Dr. Stone: Stone Age Science fiction? what the heck?

[Kato]

But.. I mean, I don't know anything about hunting or foraging (that's not video game related) but they have literally no competition because in three thousand years they never expanded (which is a terrible strategy in 4x). They should be drowning in wildlife and at least simple fruit to gather, and fish. It's Japan after all. There's really no reason for them to have food shortages, short of some disaster. I mean, lacking medical knowledge might be hindering their expansion but them sticking to one village for a thousand years is just... Crazy. But that's been discussed before.

Anyway, yes, expansion time! No barbarians, no other civs, it's all free for the taking! Go grab it, build as many settlements as possible and in a few hundred turns you can go to Mars! Or Alpha Centauri.

[PraetorDragoon]

This is how I usually roll in 4X games. Heavily focus on science, and then realized I should have expanded several hundered turns before. Still, tanks crush barbarians (aside from spearmen on hills) so expansion shouldn't be that hard.

[Cozzer]

Fact: one of the next chapters should be a big Civilization II shout-out with the whole village - science, tanks, gunpowder and everything - not being able to deal efficiently with a single lancer on a hill.

[LaZodiac]

Fact: one of the next chapters should be a big Civilization II shout-out with the whole village - science, tanks, gunpowder and everything - not being able to deal efficiently with a single lancer on a hill.

This was literally last arc with the pipe spear dude.

[Cozzer]

It... it was? I really need to re-read this from the beginning.

[LaZodiac]

It... it was? I really need to re-read this from the beginning.

Admittedly, they didn't have a GUN for their gunpowder, and their tank was shooting a dummy round since Senku legitimately does not want to kill people, but they did HAVE a tank, and they more or less finished the fight with weapons grade TNT after everything else failed and almost all of them nearly died because this one dude is just real good with a pointed stick.

[LaZodiac]

New chapter!

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Bread's not that ****ing hard to bake you guys jesus ****.

[Kato]

Well, I never tried it in a stone oven, but I'm not sure how much that matters... maybe they forgot to add yeast... wherever they got that from.
Also, ultra fast growing wheat!

But nice callback to Senku's agriculture lesson, nice tricking by Gen and with their knowledge they should be way ahead of actual stone age farmers, because they know about things like... fertilizer.

[LaZodiac]

Well, I never tried it in a stone oven, but I'm not sure how much that matters... maybe they forgot to add yeast... wherever they got that from.
Also, ultra fast growing wheat!

But nice callback to Senku's agriculture lesson, nice tricking by Gen and with their knowledge they should be way ahead of actual stone age farmers, because they know about things like... fertilizer.

Yeah the callbacks and science in this episode was pretty good!

And I mean their bread didn't rise at all, it's just burnt. You don't need YEAST, you just need wheat. You end up with some crap bread even if it's cooked well, but it's serviceable.

Also yes this series plays...fast and loose with time.

[PraetorDragoon]

My dad once tried to bake bread. It didn't end well.

[Braininthejar2]

And so, another weirdo unstoned.

I wonder why she still follows her boss - it's not like he can pay her. Is it a crush, or is it her 'safe mode' for dealing with the madness that surrounds her?

[Kato]

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It's called loyalty... With maybe a hint of crush.

So... I have to wonder... what did Reporter lady ask for? Did I miss it? Ryu sure is a pretty crappy boss but I guess... in a weird way also good. But mostly crap. And where exactly are they getting sugar from? Pure sugar is hard to get if you're not doing agriculture. And making Stollen without sugar... Also, yummy, Stollen.

And... I'm not sure I get the title/ Francoise'... uhm.. motto(?)

[Braininthejar2]

With them making modern food, do you think they'll have to unstone a dentist next?

[LaZodiac]

New chapter!

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D E S I R E.

[Kato]

New chapter!

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D E S I R E.

Uhm...
J U S T I C E?

Also, is it just me or does the story move further and further away from realistic characters? I mean, not like it was very concerned with this at any time but...

[LaZodiac]

Uhm...
J U S T I C E?

Also, is it just me or does the story move further and further away from realistic characters? I mean, not like it was very concerned with this at any time but...

I mean, Francois is a realistic character near as I can tell. Some people are just weirdos.

[Kato]

I mean, Francois is a realistic character near as I can tell. Some people are just weirdos.

Well, she walked two days straight or so... Maybe I'm just weak

Also, apparently the original translation went with noble instead of justice. Makes a lot mor sense to me.

[LaZodiac]

Well, she walked two days straight or so... Maybe I'm just weak

Also, apparently the original translation went with noble instead of justice. Makes a lot mor sense to me.

Aah, didn't realize that. Yeah, "Desire is noble" makes a far more...coherent thought than "Desire is justice". The latter honestly sounds like a jokey reference to otaku who go on about how flat is justice and such.

I mean, Francois is also a butler. They're way more durable on the whole than any of us, they do a lot of work!

