It’s time for the return of Dr. Stone. After the series ended a while back, it returned briefly for a 3 chapter mini series. That was a pretty nice surprise particularly since it actually does add some more context to that controversial ending involving the time machine. Retroactively it adds a lot to the lore as well although this may have been a bit too ambitious for a 3 chapter series. The first chapter has a massive cliffhanger after all and the second one ends with some mysteries but the third has to wrap things up rather quickly. I’d say it feels rushed but I’m at least 99% confident this was meant to be a 3 chapter miniseries from the jump so I suppose that was intentional.

The series starts by having Senku remember his first time trying to make a time machine. He was a kid at the time and so he knew he couldn’t actually build one but what he could do was test to see if a certain event would happen in the future. For example, hypothetically if you built a time machine and did find a way to travel through time, the best way to prove it would be to leave something for your past self to find right? Well nothing happens so Senku gives up on it but in the present they decide to try again. To their surprise something does happen…they discover a message from Senku’s father implying that he was able to master time travel but how is that possible? It’s time for the scientists to work on one last case!

I do want to say that this experiment is the most logical way to test time travel and it’s also why I’m confident that it will never be discovered. In theory there would be some evidence at this point from people going back in time. I know a few counter arguments for it is that they’re really careful about changing time so that only the outcomes are noticeable and since that’s our present reality we would not be able to tell. I’m not sold on that but time travel’s always an interesting subject. So for the heroes to get a message from Senku’s father, that’s pretty big.

It’s a great hook from the first chapter and the only problem is that there are a ton of really fun scenarios you can make from that but the series doesn’t opt to go with any of them. It’s a shame because I think that would have been great. Perhaps a little “Jump the Shark” in nature since it would be way less science based but it would be fun. Instead the series opts to go with the cop out ending as in it ends before we see exactly what happened. The series allows you to decide for yourself if the time travel worked or if it didn’t. Me personally? I’d rather know one way or the other. The author needed to take a stand here and just tell us. Putting off the decision of what happened feels like the author was just playing it too safe.

Perhaps one day we will get a sequel to this that explores the ending because at least if the ending goes one way then there is plenty of room for a sequel and that’ll definitely change things in a big way. Beyond that the art is really solid as always. I like the realistic style that is always used for Dr. Stone. The writing is also good as you would expect with all of the characters making plans and it’s good to see that Senku really hasn’t changed a bit. He’s still a super logical person who doesn’t let anything get to him.

I did appreciate that Ryusui also got a really big role here. He’s the first one to pick up on something and the series hasn’t forgotten that he can compete in intelligence with everyone else. Perhaps not as a pure scientist, Chrome, Xeno, and Senku are definitely superior there but in overall intelligence and picking up on things, it’s hard to beat him. He was also doing his best to shield Senku from taking any emotional damage which I appreciate. The characters are really a close knit group at this point and even with society back, you figure they will always stay great friends and won’t drift apart.

There’s one emotional subplot in here that sort of comes out of nowhere though. At best you just don’t really care about it and at worst it feels like just a way to nerf a character. The all powerful alien cube beings apparently have emotions and just hide them behind logic. Why is this even a thing? It just doesn’t make sense to me and it has this whole emotional goodbye to everyone before going back into its emotionless mode. So why is his basically filler? Because if you skip that chapter, the status quo hasn’t changed. It’s back to being emotionless and in theory the emotional outburst will never be mentioned again. So…..yeah there just wasn’t much of a reason for this. I can’t say I felt bad for it either since the being creates a lot of the drama in this miniseries for no good reason. If it just talked things through with Senku that would have been way better and Senku would have understood since he is a scientist at heart. There are some twists of course since this miniseries is part mystery so I won’t go any further into the nitty gritty of what’s going on there.

Overall, This was a fun mini series. At only 3 chapters long it’s really a blink and miss it kind of title. You’ll be done with it so quickly that it almost feels like a one shot but in volume format it’ll be a fun way to see the cast again. Each character gets a quick moment to contribute and we also get a classic building roadmap which was always fun in the series. It’s a little too short to really go into too much detail on this but there’s still enough for you to feel the nostalgia. Outside of the cop out ending which is a little iffy, there’s nothing bad here so there’s really nothing to dislike. Particularly within the context of the 3 chapters limit I’d say it did a good job.

Overall 7/10