The Winter 2021 Preview Guide

Dr. Stone: Stone Wars

Modern society is lost when a mysterious light leaves everyone petrified in stone. Thousands of years in the future, super genius Senku awakens and begins restoring civilization with his Kingdom of Science. Now as he sets down blueprints for a smartphone in the stone world, Tsukasa and his Empire of Might prepare for the upcoming war.

Dr. Stone: Stone Wars is based on Boichi and Riichirou Inagaki's manga and streams on Crunchyroll on Thursdays.

Nicholas Dupree
Rating:

You know, for all the years-absent shows suddenly receiving a second season that dedicated 0 time to catching the audience up, it's a little frustrating that the one series that does see fit to recap is the one that's only been away for a year. Though at least this season premiere of Dr. Stone saw fit to make it a bit more engaging than your typical info-dump. Letting Gen regale the Ishigami Village children with an only slightly heightened tale of season 1's broad strokes – complete with Senku interrupting to tell the mentalist to get back to work – is a pretty solid way to reorient everyone watching who might have forgotten a few things.

After that though, this is Dr. Stone back to business as usual. Senku's got another crazy invention to make happen in the middle of the stone age, and the rest of the cast are ready to help, react to, or just reap the spoils of it. This episode is freeze-dried food, and while it succeeds in making me illogically hungry for some cup noodles, it's mostly a throwaway creation to get us back in the groove of things. There's some nice character moments, like acknowledging the vacuum they use for dehydrating is powered by the water wheel Chrome and Kaseki built last season, but otherwise it's far from this series' most memorable or interesting creation.

With rations taken care of though, it means the Kingdom of Science is finally ready to enact their plan with the radio commu- I'm sorry, “cell phones” and set about outmaneuvering Tsukasa's ever growing army. During all this Gen comes up with a pretty devious plan to impersonate Lillian, using the low-quality sound of the phones to trick the enemy, and then they even set up a plan to distract Homura to cover the scouting team's departure. All-in-all it's a solid enough setup for this new season, but like many sequel premieres feels like it's doing the necessary transition work before things really get going. Regardless, Dr. Stone is an infectiously watchable show, and I can't wait to see what ingenuity it has up its sleeve next.