Yuzuriha Ogawa

Dr. STONE is a science adventure anime made by the studio TMS Entertainment. It first aired in Japan on July 5, 2019, and its first season has 24 episodes. The show is based on a manga (a Japanese comic) written by Riichiro Inagaki and drawn by the Korean artist Boichi. The manga ran in Weekly Shonen Jump from 2017 to 2022. It won the Shogakukan Manga Award in 2019, and over 20 million copies are now in print. The story begins on an ordinary day in 2019. A strange flash of green light covers the whole planet. In one moment, every person on Earth turns into a stone statue. Nobody knows who caused it or why. Thousands of years pass. Cities fall apart, and forests grow over roads and buildings. The world becomes wild again. About 3,700 years later, a few people break free from their stone shells. The first is Senku Ishigami, a teenage genius who loves science more than anything. He kept his mind awake inside the stone by counting every second, so he knows exactly how much time has passed. Soon he is joined by his best friend Taiju Oki. Taiju is not very smart, but he is very strong, loyal, and kind. He also has a long secret crush on a classmate, Yuzuriha Ogawa, who is still frozen as a statue. Senku finds out that a simple chemical mix, made with nitric acid, can bring stone people back to life. This gives the two friends a real plan: rebuild human knowledge from nothing and wake everyone up. The problem is that not everyone wants the old world back. Tsukasa Shishio is a famous fighter, known as the strongest high school student in Japan. When he is woken up, he does not agree with Senku's dream. Tsukasa believes adults ruined the world before, and he wants a new world where only young people with pure hearts live. His ideas put him in direct conflict with Senku, and their fight drives much of the first season. Later, Senku meets a small village of people who have lived in this wild world for generations. Two important new friends come from there. Kohaku is a brave and fast warrior girl. Chrome is a curious boy who calls himself a "sorcerer," because he studies rocks and plants without knowing that this is science. With their help, Senku forms what he calls the Kingdom of Science. Step by step, they make things we take for granted today, like glass, iron, medicine, and even electricity. What makes Dr. STONE special is how it teaches real science in a fun way. Each problem is solved by careful steps and hard work, not by magic. Viewers and critics have praised how accurate the science is. Senku is loud, funny, and confident, and he even won Best Protagonist at the Crunchyroll Anime Awards in 2020. The show mixes action, comedy, and survival with a hopeful message: human knowledge, built up one small step at a time, can bring back a whole civilization. The first season is followed by Stone Wars, New World, and the final season, Science Future.