It’s the mid season turn and we got a brand new OP and ED for Dr. Stone! Am I the only dork that gets excited about that sort of stuff? I liked the old OP better, partly because I’m really fond of Good Morning World as a song but the second ED is just so gawsh darn adorable.
In fact quite a few adorable moments this week. This is a good thing. My week was badly in need of some adorableness!
What I thought Would Happen
I must have gotten the match ups wrong last week. I thought that Kinro would somehow loose last minute but Chrome would win his match and Kohaku would come back in time and obviously win over Senku. Then Ginro would win as well and we would move on to semi-finals.
I figured Kohaku would win against Magma and sort of get revenge for his evil plans on her sister. However, I figured Chrome would win over Ginro and then Kohaku would let Chrome have the ultimate victory which would be super cute as love would have triumphed but Kohaku would also have played an important role in keeping her sister safe.
I don’t know, I just really wanted love to win in the end and I thought that was the most direct way to get to it. Of course this was all based on very flawed match up table so forget it…
What Did Happen
Kinro’s righteousness got the better of him and cost him the match but everyone knows who won in spirit. This said Magama won the match which I was expecting. Then Chrome won his own match but not through his own merit, too bad and they basically threw the match so that Kohaku wouldn’t make it back in time. Being mere seconds late, Kohaku still got disqualified making Senku the winner by default.Ginro did his usual comedic relief thing but managed to win his own match as well, even if just barely.
This meant that the semi finals started off between Magma and Chrome. The second half of the episode was pretty much entirely dedicated to this fight. Unexpectedly (at least to me) Asagiri also chose the middle of this battle to make his come back! cool.
What About the Characters
Last week I started this sections off with: “Have I mentioned how much I like Kohaku?” and I was legit about to do the exact same thing. Word for word. We only saw a bit of Kohaku but she showed that her kindness extends beyond her sister. In fact, she was o.k. with loosing the Grand Bout to save a friend. After all, as long as Ruri is alive, Kohaku would keep on fighting for her but if Suika drowned then there would be nothing left for it. I agree with this thinking but I didn’t expect it from Kohaku. She’s not exactly the single minded character we’ve been led to believe she is. She’s more nuanced and sentimental. Awesome!
Like I said, Ginro revert back to the manic comic relief character but I thought it worked better this week. Not because the character was better balanced or anything but because that type of over the top slapstick was better suited to this particular episode than any we’ve seen before. This said, there is much potential for this character to become very annoying very fast.
This being a almost entirely action driven episode, there really wasn’t that much time for character development and that’s fine. we’re at episode 14, we know all these guys pretty well. We don’t need to have a big revelation every week!
What I Liked
I hinted about this a lot but the moment between Kohaku and Suika was just lovely. I got teary eyed. It was just such a sweet display of tenderness between all this fighting that brought a sweet tonal contrast and balanced the episode out.
And you know what, it’s sappy and improbable but I also was pretty psyched that love triumphed. I root for Chrome and his love life. And his victories made me genuinely happy. I still liked my weird and impossible set up better but it was not possible. So this is the next best thing. Heck I even enjoyed the tear lens.
Math montage! I do not know why but montages of really mundane stuff where characters don’t actually do much like thinking, reading. or doing math are one of my fetishes. It’s the weirdest thing in the world. Anyways, there was a math montage. I cheered. I may have also taken a drink. This review is fun, weeeee.
I’m super excited to see Gen again. I honestly didn’t expect him to return so soon but I’m certainly not complaining. I think his presence in and of itself is a good source of conflict for our little group and the potential he brings with him is very promising.
Finally, and this may just be because I’m paranoid, but there was something unsettling about how the episode ended. Like it was too good to be true. If their victory is pretty much assured, then why not just take a few extra seconds to make it official. All they need are basically 3 stills. I think the fact that they didn’t means something. Moreover, Senku is still in the running and he’s the only one we didn’t see fight. methinks something is afoot and that’s interesting.
What I Liked Less
The Chrome Magma Fight may have gone on a touch too long?
Oh I know! Senku was basically just a narrator this week. As in he literally stood around an gave explanatory exposition. Don’t get me wrong, it didn’t in fact bother me much but it’s a touch lazy.
We also didn’t see Ginro at all after his own fight was over. I find his character has not been treated well by the show. He seems mostly utilitarian. It’s unfortunate since the little they did establish is quite different from every other character and if the show paid a bit more attention to him, he would bring something unique to the cast.
Closing Thoughts
So for you guys that have read the manga, does it stay at this level? Cause if so, I have no complaints. There were a few shots in the new OP that looked pretty intriguing too. And did we see Senku’s dad in the ED. I mean we’ve never seen him in the flashbacks and the mom was always with her back to the camera but the dad we saw. And we know he sparked Senku’s interest in science so he must be pretty important to him.
I wonder why Senku hasn’t set out to find him yet. Maybe they had a falling out? This isn’t closing thoughts at all, it’s just rambling. Again I had fun and again I want to see next week!
Mood: Believing in a thing called love
I’m on the fence over ‘tourney’ as an Anime/Manga convention? In general, the binary we get the feel good outcome / we get a surprise feel bad outcome, feels overly predictable. That, and character development is usually shelved in favor of character-skill development during the tourney, which makes sense but /character/ is what drives my interest in story telling.
So yeah… its a few episodes that reveal hints, but wont amount to anything until one of our heroes wins the day and saves the damsel in (medical) distress. Yay?
He was in the flashback but I don’t remember seeing his face. Maye we did, I’m not positive on this.
I think we’re gonna get a bump on the road with the tournament. I feel like if they were going to stretch it out, they would have done so before Chrome’s victory
Didn’t we see Senku’s dad in a flash back when he sold his car to buy Senku the science stuff for his room? Or was a mis-remembering that sequence?
I’m with you in that I didn’t expect the tournament to go this way though was speculating that Chrome would win. Then the fact that they didn’t wrap the tournament up this episode makes me wonder what is going to interfere with their plans or whether they are just stretching it out for the sake of it.