Dr. Stone Reboot: Byakuya

I only see one other review for this, which is obnoxiously long and absolutely shits on the manga with pages of elitist pessimism. So, here I am to keep the balance. If you like Dr. Stone, you will like this. It has the same science-y shounen solutions and great potential for the main series despite the absence of the main characters. There's also a healthy dose of tragedy. 10 billion percent recommend. However, the story focuses less on Byakuya than I expected, as most of his development was already depicted in the main series. The title implies we would learn a great deal more about Byakuya than we did, but it also creates opportunity for the well-done unexpected shift in focus that occurs in the latter half of the story.

『This review contains MINOR SPOILERS from Dr.Stone and Dr.Stone Reboot: Byakuya.』

────「También está disponible en español.」

Here I go...

Dr.Stone Reboot: Byakuya is one of those things that you can consider VERY GOOD or VERY BAD. And here below I'm going to explain the reasons why.

First of all, I'll explain why this can be considered BAD; with that in mind, you have to know that this is totally canon ─very much to my regret─ and the story is not only made by Riichiro but that Boichi took the lead this time too (something that doesn't happen in the original series). And that's directly the problem here.

I'm a reader of Boichi and, yes, he's a master of sci-fi, he has done very interesting things in his previous works, but Dr. Stone is NOT from Boichi, so letting him take control of this spin-off was a mistake.

◌ Why?
↳ Basically 'cause Dr. Stone DOESN'T TRY to be "science fiction." I want to make this point very clear: what attracts me most about Dr. Stone is its "didactic", "realistic" factor, not just the fact that it has science and that's it (and I know many of you do too).

However, it's true that the series has touched sci-fi on a couple of occasions and it's very likely that, the closer we get to the end, the greater the involvement of science fiction (the petrifying apparatus and the why man are proof of that). In spite of all this, Senkuu and his friends have always remained attached to reality as much as they can and that's something notice when reading the manga.

Dr.Stone Reboot: Byakuya breaks the pattern of the series. In almost every chapter I felt that I was reading a new spin-off of Origin (one of the most recent works by Boichi) and not Dr.Stone itself.

In fact, the evolution of Rei (the robot on the cover) is almost identical to the evolution of **** in an Origin special.

◦ ◦ ◦ ➤ Well, now, why, with all these reasons, Dr.Stone Reboot: Byakuya could be considered GOOD?

Let's see... In the chapters (especially from chapter 5 onwards) we start to watch the evolution of a robot ─an android, an AI, whatever you want to call it─ with the knowledge that HUMANITY HAS for that moment in time. What is the difference that leads the robot to develop at a "fictional" level? ─the length of its life.

This, readers, exposes one of the main advantages about AIs. Einstein had children, but his children did not inherit their father's knowledge, they would've to learn everything from ZERO. AIs, on the other hand, since they learn something remain in their database and have ALL THE TIME IN THE UNIVERSE to learn more.

◌ This is precisely why, the more time passed, the more complex and fictional Rei became.

Rei's evolution in this manga represents the evolution that HUMANITY would've had if it had been active during the 3700 years of petrification. Which, from my perspective, is very poetic.

↴

➠ In conclusion, if «Dr.Stone Reboot: Byakuya» had been a spin-off of some of Boichi's work, it would be a MAGNIFICENT MANGA. But as it's NOT, now questions the development that the main series will have when approaches the ending and it makes us wonder what will happen to the things that Dr.Stone: Reboot Byakuya added to the Dr.Stone's universe...

◌ ◌ I really appreciate Boichi's work, but I'm disillusioned with the final result of this.
⤷ And that's why I'm giving this manga 6/10.

Now go and if you haven't read it, do it.
There're ten billion possibilities it make you think a lot of things.


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Aquí vamos...

Dr.Stone: Reboot Byakuya es una de esas cosas que puedes considerar MUY BUENA o MUY MALA. Y a continuación les voy a explicar las razones.

Primero que nada, les explicaré porque puede ser considerada MALA; para eso hay que saber que esto es totalmente canon --muy a mi pesar-- y que la historia no está sólo hecha por Riichiro sino que Boichi tomó el mando en esta ocasión también (algo que no pasa en la serie original). Y eso es directamente el problema aquí.

Yo soy un lector de Boichi y, sí, es un maestro de la ciencia ficción, ha hecho cosas muy interesantes en sus anteriores trabajos, pero Dr. Stone NO es de Boichi, por lo que dejarle tomar el control de este spin-off fue un error.

