Dr. Stone Editor Reveals How Series Became An Anime

Dr. Stone has revealed a “Stone World” wherein high school students are attempting to recreate human civilization after the population of the earth was randomly encased in stone prisons for thousands of years. The franchise originally premiered in Weekly Shonen Jump in 2017 but has managed to take the world by storm with its anime premiering during this sweltering summer season. We got the chance to chat with the editor of the ingenious series, Hiroyuki Honda, at the recent Anime Expo convention as to how this franchise became an anime:

Comicbook: How did Dr. Stone get chosen to become an anime?

Hiroyuki Honda: Dr. Stone has been running in Weekly Shonen Jump for a while, and it’s been very popular. To the point where we were kind of like “We kind of want to make an anime series of this, do you want to work together?” and we were very graciously accepting the offer. Here you go.

Easy peezy lemon squeezy! When a manga franchise is able to stand on its own legs within the weekly Japanese publications such as Shonen Jump, it’s only a matter of time until an anime series becomes the obvious next step to garner a brand new audience to the material itself. We’re sure that based on the popularity of the franchise, we’ll be seeing additional merchandise and potentially feature length films spawning from the characters themselves.

Have you been digging the Dr. Stone anime so far? Feel free to let us know in the comments or hit me up directly on Twitter @EVComedy to talk all things comics, anime, and stone worlds!

Dr. Stone was originally created by Riichiro Inagaki with illustrations provided by Boichi for Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump in 2017. The series follows two boys (initially) as they try and save a world that’s been completely petrified in stone, and has so far been collected into several volumes since it’s release, and Viz Media has licensed the series for an English language release.

The anime series is currently listed with 24 episodes, and can currently be found streaming on Crunchyroll. Funimation will be offering the English dub at a later date, and they describe the series as such, “Several thousand years after a mysterious phenomenon that turns all of humanity to stone, the extraordinarily intelligent, science-driven boy, Senku Ishigami, awakens. Facing a world of stone and the total collapse of civilization, Senku makes up his mind to use science to rebuild the world. Starting with his super strong childhood friend Taiju Oki, who awakened at the same time, they will begin to rebuild civilization from nothing… Depicting two million years of scientific history from the Stone Age to present day, the unprecedented crafting adventure story is about to begin!”