The SettingAt the beginning, there is the crisis. Dr. Stone doesn't hide this driving moment, it throws the reader right into a world where everyone turned to stone. Certainly something that can be shown off very well in colour. But wait, the story itself needs to backtrack a little bit. And so the story starts at school.Where else should it, possibly. We all known the obsession with school settings manga seem to have. Today, though, we're in luck. Bar any flashbacks and other surprises, that's the only part of school life we will see. Sorry to anyone who likes that particular setting, this is actually a story about post-apocalyptical survival.
The ProtagonistsFor now, the manga has a rather loose main-character triangle. There's Taiju, the brute, who is strong and honorable, but a little too dense for his own good. His friend, the brainy Senkuu, who knows everything and that with a certainty of 10 billion %. And lastly, there is Taiju's love interest, a girl named Yuzuriha. She's not the brightest either, so quite a good fit for Taiju it seems. Other than that we know very little about them after the first chapter. No hints about them even having a family or other friends. Honorable mentions to the camphor tree playing its role.
The StoryJust as Taiju is about to confess his love to Yuzuriha under the camphor tree, a strange light fills the sky. Seemingly of extra-terrestrial origin, this light petrifies all humans. Taiju tries to protect Yuzuriha, telling her to grab a hold of the camphor tree and indeed saves her structural integrity like this over the next few thousand years. While turned to stone, all humans are still fully conscious, that is, at first. Their consciousness is slowly fading, most people accepting death. Not so Taiju. Taiju is in love.
Somewhen during his time as a stoner, Taiju remembers there was a commotion about a wonderfully realistically worked bird statue. One that happened to look exactly like a real bird Taiju knew. Over at the animal hospital, he encountered Yuzuriha, who at first scolds him for not thinking through his actions, just to present a bird she was about to take there herself. Two fools, one thought.
Curiously, only a few select birds were turned to stone. And also all humans. Domesticated and wild animals, all of them were just fine. And without humans, nature would take back all of the world, killing many of the petrified people in the process.
Until, one day, Taiju manages to break the stone shell. He finds himself in a vastly changed environment among some other humans still in their stone shells. Some broken, but many still in a good shape.
The first things to do after being trapped for an unknown amount of time:
1. Pay respects to a stranger by piecing her together
2. Quench your thirst by drinking some water directly from a stream
3. Get yourself some sort of pants to wear, somebody could see you
Having done all that, Taiju sets out... and finds Yuzuriha under the camphor tree. Pure happiness. And finally, the confession. A few years late, but he manages to anyway.
A message carved into the tree is the next hint in Taiju's scavenger hunt. Down the river, he should head. And there he finds, surprise, surprise, Mr. Know-it-all. Senkuu broke free from the stone half a year earlier, after 3689 years and a few days. Either way, there's no time to lose dwelling in memories or detailed explanations. The ultimate goal Senkuu works towards, and has already planned in Taiju for, is to restart civilization. Even more, to get it back to where it was before the apocalypse and to find the reason for that. Taiju gets to add returning Yuzuriha to the list. Quite the objectives for a couple of highschoolers restarting from scratch.
Will they make it? What will their first steps be? Find out in further chapters and discuss with us in our
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