Dr. Stone’s Identity Revealed! (episode 2)

It was inevitable. Remember back in episode 1, when Senku compared himself and Taiju to Adam and Eve? Where two people live in Paradise, a serpent is bound to rear its head. Like the Genesis serpent, Tsukasa speaks beguilingly, flattering Senku and convincing Taiju that Tsukasa is “a really good guy.”

Before long, though, Tsukasa murders in cold blood, in a fit of fury. He also declares his intent to revive only the “pure-hearted”, the “untainted.” It’s clear that Tsukasa has his eye set on being the “King of the Stone World”, as the episode’s title goes; and it’s worth remembering that in the Bible, the devil is sometimes called “The King of this World” (or Lord, Prince, etc.).

In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion… isn’t exactly sleeping tonight.

Tsukasa’s first act in the new world is to slay a lion–a good deed, naturally, which saves Senku and Taiju from becoming the last humans in the stone world as well as the first. His second act, though, is to skin the lion and don its skin. (One might say he does so in a fit of furry. But I digress.) From then on, he stalks about in his lionskin, embodying the biblical verse that declares, “Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a lion, seeking whom he may devour.”

Wearing the Lion’s skin also calls to mind the mythological figure of Hercules, who allegedly fought a lion with his bare hands (like Tsukasa does). This lion could not be pierced by any weapon short of its own claws, so H strangled it instead. Then he skinned the lion with its own fingernails, put the skin on, and went home to impress Mrs. H. From then on he wore the lion skin in place of armor.

You might think, “Isn’t Hercules a good guy? Isn’t this a positive comparison?” Well, Taiju, set aside everything you learned from Disney for a second, and get to know the real Hercules, who murdered his family and raped a woman.

Way to trigger a flag, genius.

And yeah, he also did some good things like saving people’s lives. Like Shinsu.

The point is, nobody’s untainted. Not Tsukasa, not Hercules (even though he was the son of Zeus), not even Senku and Taiju. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn observed, the line between good and evil runs down the center of every human heart.

And yet, clearly we’re supposed to root for Senku as the good guy and see Tsukasa as the antagonist. So what sets the two apart?

I think it’s simply that Senku rejects Tsukasa’s division of the world into the tainted and untainted. In this episode, Senku introduces soup and calls it a “stone” on which their lives depend, their “doctor”. That’s right–Dr. Stone is a bar of soap!

And metaphorically, of course, it’s Senku, who aims to make the world not untainted, but healthy. Whether it’s the germs of disease or of judgementalism, Senku is ready to wash them away.

Take a bath.