 What's up and welcome to One Take. I'm Gil and today we're talking about Dr. Stone season one, episode six, Two Nations of the Stone World. This is going to be a full recap and review so it's going to be full of spoilers. If you haven't watched the episode yet, go do that and then watch this review. I should say I don't read the manga so there won't be any spoilers from that or from future episodes. With that, let's dive right in. The episode starts in flashback mode. We're still watching Sanku shortly after he's unpetrified 3700 years after turning to stone. He's settled into stone world life but is starting to realize he can't do it all on his own. He's literally just too exhausted so he tries to find a friend that can help him. He sees a strong hand sticking up out of the ground and when he unburies the rest of that body, he sees it's his old friend, Taiju, the big oaf. As he unburies Taiju, he wonders to himself what caused the petrification of the human population and swallows to begin with. He wonders if it was aliens, a military weapon gone wrong or some kind of a virus. Then in order to unpetrify Taiju, he tries to figure out what caused him to unpetrify to begin with. He goes back to the site where he woke up and while there sees the bats, which leads him to the cave where we see the dripping nitric acid that we've seen so many times before. He pulls a piece of hair off his head that's still petrified, lets some of the nitric acid drip onto that and sees that it works. It frees his hair from the stone. But when he pours that acid onto Taiju and pours it onto other people who are still stone, he finds that it has no effect. He asks himself, what's different about me that the nitric acid woke me up but it won't wake anybody else up? He tells himself, think, think and that's when it hits him. Thinking is exactly what he did differently. For 3700 years he was conscious, which I still have kind of a hard time believing but we'll go with it. It occurs to him that thinking and your brain working requires about 400 calories a day. Over the course of thousands of years that's a lot of energy and where did that energy come from? Sanku surmises that it must have come from the stone. The nitric acid coupled with using some part of that stone for energy is what ultimately freed him. At first as we were watching all of this, similar to the last episode during the flashback, I found myself asking why are we watching all this? What's the point of seeing how Sanku got to where we know he arrives in the earlier episodes? But I did find this whole sequence more entertaining and more interesting than last week's flashback. Mainly because last week's flashback we found Sanku dealing with some pretty elementary issues. We see him build a shelter, we see him create fire and I'm not saying I could do that stuff on my own necessarily, but I can at least picture how somebody would put a fire together and build a shelter. But watching Sanku deal with the issue of what caused him to unpetrify, how can he heal other people from the petrification? That's an interesting question and it was intriguing to watch him figure that out through trial and error. And the idea that thinking and his brainworking was a contributing factor in that was a really cool solution to that problem. Plus, this flashback had a great emotional payoff that we'll get to in a few minutes. Once Sanku has pieced all this together, he returns to Taiju, pours enough nitric acid on him to hopefully wake up, and then as it takes time and he can't tell if it's working or not, he starts to get frustrated. He shouts at Taiju, take the nitric acid and wake up already, you blockhead. You're awake, aren't you? You've been awake for the past 3700 years. You're no different from me. You don't know when to give up. Then a lightning bolt. We're back in present day where Taiju and Yuzuriha are standing over Sanku hoping he'll wake up. Here we get to one of my favorite moments of the episode. In the past, we see Sanku yelling at Taiju to wake up. In the present, we see Taiju yelling at Sanku to wake up. And in a great split screen, we see the two of them simultaneously yell the same thing. I'll believe in you and wait for you as long as it takes. I'm hopeless without you. And throughout all that, we hear this uplifting Dr. Stone music, the storm and the rain clears, and then we see Sanku has awakened. He thanks Taiju and Yuzuriha and tells them that they both earned 10 billion points. Now, I've already alluded to the fact that I absolutely love this scene, but the reason why is because how much emotional payoff it's able to pack into one moment. You've got number one, just the desperation that Sanku feels for Taiju to wake up and the desperation that Taiju feels for Sanku to wake up. That on its own just creates such a great visceral reaction where you're right along with those characters wanting them both to get what they need in that moment. Also, Sanku is typically a pretty stoic character. So to see him explode like this in that moment and show any kind of emotion is extremely powerful. This scene by having the two of them, Sanku and Taiju so desperate for the other to wake up, we see how much these two characters really need each other and this so strongly solidifies the relationship and the friendship between the two of them, which becomes very important in a few minutes because this leads to another great emotional payoff. And then, of course, you just have the outright joy at Sanku finally waking up after being in such a dire near-death situation. From there, Yuzuriha pulls out a cloth, which has a few blobs on it that sort of resemble a rocket ship and some stars. So