◌ ¿Por qué?
↳ Básicamente porque Dr. Stone NO INTENTA ser "ciencia ficción". Quiero dejar este punto muy claro, y es que, a mí lo que más me atrae de Dr. Stone es su factor "didáctico", "realista", no sólo el hecho de que tenga ciencia y ya está (y yo sé que a muchos les sucede igual).

Ahora bien, es cierto que la serie ha rozado la ciencia ficción en un par de ocasiones y es muy probable que, mientras más nos vayamos acercando al final, mayor será la implicación de ésta (por el aparato petrificador y el hombre del why). Pese a todo esto, Senkuu y sus amigos siempre se han mantenido apegados a la realidad lo más que pueden y eso es algo que notas al leer el manga.

Dr.Stone: Reboot Byakuya rompe los esquemas de la serie. En casi todos los capítulos sentí que leía un nuevo spin-off de Origin (una de las obras más recientes de Boichi) y no Dr.Stone en sí mismo.

De hecho, la evolución de Rei (el robot en la portada) es casi idéntica a la evolución de **** en un especial de Origin.

◦ ◦ ◦ ➤ Bien, ahora, ¿por qué, con todas estas razones, Dr.Stone: Reboot Byakuya podría ser considerado BUENO?

Veamos, en los capítulos (especialmente a partir del capítulo 5) comenzamos a ver la evolución de un robot --un androide, una IA, como queráis llamarlo-- con los conocimientos que TIENE la HUMANIDAD para ese momento del tiempo. ¿Cuál es la diferencia que lleva al robot a desarrollarse a un nivel "ficticio"? --La duración de su vida.

Esto, lectores, expone una de las principales ventajas sobre las IAs. Y es que Einstein tuvo hijos, pero sus hijos no heredaron el conocimiento de su padre, tendrían que aprenderlo todo desde CERO. Las IAs, por otra parte, desde que aprenden algo queda en su base de datos y tienen TODO EL TIEMPO DEL UNIVERSO para seguir desarrollándose.

◌ Es precisamente por esto que, mientras más pasaba el tiempo, mayor se volvía la complejidad y el factor ficción de Rei.

La evolución de Rei en este manga representa la evolución que habría tenido la HUMANIDAD si hubiera estado activa durante los 3700 años de petrificación. Lo cual, desde mi perspectiva, es algo muy poético.

↴

➠ En conclusión, si 'Dr.Stone: Reboot Byakuya' fuera el spin-off de algunos de los trabajos de Boichi, sería un MAGNÍFICO MANGA. Pero, como NO lo es, ahora coloca en tela de juicio el desarrollo que tendrá la serie principal cuando se aproxime al final y las cosas que sucederán con lo que Dr.Stone: Reboot Byakuya agregó al universo de Dr.Stone...

◌ ◌ Realmente aprecio el trabajo de Boichi, pero me he decepcionado con el resultado final de esto.
⤷ Y es por esto le doy a este manga un 6/10.

Ahora ve y, si no lo has leído, léelo.
Hay un diez billones de posibilidades que te haga pensar muchas cosas.

Ah, yes. "Dr. Stone Reboob: Who's Byakuya, Again?"

Let me prepend the following by saying no manga is perfect, and the acclaimed Weekly Jump mainstay Dr. Stone is no exception. There's often the classic Jump contrivance ("this will go my way because I'm very determined, dattebayo!"), the omnipresent melodramatism, the use of hyped-up terms for completely unrelated concepts (e.g. calling a radio a "smartphone" just because that's the word modern kids learn first), the occasional out-of-character behavior, and sexualization of characters to an uncalled-for extent. Thankfully, these weaknesses are well-offset by Dr. Stone's numerous strengths.

Where the spin-off comes in is gathering pretty much all of the weakest aspects of the original while adding some of its own in a concentrated cocktail of low-effort pandering and creative bankruptcy without any redeeming qualities other than Boichi's characteristically expressive art. It's a functional equivalent of a summer break episode set in a low Earth orbit. Of course, the decidedly short run and narrow focus played their part in making it worse than it deserved to be, but it didn't *have* to be this short in the first place. That was just an arbitrary decision, presumably on the side of the publisher, Shueisha. Together, we will try to get to the bottom of this myst... er, the reason why it ended up that way.

