far.

While in some ways this is a deeply unusual episode of Dr. Stone, as an almost exclusive one-hander for Suika, it epitomizes the show’s deep optimism and love for science and the natural world. It celebrates resilience and effort, recognizing that success can’t always come easily. Suika has sacrificed several years of her life to revive her friends, and she’s now reached parity with them in terms of age. I wonder how their relationships with her will differ now that she’s essentially reached young adulthood without them?

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

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