Sci-Fi Anime #1: Dr. Stone

Finally, at 1st place on our list of sci-fi anime, we have the new contender: Dr. Stone!

Senku somehow holding a bottle of something while petrified.
The power of SCIENCE in the palm of his hands.

Dr. Stone is a pretty recent anime that aired back in July 2019, and ran for 24 episodes. It’s based on the sci-fi, post-apocalyptic adventure manga series by Riichiro Inagaki and Boichi, which is currently 15 volumes and counting. Both the manga and anime are good enough that at the end of the anime, a 2nd season was announced.

Plot Summary

Imagine if one day, a light appeared and spread all over the world. This light turns you and every other human on the planet into stone. With every human on the planet now a statue, there’s no one left to run civilization. As a result, it all falls apart as time slowly grinds the buildings and monuments down.

Anime version of New York City: "Dr. Stone" edition.
Trees: they grow everywhere if you don’t stop them.

Fast forward 3700 years later, and the world is now almost completely devoid of humanity’s presence. Humanity might as well be extinct in this new world, except for one guy. His name is Senku Ishigami, and he awoke only by pure chance. He’s most definitely not satisfied with this though. He is determined to find out how he woke up, why this disaster happened, and most importantly of all, find out how to wake up all of humanity in this new Stone World. There’s a reason why his last means “Stone God”, after all.

Senku showing off his survival skills.
Senku in his best Stone Age outfit.

The main draw of this show though is how much SCIENCE there is. Senku has to draw upon his extensive knowledge of scientific matters to MacGyver his way out of problems, since he has the muscle strength you’d expect out of someone who devotes his life to SCIENCE, i.e. not much. In that respect, Senku is basically a Japanese Leonardo da Vinci. Or a Neil deGrasse Tyson. Whoever comes first.

I wish there was an anime version of Neil Tyson here.
Senku would agree wholeheartedly.

Opening

You’re all probably tired of me telling you that X anime’s opening is great by now, but this is the last time, I swear. Dr. Stone‘s opening is “Good Morning World!” by Burnout Syndromes. Admittedly, I’ve never heard of this band before, but that’s a given for how new this anime is. Still, it’s pretty catchy.

Arguably the prettiest animation of the entire list.

Conclusion

Do you like post-apocalyptic shows where the characters have to survive in a wild, wild world? Do you like survival shows in general? Or do you like shows that show off the power of SCIENCE? If you like any or all of the above, check out Dr. Stone on Crunchyroll now.