Dr. Stone Chapter 95 Review by BelserionChapter Title: First ContactThe wild boar, whose name is now Sagara, from the end of last week’s chapter, leads our heroes to the area where the oil is. Senkuu is excited because they’ve now acquired the means to power the ship, or as Senkuu puts it, they now have fuel to burn.
Oil Acquired!
Suika is sad now because Sagara has served his purpose and is in line to be cooked. Senkuu asks Francoise if the boar is even worth eating. Francoise realizes what Senkuu is doing and agrees that with the scent of oil on him he’s not worth cooking in her professional opinion. Both of them just want to make Suika happy so that was a cute moment, especially with Suika ecstatic at getting to keep her new friend.
Senkuu wants to test out the oil, so what does he do? Builds a speed boat. Some of this is just so hard to believe sometimes, but yes, the first motorboat has been created. On smelling the oil, Taijuu calls it a love potion and asks Senkuu if he found a girl he was sweet on. Turns out the one of the last things Senkuu did before the petrification was to concoct a "love potion" to give Taijuu the courage to confess to Yuzuriha. Senkuu laughs at him because he still believes that lie. Turns out the “love potion” was gasoline Senkuu made from bottle caps, which he calls Grade A gasoline with a carbon count of five to twelve, so basically because it smells the same to Taijuu that must mean the Sagara oil is the same as what Senkuu made before.
Since that was the last bit of science Senkuu did back then, Ryusui considers what they’re doing now the starting point of science and they will now go beyond it. While the boys talk about what it’s like being so far out on the water, they realize they’re going to need an accurate way to track their coordinates. Senkuu then announces they’re making a
GPS. While these are usually based on satellite signals, they know that it’s beyond their current capabilities to aim that high. Senkuu instead says they’re going to shoot strong radio waves from a tower back on the mainland. They run a test with the mainland and it’s a success. Ruri and Chrome can hear and speak to each other. Ginrou uses this opportunity to encourage Ruri to confess to Chrome since he was too cowardly to confess to her before, saying that girls can make the first move too.
Just when it looks like Ruri is about to take his advice, the signal gets interrupted. It’s too saturated to tell what direction the new signal is coming from, but Senkuu knows it was deliberate, not a natural phenomenon like Plasma in Space. It seems that when they activated their powerful signal tower someone or something took notice. While they try to figure out who it could be, possibly someone else revived, they suddenly hear what turns out to be Morse code. The person is repeating the same thing over and over.
Why! Chrome, Ukyo, Gen and Ryusui look very worried at this turn of events. Senkuu simply grins like he’s excited. This is where the chapter ends.
I’d rate the chapter
7.5/10. The end is where it really picks up. Finding the oil wasn’t as exciting as I thought it would be, but that’s fine as not everything needs to be a big moment. I have to say I’m getting a little disenchanted with the way everything comes easily for Senkuu. Looking at everything he’s done makes me wonder why he was even in school before the petrification. Surely he was beyond high school level?
The ending was an out of the blue surprise. Is it someone that was revived randomly like Senkuu was? One of the exiles from the village? Someone from another village, providing Byakuya’s group weren’t the only set of survivors? A pre-recorded message set to activate at the specific moment any sort of signal is triggered? There are so many avenues this could take, so I hope there’s a good explanation. What I don’t want however is a new arc that has nothing to do with the current preparation. They’re preparing for a new adventure on the other side of the world, so we really don’t need any new villains or random people showing up to take us off track. That would just drag everything out and unless the new addition goes with them, completely pointless and could have been left for a later time, maybe even when they got to the other side. But I trust this author so I’ll wait and see.
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