When Dr. Stone premiered in 2019, a trail of hype followed immediately in its wake. The buzz came about because—well, a series about building back from a mysterious event in which all of humanity was petrified, thousands of years later, is quite intriguing.
But there’s also a key way in which Dr. Stone is not your typical shounen. When someone begins selling you on the series, the pitch almost always goes something like: “Have you watched Dr. Stone? It’s a cool series, because instead of being all about fighting, the main character is a scientist. And it’s … like … real science! I think.”
Dr. Stone is currently wrapping up the second cour of its third season, subtitled New World, and the show’s affinity for showing off the brainpower of its protagonist, Senku, still attracts legions of fans. “We believe that everybody is an expert of something,” said season three director Shuhei Matsushita through a translator. “The characters are relatable in that I’m sure everybody experiences [thoughts like], ‘I’m smart, but I can’t do sports,’ or ‘I have lots of power, but I’m not that smart.’ “
Still, very few of us are Senku-levels of smart. Even the Dr. Stone team has had to go above and beyond to catch up with Senku.
The struggles of science
The numerous portrayals of the scientific processes in the series pose a profound challenge for the Dr. Stone team. “Especially with a series like this, we want to be truthful and authentic to scientific elements,” director Matsushita said earnestly. “So we pay attention to make what you see on the screen as authentic as possible.”
“Did you have to learn a lot about science in order to animate sequences [in Dr. Stone]?” I asked Matsushita.
The series director looked me straight in the eye. “Yes,” he said emphatically, in English. “Always.”
He continued to elaborate through the translator, “As the story continues, there are different fields of science that it gets introduced. So we had to keep on studying. Not that we got any smarter, but we have more knowledge about science.”
In fact, Matsushita said the portrayal of “anything scientific” is hands-down the hardest aspect of translating the Dr. Stone manga into an anime. “The manga shows certain liquids and [gases], and [we have to figure out] what color is it? How does that gas flow in real life? Just because something is described and depicted in a certain way on original manga, is that really true? So we have to investigate and make sure what happens is accurate. That was very hard.”
Even before the topic of science fully came up, authenticity clearly weighed on Matsuhita’s mind. “If you audience detect a little bit of untruthfulness, then that gets caught and you can’t fully dive into the narrative and story and characters,” he warned.
A messy field trip
The Dr. Stone team’s methodologies of studying science include an impressive amount of field research. In New World, Senku leads a team to look for the Sangara Oil Fields. The Sangara Oil Fields are also a real place in Shizuoka prefecture in Japan, and producer Shusuke Katagiri organized a field trip for the team. However, Katagiri didn’t pass along all the information on the trip. “The people definitely told us that we need to wear long boots,” he said through a translator. “Just, intentionally, I left out that information.” And so, someone showed up to the oil field with brand new sneakers.
Katagiri continued, “That funny little anecdote gets more focus, but in reality, that field work was really helpful. The oil is still coming out, and we got to smell it, and we got to see it and take a lot of photos, especially on the surface of the oil. It gives off a kind of iridescent light. So we were able to reflect that [in the show].”
Of course, the best acquisition of Senku’s trip to the Sangara Oil Fields is arguably not the oil itself, but an adorable boar, which Suika appropriately names Sangara. The Dr. Stone team got to see the boars firsthand. “The boars rubbed their body against the trees, actually,” reflected Katagiri, “and we actually saw that, and we were told to watch out for for the boars. But how are we supposed to be careful about it when we see one?” Thankfully, the new shoes remained the most damaged party.
The field work also extended to working on a boat, which helped director Matsushita make season three’s plentiful scenes aboard the Perseus. Matsuhita was struck by the ship’s “really narrow corridors,” and how even during the daytime, “when you’re inside the boat, it’s actually much darker [than you’d think]. We were able to reflect that in the animation as well. So we’re happy [the field work] was worth it.”
Sailing ahead
The Dr. Stone manga finished last year, but the team behind the anime never felt like this gave them any excuse to take it easy. “We can’t sit back and relax, because it feels like what the anime series brings to the table feels a little different,” said series producer Katagiri. “Because only there are fans who only watch the anime series and don’t read the manga as well, but we want those anime-only fans to experience the thrilling moments as much as the manga readers did.”
“But with that said,” Katagiri hedged, “because we know the ending, we can a little bit plan ahead and do a foreshadowing. So we do have that luxury.”
In the meantime, all the hard work the Dr. Stone team has put into make the show’s scientific displays as accurate as possible could have wider usefulness. “If something happens … I feel like if you follow the series, you have this survival knowledge that might help you survive such a situation,” Katagiri said hopefully. “If you know the series, you can survive maybe a little bit.”
And there you have it: Dr. Stone is so committed to being accurate that it might help you get ahead in the apocalypse. If you, too, want this advantage in the end times, season three, New World, is currently wrapping up its final episodes. You can stream it on Crunchyroll.
(featured image: TMS Entertainment)