she exclaims that this would make a great science flag for Sanku. She uses it to tie a stick around Sanku's neck as sort of a splint. And then we have an interesting exchange between Sanku and Taiju. Sanku remarks on how incredible the healing power is when you unpetrify somebody. He says out loud, the restorative effects of undoing petrification are too damn high. Then Taiju says, laughing, the petrification that's given us so much grief is what cured you too, huh? You said it when we made soap too, but maybe this petrification is a stone of life that replaces doctors for us. It's Dr. Stone. When he says that, Yuzuriha and Sanku give him a sort of astonished look like he just said something really important. And then Sanku wonders to himself, who petrified humanity? Who attacked us? No. Was it really even an attack? So I think this scene is pretty important for a couple of reasons. Number one, it makes me wonder how important the healing ability of the unpetrification will be. Because my thought so far is that once you've healed somebody from the petrification, that's it. There's really no more healing factor you can get out of it. But the way that Sanku and Yuzuriha looked at Taiju when he made that remark about Dr. Stone made me wonder if Sanku can study that healing effect and maybe extract it somehow. Or will they find a way to repetrify a part of your body, then unpetrify it, and once again use that healing ability. Also, this entire time, I've taken it for granted and assumed that whatever happened to humanity that caused them to become stone, I assumed that was malicious. It represented an attack of some kind. But the way that Sanku wondered and asked himself, if it even was an attack to begin with, made me start to speculate. It made me wonder what if this whole thing was actually meant to be protective. Maybe there was some event that's taken place in the last 3700 years which could have killed humanity and somebody turned humanity to stone to protect him. And it was always the plan one day for humanity to unpetrify. Who knows how that'll resolve itself, but I'm very interested to see. And it's easy watching this show to sort of forget about that central mystery. I've gotten so wrapped up with the survival of these characters, their conflict with Tsukasa, so I sort of completely forgot about what caused humanity to turn to stone to begin with. So it's good to see that the show is still exploring that question and it's striking a good balance between exploring that mystery and just dealing with the current conflicts and survival of the characters in present day. After that exchange, Yuzuriha asks if because unpetrifying creates this healing effect, maybe the people who have shattered to pieces, you know, we see various statues where someone's missing a head or an arm, she wonders if we can stick those people back together and then when they're unpetrified, maybe the healing ability will kick in and they can come back as one piece. Sanku tells Yuzuriha that that's one of the first things he tried, but found that every time he made an attempt, those people would simply come back as a corpse and fall apart once again. But as he says all this, he seems to have an idea. So he talks to Yuzuriha, he whispers in her ear, we don't hear what he says. Whatever the plan is, whatever the mission, Yuzuriha gets extremely nervous, but agrees anyway. We don't get to hear the whole plan, but we do learn bits and pieces of it. Sanku explains that at this point, Tsukasa thinks he's dead. So Sanku is going to go off on his own while Yuzuriha and Taiju go back to Tsukasa and join the army that he's trying to amass. They're going to join Tsukasa as spies and while they do that, Sanku will go meet up with some of these other people that we learned are out there because of those smoke signals in the last couple of episodes. Sanku's going to try and meet some of those people, get them to join him and he'll build an army using science and technology so one day he can come back and defeat Tsukasa. I thought this was a great plot development. Last episode, when I thought there was a chance Sanku could die, I started to wonder how the show would go on from there. And my thought was that they introduced the idea that there are other people out there. So Tsukasa, Yuzuriha and Taiju without Sanku could go meet some of those people and that could be a way for the plot to move forward. So it sounds like in a way we're going to get that plot but we get to have our cake and eat it too because they are going to move on from Sanku but Sanku gets to stay alive. So far Taiju has been extremely dependent on Sanku to constantly save the day with his brilliance and his science so it'll be really interesting to see what happens when Taiju finds himself in a position where he needs to use his mind to get out of it. I'd love to see him learn to start thinking on his own and maybe become a little bit more than a big oaf. I'm sure Yuzuriha will help him out in some regard but I'm really hoping we see him cornered at some point where he's got to use his mind. When they all part ways, Sanku walks in one direction, Taiju and Yuzuriha walk in another. Yuzuriha comments to Taiju how stoic the two of them are and how impressive it is that neither of them are really getting emotional and Taiju starts to think out loud, yeah I may not see Sanku for a few days, months or maybe even years and at that the emotions hit him. He turns around, runs back towards Sanku and then starts to yell. Realizes he probably shouldn't yell so waves instead. Sanku turns to him, takes that splint off his neck, takes the rag off his neck and holds up that science flag to say