With the receiver carefully planted in enemy territory, Senku’s plan is in motion! Now comes the critical part, Gen’s impersonation of Lillian Weinberg must be executed flawlessly. Otherwise, it’s game over for Senku and the Ishigami Villagers.
Season 2 Episode 3 of Dr. Stone entitled “Call from the Dead” covered Chapters 65-66 of the manga. This review contains spoilers. Read with caution.
Quick Recap:
Here’s what you missed in the previous episode:
Tsukasa’s spy, Homura was successfully captured by the pincer attack of Senku and the Ishigami Villagers
The Engineer Team of Gen, Chrome, and Magma infiltrated enemy lines to plant the phone receiver for Yuzuriha and Taiju
A member of Tsukasa’s army was able to detect Gen and his team via supersonic hearing
The audience was left with an emotional cliffhanger between the original trio of Senku, Taiju and Yuzuriha
Underrated Taiju
Dr. Stone shines the most in these three things: its ability to simplify complex references, its comedic situational approach, and its ability to display well-rounded human characteristics and perspectives.
Since we all know how brilliant Senku is with his gigantic brain, we’ll put the spotlight on another character who has fallen off of the radar for quite some time and, quite honestly, is so underrated. We’re talking about the big oaf himself – Taiju Oki.
He’s the simple-minded character blessed with athletic abilities and always wears his heart on his sleeve. But what makes Taiju so admirable is his ability to acknowledge, not just his strength, but also his weaknesses. He’s willing to contribute to the team’s success in whatever way he can and follow Senku’s lead without question. That takes a great deal of trust and humility that all of us can definitely learn from. Of course, it goes without saying that all of that resulted from a solid foundation of friendship. But if we’re completely being honest, realistically-speaking, it’s more about character right?
A lot can happen in a year’s time especially in that stone world where long distance communication is nonexistent, not to mention actually living in enemy territory without knowing whether your friend will be keeping his end of the bargain. A great display of trust and friendship.
Luck in Science
While science relies heavily on solid facts and evidence, carefully precise calculations, and logical reasoning, the role of luck can’t be disregarded as quite a number of scientific discoveries are influenced by the role of chance one way or another. A miscalculation can take a turn either for the better or for the worse.
That’s certainly the case in this episode as Senku and Gen deal with the worst possible candidate to convert into an ally, specifically for the method that they’ll be using. However, this also shows the author’s creativity as he is able to fully display really intelligent plans to the point that the audience feel that it’s flawless but later on throws a curveball to stir things up. Another example for this is the Engineer Team’s tactic against the archer Ukyo.
Towards the end of the episode, Senku shows the limitation of his scientific methods and surprises the audience as he tries to win the enemy over on a more emotional approach. Could this be Senku’s humanity speaking or is this still a logical calculation to achieve the goal?
The narrative for this arc keeps getting better with every episode that comes out. Even though Senku’s brilliance continues to be the potential reason for the anime to plateau, this episode also showed that there are rare occasions where his character is put into a position of potential failure. Having more scenes like this will help the audience to view Senku from perfect human to just human, further increasing his relatability. Speaking of which, no one else displayed relatability in this episode apart from Nikki Hanada, as past memories consumed her upon hearing a familiar voice that helped her through such a difficult time.
While it’s amazing to see the brilliance of the individual, it’s equally important to see how human one is as it adds a solid layer of relatability for the audience.
Episode 4 of Dr. Stone’s second season entitled “Full Assault” comes out on February 4, 2021 at 10:30PM (PHST).
The Second Season of Dr. Stone is also available for viewing on one of AniRadio+'s official video-on-demand streaming partner, iQIYI Philippines.
TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read)
Taiju Oki is such an underrated character; His ability to acknowledge both his strength and weaknesses make him such an admirable character despite his intellectual shortcomings.
Senku veers away from his usual scientific methods to a more emotional attack to win the enemy over.
Senku’s scientific perfection is still a cause of concern but showing glimpses of his human side, emotionally speaking, adds a layer of relatability to debunk the perfect human perception.
Nikki Hanada displayed the most relatability as she shows her vulnerable side.
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Do you think it's important for characters to fail at some point? Let's discuss in the comments below and let us know what you think about this episode!
