Dr. Stone Season 3 Review

Science is a marvelous thing, isn’t it? It’s easy to take for granted the miracle of all the gadgets available to us, but also the millennia of human ingenuity that brought us to this moment, the progression of simple yet monumental achievements that took humanity from agrarian societ to the internet age. There are many sci-fi shows and movies that show us fantastical new worlds and technologies, but few shows are capable of truly taking a moment and reveling in the humanity behind that tech quite as effectively as Dr. Stone.

In the first half of its third season, the oft-overlooked shonen anime completely changed gears and entered a new genre with a tense spy thriller arc while still providing moments of exhilarating scientific breakthroughs and heartbreaking emotion.

After the premiere introduces farming and the idea that the Kingdom of Science can finally start growing and support an actual civilization, the rest of the season focuses on the the journey to find the source of the light that petrified every living person over 3,000 years ago. The first story arc is concerned with the preparations for the long oceanic voyage, before the second deals with a meeting between kingdoms, and an infiltration into enemy territory to recover a cure for petrification.

We go from radio to spy earpieces and even drones, seemingly out of the blue.

This is also where season 3’s big problem lies: A choppy transition between arcs creates the feeling that something important was skipped. What’s more, the meticulous pacing of the first season – where you could easily trace the progression from one invention or discovery to the next – is missing. Here, we go from radio to spy earpieces and even drones, seemingly out of the blue, with a focus on the plot use of those inventions rather than the inventions themselves. Compare that to earlier in the season, when Senku brings back photography and then poses for the first photograph of the new world by pulling an iconic Einstein pose. What matters is not that photography will help them in their mission, it’s that they now have a way to record and treasure their history, and that Senku immediately finds a fun use for the technology.

Pivots between genres are handled more seamlessly. Episode three enters horror territory and gives us a truly terrifying scene as Senku and the Kingdom of Science discover they’re not alone in the world – with the animation from TMS Entertainment delivering some nightmare-fuel imagery – and the Treasure Island arc handles its spy-thriller material with tension and excitement.. It’s a testament to the writing in this anime that the show easily supports these tonal shifts.

As Dr. Stone dramatically expands its cast and scope, it loses some of the heart that sustains its more ridiculous plot developments. Still, the finale and its focus on Senku and his dad are as emotional as anything the show has done to date, showing the power of human perseverance through an emotionally charged performance by Keiji Fujiwara as Byakuya. By the time credits roll on the last episode, it’s easy to overlook some of the flaws of the season and simply stick with the image of Senku and his father working together despite being separated by millennia.

Author: Dan Stapleton. [Source Link (*), IGN All]

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