goodbye. So it was great storytelling to have the scene just a few minutes earlier where Sanku and Taiju are begging each other to wake up. That scene did such a great job of underscoring how close these two have become, how dependent they are on each other, to just a few minutes later have the two of them separate. By having that scene earlier it increased the impact of this scene and made it incredibly effective and powerful. I'd also say one of my complaints last episode is that during a pretty dramatic moment it was undercut by a joke and just over the top silliness. This scene is an example of doing it right. They have the emotional scene of Taiju saying goodbye to Sanku but they're still able to get some humor in there with Taiju realizing he shouldn't yell and stopping himself. It was funny but it wasn't so over the top silly that it took me out of it. It was a perfect blend of the two and that's the last we see of Taiju or Yuzuriha this episode. From there we cut to Tsukasa. We see him walking in the wilderness suddenly stopping and realizing that someone's been following him. That someone reveals herself to be a young blonde girl and she pretty quickly attacks Tsukasa because she witnessed the whole thing. She saw Tsukasa attack and presumably kill Sanku. She saw Tsukasa kidnap Yuzuriha so this girl has realized that this Tsukasa guy is kind of a villain. As they fight Tsukasa wonders how this girl could be such a good fighter. He thinks to himself that such a good fighter would be known within the martial arts community. Then he realizes that this girl was likely born in the stone world and he realizes that there might have been people who woke up years ago. He realizes that there may have been multiple generations of people that have grown up in this stone world. Tsukasa is able to pretty quickly best the girl in this battle. He knocks a tree down on top of her to pin her down so he can head off back towards the cave where he wants to get a hold of that miracle water before Taiju and Yuzuriha can get their hands on it. So here the episode introduces another really cool concept. When we saw hints of other people being alive in the stone world I assumed that those were all people who recently woke up. Maybe around the same time as Senku but the idea that there could be generations of people that grew up in this world is awesome and I can't wait to meet some of those people and see what sort of culture they've formed in this world. And it raises some other questions. How did these people wake up? Are there other methods of unpetrifying besides the nitric acid method that Senku's been using? So I love these questions that the show is asking and I love the fact that it's able to ask those questions without interrupting the flow of the plot. All these questions I'm mentioning all these concepts are introduced in the midst of a battle between this girl and Tsukasa so it was very well done. From a distance Senku sees that tree fall on top of that girl so he runs over to help her out and once again science to the rescue. He builds a pulley system which he uses to lift the tree off of her and she is so impressed she's finally willing to open up a little bit. She compliments Senku saying your unwavering diligence in forcing yourself through every step until you solve a problem. My name is Kohaku. It seems I've taken quite a liking to you. Then she smiles and the episode ends on that great upbeat note. So that's an interesting development for two reasons. One this is presumably the beginning of Senku building his army. She's clearly a strong fighter and she probably comes from a community of strong fighters. So if Senku can form an alliance with her then that's going to be a great window into the rest of that community to become his army. And if she has taken a liking to him and that liking ends up being somewhat of a romantic interest that'll be pretty interesting to see. Senku, science-minded, super stoic, very closed with his emotions. How will Senku deal with the one thing science can't solve? Love. Speaking of love, as I've said over and over I loved this episode. It managed to pack a bunch of plot developments into one episode without feeling rushed. We got the team splitting in two. Senku going one way, Taiju and Yuzuriha going another. We have Taiju and Yuzuriha now part of a mysterious plan to become spies dealing with Tukasa. We have the introduction of multiple generations potentially that have been raised in the stone world. And we've started to more directly deal with the question of what caused the petrification and why. On top of that we had great character development for both Senku and Taiju. And this isn't a knock against the episode but that's made me kind of hungry to see similar development for Yuzuriha who so far has been very much a supporting character. But I'm sure we'll see more of that as she along with Taiju have to deal with Tukasa and have to play that spy role. Anyway I can't wait to see where the show goes from here especially now that we've got two great storylines that are going to be going on. We'll have Senku trying to build up his science tech enabled army. We'll have Taiju and Yuzuriha trying to become spies in Tukasa's army. It's going to be really interesting to see how all of this unfolds. Anyway leave a comment below. Let us know what you thought of the episode. Did you love it as much as I did? What was your favorite part? Or did you hate it? And if so why? And if you liked this video make sure to click the like button subscribe to this channel and hit that little bell icon to make sure you get notifications whenever we release more videos like this one. Thanks for watching.