It’s A Battle of
Wits Vs Brawn
Last week I was speculating on the outcome of this tournament drawing the conclusion that:
…it seems like they’ve opened a very narrow path for Chrome to maybe come out on top…
Episode 13 Review, Karandi
Turns out I was right and wrong because the how they got to that point was very much well outside of my predictions. In fairness though, I doubt anyone would predict the way this tournament played out without having read the source.
What did make this more amusing than the vast majority of anime tournaments watched before was that the protagonists, while not actually cheating, were the ones more or less willing to do anything to achieve the outcome they desired. Such a change from discount villains plotting to undermine tournament rules when in this case it is the characters we’re supposed to be supporting who are taking as many liberties as the rules allow.
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Of course, it also helps that Magma is such an obviously terrible choice for village leader. Forget his plans to kill Ruri, or at least let her die. Forget the fact that he would most definitely hinder Senku’s plans for a kingdom of science. He’s just a horrible human being and seeing him brought down is something the audience can get behind even if the methods are somewhat less than noble.
We did get a surprise reappearance by Gen in this episode. Timely and fairly useful all things considered. I wonder why he’s back though and what will occur next week.
And this is when I realise that I am now very emotionally invested in this story. During the first half of the first cour I didn’t dislike the show but was never really connected to it and could have walked away at any time. Now though I genuinely want to know what happens next and where the characters will go from here. Dr Stone has definitely built momentum and these last few episodes have just been fun to watch.
Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
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Karandi James
Want to follow Senku on his journey to bring back civilisation?
Images from: Dr Stone. Dir. I Shinya. TMS Entertainment. 2019.
Dr. Stone is really good at making you care about its characters. You can just sit back and enjoy the ride knowing you’re gonna have fun and/or learn something.
That had to be the longest 60 seconds in anime history…. <_<
It did go on awhile.