Feeling dreadful yet? No? Good. Let's move on to the bigger problem, which is the titular character, Byakuya Ishigami himself. The way he was portrayed in the original Dr. Stone made him look like one of the coolest characters, so it was natural that readers had wanted more of him in some form. And at first, this short spin-off seemed like a godsend to everyone who felt Byakuya deserved more screen time. What they received, however, was a mini-series with a disturbing *lack* of Byakuya: in fact, he's totally absent in most of it! To add to the injury, it actually *detracts* from his character in a major way. The moment the disaster hits Earth, every one of Byakuya's decisions becomes based on the notion that it will be Senku who will wake up by himself and save humanity, and this notion is grounded in... neither science nor reason, but a bunch of purely emotion-driven assumptions.

Think about it. He didn't consider even for a moment that somebody else could wake up before Senku. Nor that they should prioritize the assumption that petrification is irreversible and the new civilization has to be able to make it on its own. Nor that Senku's statue could end up lost underground, broken, or eroded beyond repair before depetrification is solved. Nor that he'll be quickly killed by the primitive world even if he does wake up—which would be a reasonable assumption considering he *almost was* killed by a lion! None of these nor any other options are considered even as a passing thought—and frankly, they are all ten billion percent™ more likely than what we got in the canon storyline. Make no mistake: I'm not entirely happy about how this was explained away in the original series, either. Far too many concessions have been made to make the plot pieces conveniently fall into place at the expense of character agency and sensibility. Realistically, for the astronaut team it would've been a far safer bet to repeat most of Senku's initial steps in restoring and preserving primitive technology to ensure long-term survival of the colony and accelerated rate of development. At the very least they could have ensured that the basics are taught and preserved in whatever convenient form to the entire populace, so it doesn't always hinge on the one girl who has to memorize a hundred vague precepts and stay alive and in good enough mental shape to pass them on—because every astronaut has the concept of redundancy drilled into them.

But Senku just had to be the Jump protagonist, AKA the most powerful and plot-armor-coated entity in existence. As a result, Byakuya doesn't even bother coming up with a convincing rationale that would prioritize sensible decisions that *also* happen to work out for Senku if everything was to go as he envisioned. He just goes one step ahead and unashamedly weaves his narrative around ensuring that *Senku* has everything he needs when he is eventually depetrified, and this is the only right thing to do. Instead of, you know, maximizing the chances of survival of the *colony* that is already far too small to take extra risks. Apparently that's the best course of action, least likely to end up in failure—which is, well, the end of all humanity. And I'd be fine with having selfish reasons, but remember that just moments earlier the same guy claimed they had to "save humanity". Not Senku—humanity! But they will somehow do so by helping Senku first, with humanity taking a backseat. What a load of inexcusable horseshit this line of thought is.

The other characters are no better for buying into Byakuya's (lack of) reasoning, but I can accept them being too depressed to argue against somebody who's read the Dr. Stone script in advance. I mean I'd probably consider humanity as good as doomed in that scenario anyway, so yeah, why not humor the crazy guy and let him pass away believing he did the right thing? The only one who has the balls to stand up to Byakuya's selfishness is Shamil—who is immediately put in his place for daring to question the father of a Jump protagonist. When called out, Byakuya nearly bullies the opponent into submission by turning this into a fight for authority over the group—which he only has by the virtue of being the Jump dad, despite Yakov being the actual commander for the mission. This self-righteousness born from plot armor and the fact that he gets away with it without much opposition are insulting to intelligence. You know, that thing we like Senku for.

Honestly, the way Boichi wrote Byakuya here is such a low blow to his character. Not to mention that for a series so preoccupied with the concept of science and making it look cool at all costs, Byakuya sure loves being completely under control of his gut feelings and other cognitive biases, sending the wrong message without ever acknowledging it. There is no love for *actual science* here—just a shocking absence thereof. I understand that he's a loving and loyal father and all, but the characters have to have at least a modicum of self-awareness. Show me the thought process, show me the actual conflict of opinions coming from highly-educated professionals, best people on the job, instead of this limp attempt to use kindergarten-level rhetorics to talk Byakuya out of his obsession. This could have been a good opportunity to open an interesting insight into rational vs. irrational thinking, e.g. whether it's better to follow the brain or the heart in extreme situations—something Interstellar tried to execute (and also failed at it, albeit not as horribly). Or, alternatively, the conflict of a person who is torn between trying to save his son and trying to save the rest of humanity. You know, the poignant psychological motifs that make you think what you'd do in a situation like this. Evidently, Boichi isn't as capable a writer as he is an artist—and this really wasn't a secret, based on his earlier series. But his writing was sufficient for the actual goal at hand—which we'll move on to right now.

