One Big Plot Contrivance
Dr Stone Episode 5
I know fans of the show are going to justify this latest turn in the story by talking about subliminal messaging and body language and how Senkyu was so prepared and brilliant but I’m going to call it absolute bull. What is the actual likelihood of Tsukasa not just ramming the spear through Senkyu’s throat, snapping his neck sideways, of the million other things Tsukasa could have done to Senkyu while having still picked up Senkyu’s cue to aim for the neck that would have resulted in his death?
And when your entire plot moves forward only because of a contrivance too big to ignore suspension of disbelief gets thrown out the window and the viewer, in this case me, gets forcibly ejected from the viewing experience. Instead of focusing on the interesting look at Senkyu’s time prior to Taiju waking up (and that was actually pretty good) I’m left thinking about how idiotic that particular story development was.
Meanwhile, I’m back to wondering why they didn’t find some better way to remove Tsukasa as a threat than running around to make gun powder. Can’t beat him in a fight? Try poison. Set a normal forest fire. Annoy him to death with bad jokes?
Anyway, the episode does start with a cute game of ‘what if’ as Tsukasa remarks that if he’s met them back 3700 years ago they would have been friends. We see a montage of the scenes we saw last week only this time with Tsukasa in the story as well. And then we are back to reality. It is an interesting point but I’m honestly thinking they probably wouldn’t have been friends back then anyway. Tsukasa and Senku both seem to have the same problem of always thinking they are right and by nature they probably would have clashed sooner or later regardless of the time period.
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On the bright side though, we do get to see that Taiju and Yuzuriha are a very good combo. They understand each of other well and manage to formulate a plan very quickly and with very few words that they pull off very effectively. It is the best showing of Yuzuriha yet, and it was probably the highlight of the episode.
I was enjoying Dr Stone and I still like the idea here, but I’m lowering my expectations of the narrative at this point. Hopefully it will remain fun viewing and we don’t see these kinds of plot contrivances taking centre stage in future episodes.
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Karandi James
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Images from: Dr Stone. Dir. I Shinya. TMS Entertainment. 2019.
Personally my suspension of disbelief was not badly affected by this turn of events, but I get where you’re coming from. For me, it’s about understanding and knowing the type of personality Senku has.
I know that not everything comes back to MBTI types, but… most of it does. xD Senku is only “smart” depending on how you define “smart.” He is an N (intuitive type) and not an S (sensing type). S types are practical and focused on reality. Senku is the opposite.He’s all about possibilities, theories, thinking outside the box, and sometimes ignoring or forgetting to factor in realistic limiters. (Science at any depth is mostly a specialty of N types. Senku’s science and vast knowledge base was made “practical” by the stone world, but ordinarily, most of it has no practical use for a highschool boy.)
Also, Senku is an ENTP type. Among the N types, that’s wackiest and most unpredictable one. Is Senku book-smart, knowledgeable, and a creatively thinker? Yes. Is he practical and does he rely on common sense? Absolutely not. xD
Senku’s personality aside, if he’s thinking through possibilities, than he had to know that even if his ploy convinced Tsukasa to strike his neck there was no guarantee where and how he would do that. He would have known his own plan was flawed. The fact that it played out as he expected actually makes it worse. if it had mostly gone to plan but something had caused a minor problem, it probably would have been more believable, given what a gamble the entire thing was.
Oh, he knew very well the desired outcome was improbable. A practical person might stop there. But Senku also entertained the idea that it might just work. Yes, it was a big gamble. ENTPs love a gamble now and then.
Still, the fact that he won his gamble was, indeed, hard to believe. It’s one of those “because anime” things. Maybe it’s because I’ve watched Kaiji and Kakegurui so many times lol, but characters winning an unlikely gamble usually isn’t enough to disappoint me. Perhaps I’m being too gracious with this show, idk. Everyone is a bit different with what breaks suspension of disbelief for them.
“Because anime” is definitely an answer to a lot of questions that come up in stories and it is the only one that works here. I’m kind of hoping I get drawn back into this story next week but I’m definitely finding this one is watchable but not one of my favourites this season.
I notice that a lot of writers seem to confuse intelligence with clairvoyance in anime. Being super smart doesn’t let you predict the future, if anything it does the opposite and makes you plan for a number of likely outcomes rather than put all your eggs into one basket. (which isn’t actually that smart.)
I feel Taiju’s actions were a little above his station when he escaped with Senku. The leaps of logic made by him seem massively contrary to his character as the big dumb guy.
Maybe Taiju works well in a crisis? That probably would have bothered me more at the end of the episode if I hadn’t been totally thrown by their lame explanation for why Senku wasn’t going to just stay dead.
Ironically, putting some thought into this show’s writing reveals how kinda dumb it actually is.
I just want to know why some birds turned to stone and others didn’t. If I get an answer to that I’ll probably be very satisfied.
Completely agree. Putting all your hopes on the idea that Tsukasa will hit you at that exact point is not at all like the Senku we’ve come to know.