[Gray Mage]

Uhm...
J U S T I C E?

Also, is it just me or does the story move further and further away from realistic characters? I mean, not like it was very concerned with this at any time but...

We were introduced at the start of the series with the smartest cientist/high schooler that kept track of time while petrified and the "The Strongest High School Primate". Realistic is relative.

I just mentally consider this to be a Danganronpa spin off with its Super High School X, but less murder.

[LaZodiac]

Surprise! It's a Holiday in Japan this Sunday so we're actually getting the manga out early this week! Officially even! Eat that!

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This was really cute, honestly. Cameras get! Also bread. The bread was realistic.

[Kato]

I'm a little skeptical whether wild yeast works that well for baking but I guess I'll buy it.

The camera was cute, and the art on the photos looked really nice. I still feel like pushing Einstein as THE scientist is a bit... well, not fair towards a lot of other people. But okay.

[Razade]

Not for the kind of bread they're popping out, not without sugar and more stable forms of yeast. They made cotton candy but they made it from boiling down mirin, the sugar would be hideously unrefined and we should question how the tribe had things like mirin but also had a food shortage. Mirin takes a lot of rice to make, so does sake, so they'd have to grow it. Wild rice just wouldn't get you the level of product you'd need even for a village that size. The fact they have the complex mechanisims to distill in the first place is a bit weird. Sake doesn't need hefty distilation but mirin does. The sugar they get from these things burning up in the fire is also really iffy, not to mention it'd probably just be a burned mess rather than rock sugar.

Honey would, if Dr. Stone wanted to be really authentic, be the sweetener of choice and honestly a way more interesting angle for the story to have gone. We domesticated honey bees fairly early on in the civilization ladder as it were and it wouldn't have been a weird thing to just introduce sugar cane. This is a world 10,000 years in the future, there's no telling what plants and animals have become in that time span. It's just as logical that sugar cane is on Japan as wheat is. Neither are native to the island after all.

The recipe given, with goats butter and sugars gained from fermented fruits, would certainly provide some kind of bread. The biggest problem is that these sorts of things are kind of squinting at "Stone Age". The village is certainly nearing the ceiling of Neolithic civilization with the sort of things they were doing before Senku. I hate to reiterate this but they have brewing and distillation before farming which is...strange. Especially on the scale we see them at. Every bit of coursework and further reading I've ever done indicates that we moved from hunting and gathering to agriculture was in part thanks to beer production. The village is at an odd place.

All of this of course assumes the manga-ka care about being 100% accurate. Which they don't and we shouldn't either. But to say that this was "realistic" is...a stretch. They certainly could make bread the way they're did it. They absolutely could not make the bread they made the way they made it with everything they have on hand. We may well have had yeast leavened breads as early as the Bronze Age but these would have been much more close to our Sourdough breads, where the culture would be moved from one baker to the next and also heavily dependent on the local beer making process. Most early bakers got their yeast from barm, a byproduct of beer making.

tl;dr - Them making the sorts of bread they're trying to make with the things they have isn't realistic in the slightest, but it's plausible enough so who cares.

[LaZodiac]

New chapter!

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This honestly feels too easy again, but I don't mind it. It's fun to learn that's how people discovered oil back in the day!

[Kato]

I'm not sure how common this method of oil discovery is but I don't mind. I don't know a thing about Japanese oil wells.
I do think their efforts to domesticate pigs is working surprisingly fast, though. But not as fast as their agricultural revolution.
Also : truffles in Japan? I guess I'll have to trust you, Françoise..

[Braininthejar2]

tl;dr - Them making the sorts of bread they're trying to make with the things they have isn't realistic in the slightest, but it's plausible enough so who cares.

Basically, Francois is as good at cooking, as the physical characters are at climbing trees and breaking stuff.

[Kato]

Basically, Francois is as good at cooking, as the physical characters are at climbing trees and breaking stuff.

I guess, yes, at some point the characters did become a bit superhuman. Or maybe I just missed it early on.

[Razade]

I guess, yes, at some point the characters did become a bit superhuman. Or maybe I just missed it early on.

Not Super-Human. They're going the "wide cast, mono-trait" method that things like Assassination Classroom used to good effect. Senku is the lens for this, the other characters are all just crystallization of themes and functions.

[Jayngfet]

I do think their efforts to domesticate pigs is working surprisingly fast, though. But not as fast as their agricultural revolution.

Those pigs are the descendants of domesticated ones and not much else. People don't realize that it only takes a few years, or at most a couple of generations, for a pig to turn essentially all the way back into it's wild ancestors. There are wild board in Japan, yes, but the populations mean you're probably getting 90% swine bred for domestication and the rest is actual boar.

[PraetorDragoon]

Spoiler: Chapter 95

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Is it two years already? Time flies by.

That last page gives me the chills. Moving on towards the big mystery of why everyone turned into stone?

[lord_khaine]

This really what we needed more than anything else though.
A rival civilisation to compete with!