Still with me? Impressive resilience. You leave me no choice but to dirty our hands with our main offender and the only conceivable reason this abomination exists. Enter the actual main character, Rei—yet another Star-Wars-esque knockoff robot sidekick with a distinctly Japanese manga personality trait of exhibiting ten billion percent more emotional expressiveness than actual people, let alone the Japanese. And of course, being the Jump protagonist for this series, it immediately embodies all the dumbest traits thereof. Right from the start it's introduced as a self-aware AI supercomputer (which, let me remind you, wasn't yet a thing as of the beginning of the main story, and would still be at least a decade or two away, realistically) that Byakuya "helped develop" as his "side-project" which we had no idea about because he was presented as a teacher and a carefree person, not a hard-working genius programmer and/or engineer with deep connections in the industry. Gosh, what a champ this Byakuya is! I bet his other side-projects helped cure cancer, or solve cold fusion, or whatever other exploits that would've easily made him Dr. Stone's version of Elon Musk if whoever came up with this idea gave a crap about making Byakuya a self-consistent character. Doing something amazing offscreen doesn't make a character great; it's the journey, the hardships, and the mindset that drives them that make it interesting. Loving Senku is not a character trait, either, it does not help develop advanced robots. We need to see the why and how of this process: what spurred Byakuya to even start thinking about it, what he struggled with, how he managed to get it done. We don't know remotely enough about him to see how something like Rei would come to exist as a result of his ambitions. We don't even know what sort of ambitions lead to it being a thing in the first place!

But back to Rei. It is introduced very suddenly and unnaturally, as if none of the senior ISS crew knew what cargo they would be receiving, and as if the world's most intelligent AI that is also a supercomputer and the first robot to operate in zero-g was just stuffed in the closet until it was the right time for it to make a dramatic entrance. Normally, everyone would know about this months in advance, and it would attract more media attention than a celebrity space tourist coming to ISS or whatever. Incredible retcon quality right there. Over the course of the manga's nine chapters which cover the span of the entire time Senku and the others had spent petrified, Rei manages increasingly unrealistic endeavors, as is par for the course for the center of the universe any Jump protagonist is—even if it's a protagonist of a short spin-off. These endeavors culminate in it getting a new synthetic body... of a bombshell blonde girl. Because fucking of course. And all of this is done for dear Byakuya in the same sort of tiresome obsession that Byakuya has for Senku, even though with Rei's already-superhuman intelligence, it certainly must understand that Byakuya is long dead and nobody is returning to the ISS in foreseeable future. I guess even superhuman intelligence can overlook something so simple when it's convenient for the plot. The reason why it was so obsessed with Byakuya is never explained, either. Not that any explanation would make sense...

Honestly, I don't want to keep talking about this character any longer—which is good, I guess, because there simply isn't anything else to say. It's just a dumb mascot for kid readers, doing vaguely "sciencey" things that casually waltz all the way into the realm of high fantasy (with alien dragons and all—no, I'm not joking) and are spiced up by copious amounts of needless melodrama and a cult of character strong enough to make Joseph Stalin blush like a tsundere schoolgirl. And it's also the reason why this spin-off was developed without the involvement of the writer and the science consultant of the main series. They were simply unneeded—the goal was not to create more of bona fide Dr. Stone, after all: it was to create a marketable mascot and trick the buyer into thinking this book was about one of their favorite characters—which it wasn't. It was about Rei, somebody who goes decidedly against what Dr. Stone is about—which is the fun of using real, publicly available, mostly basic science and engineering knowledge to solve survival problems, and seeing how a primitive civilization can expand using such knowledge. The fun of making something functional out of sticks and vines and rocks has nothing to do with a nonsensical obsessive robot mining comets and satellites for thousands of years to upgrade itself into a gynoid in a futuristic space station made via recursive additive synthesis. It boggles my mind that people see them on the same level just because both are somehow related to "science".

Frankly, the density of cringe and the utter lack of subtlety or sense in the writing of Dr. Stone Reboot: Byakuya are suffocating even compared to the usual Weekly Shonen Jump fare. It began innocuously enough, but already starting with chapter 2 I had just about one question: why was this necessary? I mean, by the end of the chapter we get to "enjoy" the following gem: as the astronauts are tasked with finding a method of reducing the margin of error in calculating the optimal descent trajectory to safely hit their target, Byakuya has an eureka moment which he immediately discusses with the rest of the crew—who, as we are told in the same chapter, are all PhDs:
"I've got our solution!"
"You figured out how to reduce our margin of error?"
"If it's the atmosphere throwing us off, let's just plug that data into the computer as well!"
Ooh. Oooohhhhhhhhh... So that's what was missing! We need to put the magic numbers into the magic box which will give us the needed results. Dayum! The pea-brained astronaut peasants, graced by this pearl of heavenly wisdom, then raise their mud-covered faces once more to ask an obvious question as to where the data for the atmospheric model and the required processing power would come from. To which Byakuya tells them not to sweat the small details and presents the end-all solution: Rei. Because it's a supercomputer, duh. Of course, that's what the solution had to be. PhD my ass, I'm genuinely impressed all these characters managed to graduate from high school with this level of critical thinking. I understand that a sci-fi script needs to be dumbed down for kids to make sense of what's going on, but this is knocking it all the way down to a level of a gag parody. A bad one at that.

