Dr. Stone Episode 8 Review: Food of the Gods

Greetings everyone! This episode was so much fun! Do I say that all the time about Dr. Stone? Maybe. But still! For one thing, they were some great lines about science and scientific perspective from Senkuu. Now, here’s a recap of the episode with my thoughts.

I’m familiar with wild grains, sulfa drugs, and a little bit about making electricity, but I won’t pretend I knew all of this. According to the “map” Senku lays out, a source of electricity is needed in the production of sulfa antibiotics. To generate electricity, you need phosphorus (for light?), copper (probably for wires?), and refined iron metal (to make strong magnets).

So, the first thing Senkuu needs to do is make refined iron by heating up iron mineral powder to insanely high temperatures. While collecting iron mineral from stones in the stream, Senkuu, Chrome, and Kohaku meet Suika, an odd child who likes wearing a melon rind over her head. Senku treats her nicely, so the child (Suika) tries to to be helpful. It doesn’t amount to much in this episode, but it might in the future.

An influx of oxygen is heated to heat the mineral and make iron. This required pumping air into the makeshift bellows for days at a time. (This brings back memories of the ironworks in Princess Mononoke!) Anyway, Senkuu and company don’t have enough manpower to pump it long enough. They need more people. Partly to “bait” people from the village, and partly as a way to keep surviving separate from the village, Senkuu decides to make delicious food. Here’s something I know about! If you can find a non-poisonous nut or grain, you can make flour. I’ve made acorn flour before. In Dr. Stone, they use foxtail plants.

Even if yeast and gluten were added, wild flour just isn’t very suitable for making bread. But you know what you can make? Noodles. AKA ramen. Like Senkuu said, the consistency will be crumbly as fuck, and it may be bitter, but it’s nutritious. To Chrome, Suika, and Kohaku, who have never had wheat flour noodles, foxtail grain ramen is like the food of the gods. With this, they might be able to win over a few strong, hungry guys from the village. (Speaking of which, this episode points out that the villagers have some information, folk tales, and words that were only available in the technological civilization. Ruri is the one who taught them. How do you think she knows that stuff?)

(Probably the same way you’re interested in rocks and minerals.)

This episode served to introduce Suika, develop the characters, and show the antibiotic-making process beginning. You can learn a good amount about the characters’ personalities from watching this episode, and I like that. There is also a lot of over-the-top reaction comedy, which isn’t really my #1 preferred style of comedy, but I don’t mind it much, either. The music, voice-acting, and art were good and entertaining as usual. Aside from that, the meat of the episode is made of the facts you can learn about minerals/metals (iron), survival (wild grains), and planetary physics (the North Star isn’t true North anymore).

Well that’s great, says me, who has always liked science and loved “useless knowledge” in general. But, says the wiser me, episode 8 of Dr. Stone might not be to your liking if you don’t like watching the processes involved and learning random things. There’s no action. There’s no plot progression. There’s still no clue about what’s going on with Taiju and Yuzuriha. I truly enjoyed this episode, but from a “critic” view, there’s not much to it.