Dr. Stone Announces New Spin-Off

Riichiro Inagaki and Boichi’s Dr. Stone has been one of the more popular series to come out of Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump in the last couple of years because of how different it’s become from the other series in the magazine, but now it’s about to break ground in another way. The latest issue of the magazine revealed that Dr. Stone is about to get a spin-off manga focused on the adventures of Senku’s father Byakuya. This is a pretty serendipitous time as well with Byakuya’s arc in the anime officially kicking off in the latest episode.

Dr. Stone‘s new spin-off will be titled Dr. Stone reboot: Byakuya, and it will begin with the next issue of the magazine on October 27th. According to details from series writer Riichiro Inagaki’s Twitter, this new spin-off will be running for nine chapters in total and illustrator of the main series, Boichi, will be writing and illustrating the new series.

This also marks the first time a main series and its spin-off run concurrently in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump, Inagaki will be supervising the spin-off’s character dialogue and reactions, and fans won’t need to be caught up with the main series in order to enjoy the spin-off. It works as supplemental material for the original, but also exists outside of the main story.

This makes a lot of sense considering there was a mini-arc in the series exploring how Senku’s father Byakuya came to grips with life in the Stone World 3,000 years before Senku woke up, and this spin-off might explore this further. If you wanted to catch up with the Dr. Stone anime, which is also beginning to adapt the Byakuya history from the main series, you can currently find it streaming on Crunchyroll and FunimationNow, and the series is also airing new episodes as part of Adult Swim’s Toonami programming block.

Originally created by Riichiro Inagaki with illustrations provided by Boichi for Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump in 2017, the series is officially described 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!”