Before you run to curse at me in private messages for bashing this spin-off so hard, please believe that I have rational reasons for doing so. See, I'm well-aware that normally there is no harm in having some sort of an expanded universe surrounding a popular work of fiction. In many cases it enriches the fictional universe. There are many spin-offs that are no less valuable than the originals, and even some fanfics out there that keep up in terms of depth and character development. All of this is cool by me. But this is one of the few sad cases where it would actually be better if it were never written, because it perverts your perception of the canon characters and setting. It portrays Byakuya as an obsessive, irrational, and myopic person who is far more successful than he deserves to be—a far cry from the initial impression one has of him based on his depiction in Dr. Stone. It portrays the setting as a world where the word "science" is used as an excuse for what is arguably magic—ironic, considering how in the original this is exactly how the primitives were thinking about it. It betrays the very foundations of Dr. Stone's narrative which is predominantly grounded in scientific determinism rather than stringing together assumptions, off-chances, and loads of wishful thinking in a mishmash of whatever-goes.

A spin-off, or a sequel, or some other sort of official expansion that devalues the original work can do harm by simply existing, and it's much worse than having an unrelated standalone work fail. That's a risk writers and producers should realize when expanding their stories, but they almost never care because a good portion of the time even a critical failure can still bring profit in extra sales of merchandise and whatnot if the franchise it piggybacks on has enough drawing power by itself. Pardon me for bringing Star Wars into this again, but the godawful prequels—as laughable as they were in terms of writing, acting, and directing—were still a massive financial success for Lucas because of all the toys and games and clothes and amusement park rides. And that's exactly the kind of soulless thing this is: a vehicle for byproduct sales conceived by a greedy publisher without the involvement of the original creator. No offense to Boichi's art though: it is superb as always. But that's about the only positive thing I can say about this garbage.

In conclusion, let us ponder a bit about what this manga could have been if it were an honest spin-off (or "reboot", as it calls itself) true to Dr. Stone's ideals, storytelling principles, and overall writing quality. First of all, it would be focused on the man himself, Byakuya: how he was developed as a person, how he acquired his interest in science and passed it on to Senku, and how it affected his own life. A deeper insight into what made him the character we came to know, love, and respect, and how he managed to raise Senku into another character we love. Instead of the one-sided obsession with Senku driving his decisions and the other astronauts playing the role of cardboard yes men, we would see how it was Byakuya's curiosity, charm, wit, and sharp mind that earned him the leadership over the team—not unlike how it was done in Space Brothers (which is excellent, by the way!). We would see how they—a team of five highly trained adults and a somewhat less-trained space tourist—built their own village and how it differed from what Senku and others did. We would see the expanded backstory of the second village. We would follow the team's discussions and arguments on how to ensure that the essential life-preserving knowledge isn't lost over the centuries. We would see Byakuya's ingenuity and determination as he worked to ensure his colony's survival, and the pain of loss as his friends succumbed to injuries and illnesses instead of promptly killing them off almost as a passing notion. In other words, we would see the aspects of him that would make him his own character and not just Senku's dad. And most importantly, there would be no Rei at all—because honestly, fuck that. Let the ISS burn as well; it has no meaningful role in the story, anyway. The last thing Dr. Stone needs is a superhuman AI in the body of a sexy naked anime girl overseeing the world in a lone Evangelion-esque space station as some kind of a postmodern deity. Truly the darkest timeline.

I hope you're satisfied, Shueisha. You've successfully kept up your image as the publisher who does their damnedest to milk and suck everything good out of the properties that end up in their care until they become a dry husk. Readers, too—you have to start developing standards at some point in your life. The earlier, the better. Especially if you're big fans. Don't just blindly accept something as good only because it's related to something you love or panders to your closet interests. Vote with your time and/or your wallets, and let this sad attempt at expanding Dr. Stone's universe sink to where it belongs: in the gutter.