All my friends are dead.
What They Say:
Episode #16: “A Tale for the Ages”
The Review
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Everybody sit down and grab your milk and cookies, Ruri has a story to tell.
Ruri starts by explaining that the 100th story she was told is the beginnings of their civilization. She starts relating things from the perspective of a man who is very familiar to Senku, his father Byakuya. The slightly goofy father’s dream was to become an astronaut, but he failed his fitness test. More specifically he failed the swimming in space attire part of the test.
His young son attempts to help him achieve his goals because Byakuya’s dream becomes his son’s. When the next recruitment comes around Byakuya makes the cut and becomes one of the small number of folks to head to the International Space Station.
One thing I have to comment on right away is Byakuya’s voice, it is terrible. It’s weird and grating. Much like how Taiju was simply too over-the-top in Japanese, the English dub might win out regarding his voice. I hope.
Joining him on the ISS are scientists and cosmonauts Yakov, Darya, and Samil. NASA astronaut Connie Lee is also there, and one space tourist Lillian Weinberg. She’s a famous singer in the Dr. Stone timeline, a perky blond woman who looks a lot like the girls we’ve met in the present era. Everything up until this point is pretty accurate. There are still six-person missions at the ISS ongoing, the makeup of the current crew of scientists makes sense. After introductions and some bonding, the group witnesses the events which change the world from orbit.
The idea of being one of the last humans alive, trapped in space with no mission control, is beyond terrifying. The group does look shocked, confused, and they contemplate waiting for help. Byakuya says they should head down to earth because nobody is coming to save them.
The implications of the discovery that all the humans of the village descend from just six individuals is about as realistic as the petrifaction wave. The minimum viable human population for sustainability for space colonization has been estimated at 160 individuals. The closest known actual example of a small population sustaining itself is Tristan da Cunha, of whom the population descends from about 15 people. Beyond the problems of inbreeding (even with strict control, after 3 generations you’re breeding back into your own line) there’s a very high chance that the population could have been wiped out by any single geological disaster or sickness. Even if two of the survivors happen to be doctors.
Also, after 3,000 years, assuming the population didn’t get obliterated by disease, weather, war, or whatever, there should have been a lot more folks who split off and went and made their own villages. Maybe there are, they have mentioned village outcasts.
I don’t even want to get into the language thing I’ve brought up before. Language is the last thing anyone ever thinks about. A population descended from one Japanese guy, three Russians, one Chinese and one American would have probably been speaking some mixed-language descended from Russian and English, maybe with a smattering of Japanese because of the location. Even then, don’t expect anyone from now to understand any of it.
In Summary:
This episode of Dr. Stone is both a stretch and probably carries the scariest ramifications of any anime I’ve seen in a long time. The real science of what it takes to go to space is solid, even if all of what follows isn’t. I still have a bunch of problems with the premise of a population of humans that small surviving, even if they had enough genetic diversity to carry life forward. Then again, this series requires a ton of suspension of belief to make any sort of logical sense.
Episode Grade: B
Streamed by: Crunchyroll, Funimation, Toonami!
