Not quite yet…

I went into this ep of Dr. Stone needing to see something more to keep me invested.  Did it do enough?  Maybe just enough to keep me on the hook – for now.  It wasn’t so much “more” of anything thought, but less.  A little less ridonkulousness generally, and that’s a good thing.  For me there’s a pretty clear divide between what works and what doesn’t where this show is concerned, and this ep was more focused on the former than the last two have been.  I suppose the $64,000 question is whether that’s an aberration or the start of a trend.

That said, certain elements still rankled a bit.  I think it was pretty obvious that when Slabhead managed to ignite Senku’s first batch of gunpowder than Tsukasa was going to see the smoke.  I get that Senku is supposed to be the genius here, but they’ve really made Tsukasa too smart for the plot’s own good – he’s effectively psychic.  And I question Senku’s judgment in a big way here, because even after seeing the smoke signals his decision to feed the fire rather than put it out had the ring of stupidity to it.  Considering what was at stake and the odds it would result in exactly what it did, it pretty much stamps Tsukasa as the smartest person in the cast.

To give the benefit of the doubt, I guess we could say that it’s not a matter of intelligence (or even common sense) but idealism.  As in, Senku has too much of it – and that’s not an unappealing layer to add to his character.  But his plan for dealing with Tsukasa really isn’t much of a plan, and I know which one of them I’d be betting on in a negotiation.  Of course Senku isn’t dead in the third episode – that would be an impossibility from a narrative standpoint.  But based on what happened in the episode he really should be.

The matter at hand isn’t so much the cliffhanger (which isn’t much of a cliffhanger) but what the deal is with the humans who sent up the reactive smoke signals, and what role they’re going to have in the story.  Obviously more humans being alive – which from a logic standpoint is something everyone should have been expecting – makes the equation for Tsukasa much more difficult.  He can’t just kill everyone who represents a potential threat – superpowered as he is, there’s only one of him.  At this point he may not have seen the other signal fires, but he will soon enough, and he’s going to have some very difficult decisions to make.