The Fall 2023 Anime Preview Guide

Dr. Stone: New World Season 2

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While Kohaku's infiltration has won them the precious materials needed for the miracle revival fluid, Senku and his surviving companions are still barely in this fight. If they want any hope of overthrowing the island's maniacal leader and discovering the secrets of his petrification powers, they'll need to sneak and scavenge to bring their allies back from their stone imprisonment. With the fate of the world on the line, the race to revive the Kingdom of Science is on!

Dr. Stone: New World Season 2 is based on the Dr. Stone manga by Boichi and Riichirou Inagaki. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Thursdays.

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Richard Eisenbeis
Rating:

The first part of this season of Dr. Stone ended with a real gut punch of a story—detailing how Byakuya spent decades of his life gathering the gold and platinum that he was sure Senku would need to restore mankind 3000 years later. Not only was the episode a touching personal tale but also served as the turning point for the arc—the moment where our heroes gain what they need to go from defense to offense: the revival fluid making machine.

Now with an infinite supply of revival fluid, Senku and the others can restore their petrified comrades. Of course, that's still easier said than done—especially considering most of their shattered stone bodies are littering the ocean floor. To make things worse, they need Kaseki to build what they need to continue the fight and only have one chance at finding and restoring him.

This episode is one big rescue mission—one in which each of our main heroes gets a chance to shine. Kohaku retrieves Ryusui—showing off both her physical strength and belief in Senku in the process. Ryusui uses his knowledge of the ocean to find and restore Taiju. Soyuz uses his photographic memory to both assist Ryusui's search and fix Taiju's shattered body. Gen can use his mentalist abilities to figure out what Ryusui needs from a single Morse Code letter. And Senku, well, he just sciences the hell out of everything.

All in all, it's a solid, action-heavy episode of the series. It's full of tension as each of our heroes has to overcome the specific dilemmas thrown at them and it feels good to not only see them on the attack but also take the first steps toward restoring the full extended cast. Add into that some good jokes (like Kohaku predicting Ryusui's thought process or the “rat” infestation of the town) and we have a strong start to the second part of the season. Everyone is still in danger but suddenly victory doesn't look so far away.

(Oh, and how about those ending credits done with sand painting on illuminated glass? Crazy cool, am I right?)

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Nicholas Dupree
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It's always a pleasant surprise for me when Dr. Stone comes back around. While it's never been appointment television, I'm always happy to see it again whenever it returns. It's a show that's always been consistent and reliable entertainment, and even when it doesn't stick with me between seasons, these premieres are always a great reminder of what I like about this cast and premise. The start of this new cour is an especially strong one.

One criticism of the start of New World's story arc was that, without a central antagonist, the cast's journey up the tech tree felt a bit aimless. While they always had a new goal or resource to work towards, without an active threat – besides the mysterious Why Man's looming specter – episodes could turn into lengthy montages of new inventions without a narrative through-line to carry them. Now, with Senku and Co. critically low on manpower and resources, they're back to basics, trying to covertly piece their forces back together under the enemy's nose, and it's great stuff. Instead of having his handy craftsmen and a whole town's worth of assistance, Senku's got to jerry-rig oxygen tanks with parts scavenged from his mobile lab, and it makes the process all the more engaging for just how patched together everything is. It's guerrilla engineering at its finest.

More than anything, it's just nice to be back with these characters, and with the major players whittled down, we get to indulge in everyone's funniest quirks. There are wild gags like Kohaku having to sneak Ryusui's petrified body to Senku piece by dismembered piece. There are wacky engineering bits, with the rest of the team struggling to pump enough oxygen into their SCUBA tanks. There's a surprising amount of casual male nudity as Ryusui and Soyuz dive in their skivvies to recover their petrified comrades. It's a blast – the perfect mix of lighthearted comedy and high stakes to make for an episode that zooms by. If you're this far into the series, you probably don't need to be told to get back in, but it's still nice when an episode like this can remind you why you started watching in the first place.