Riichiro Inagaki was a big fan of scientists and aimed to create a successful manga. However, he wanted to do something fundamentally different from many genre representatives like Naruto, One Piece, and Dragon Ball.
Which manga is it about? Inagaki wrote the manga Dr. Stone from 2017 to 2022, which has also been adapted into an anime since 2019. In the story, all of humanity is turned to stone. But two boys manage to awaken and fight to revive civilization.
- High school student Taiju Oki and his science friend Senku are the first to awaken from the petrification. The two find themselves in the harsh wilderness and must rebuild humanity from scratch.
- Senku is a genius and creates various chemicals from the natural ingredients he finds. He manages to produce ethanol or gunpowder within a short time.
- Over time, he produces increasingly complex things like electricity, mobile phones, or medicine. This brings him one step closer to his goal of reviving humanity.
Although the manga belongs to the shounen genre, there are no exciting battles like in other representatives of the genre. Instead, what is exciting is how Senku consistently discovers newer inventions and thus reiterates the status quo of humanity before petrification. Of course, there are also other mysteries that he and his friends must uncover.
Dr. Stone aimed to break the superhero cliché
How did he want to differentiate himself? In the shounen genre, to which Dr. Stone belongs, there is usually a protagonist who pursues a dream and does everything for it. Typically, he becomes stronger and undergoes intense training. This is especially true for many older mangas like Naruto, Dragon Ball, and One Piece.
However, Inagaki revealed that he wanted to break with people’s obsession with Superman and superheroes. Instead, he wanted to write from the perspective of ordinary average people. For him, it was important that a manga be funny and entertaining, even if he feared that other mangakas might be upset with him for this statement:
In today’s entertainment landscape, there are a lot of supermen and superheroes who can do everything. But in reality, most people are not like that. I’ve thought about the average person. For an average person to achieve something, they have to work hard and keep working towards their goal. I think that’s cool, and that’s what I wanted to write about. I wondered how to best portray this average person who works hard for their goal.
To strengthen this vision, he came up with the idea of petrification. Because when you are petrified, there is nothing you can do about it. But in this situation, at least you can count, just like the main character Senku does. He embodies the idea of working diligently by counting for thousands of years.
How successful is he with this idea? A manga adaptation of Dr. Stone has now been turned into an anime, which speaks volumes about how popular the original work was. On MyAnimeList, Dr. Stone has a rating of 8.27 out of 10 (based on over 1 million reviews).
Thus, the anime is rated even higher than Dragon Ball (7.98) and Naruto (8.00). One could say that Inagaki was spot on with his idea of not making the hero a fierce fighter but rather a diligent average person. Not to mention that Senku is already a bit of a genius.
Those who want to watch Dr. Stone in streaming can do so on Crunchyroll and Netflix. However, currently, there is a particularly successful anime on the latter platform that recently landed in 3rd place in the global charts. It also follows a person who wants to lead an ordinary life: New anime jumps to 3rd place in the international Netflix charts – even reaching 1st in Japan
