Dr. Stone: New World

Episode 18

As far as pure action goes, this is the best episode of Dr. Stone to date. This episode is full of exciting twists and turns—attacks and counterattacks. It's got moments of great despair and great triumph which is backed by solid character building that gives every scene both style and substance.

Yo's story in this episode is one of selfishness and delusions of grandeur. He has the petrification device in his hand—meaning his side has all but won the day—but he is so focused on what this means for him personally (i.e., that he's holding the power to petrify others). It doesn't even occur to him he has no idea how to make the device work. Instead of swimming to shore where Senku and the others are, he sticks around the ship imagining that he'll petrify Moz and become a hero—which creates just the opening Ibara needs to steal the device back.

The battle between Moz and Hyoga is a fight between natural talent and hard work. Moz was born strong and was a genius with the spear. Meanwhile, Hyoga gained his skills through training. While talent may trump hard work within a single generation, humanity's true power is the ability to pass on our knowledge—to do things over countless generations that would be impossible if confined to a single human lifespan. This is martial arts work—not to mention science itself. With the perfect weapon in hand and the wisdom of countless past masters passed down to him, Hyoga's training makes him far stronger than Moz could hope to be.

Lastly, we get Ibara's story—one about the folly of unbridled hubris. Ibara is used to being both the smartest and most clever man in the room. For more than a decade, he has ruled the island with an iron fist as the power behind the throne. He has kept those physically stronger than himself in check by either tricking them or pitting them against each other. This has not only made Ibara cocky, it's made him completely unprepared to deal with someone like Senku as well.

Senku is someone who is pragmatically clever and has vast amounts of knowledge Ibara can't hope to understand. From Ibara's point of view, Senku is the personification of Clarke's third law: that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Ibara can't make clever plans to defeat Senku because you can't plan for the unknown. Thus, he defaults to the brute force option: petrify everyone and figure out the rest later.

On the other side, Senku and the others may not understand the inner workings of the petrification device but they do understand the rules it follows. They know how it activates as well as that its beam moves at a constant speed. They can make a plan to counter it (though we'll have to wait till next week to see what exactly that plan was).

Regardless of the specifics, one thing is clear heading into the final showdown. Senku has reached this final stage because he relied on others. Unlike Ibara, he has the support of his friends, even if they are turned to stone. He has with him the tools and technology they made together—a bag of tricks Ibara can't hope to predict. Meanwhile, Ibara has only the single weapon he stole—a weapon that Senku is more than prepared for. Now, all that's left is for their final battle to begin next week.

Rating:

Random Thoughts:

• Yeah, I think mecha Senku is going to piss off a lot of moms this week.

• The key to handling Magma is to use his ego against him. Put him in a position that will allow him to be the hero of the moment and he'll strive to make it a reality.

• Ibara's plan is a huge gamble. We don't even know how much if any, revival fluid is being carried around by our heroes. Ibara might have just made himself the last survivor on the island with no way to change that. And even if he found some, he'd have to de-petrify the right people before that supply ran out—i.e., people who could both make the fluid and would betray the Kingdom of Science under torture.

• I like the excuse for Soyuz's photographic memory—that his bloodline has been selectively bred for thousands of years to produce those who could easily and accurately remember the 100 tales.

Dr. Stone: New World is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.