Dr. Stone Chapter 79 Review by Emperor Spriggan This week's chapter title is 'The Moment you've always been waiting for,' a clear indication that it's referring to Tsukasa and his long awaited reunion with his sister. To add on to this, the first page of the chapter shows a petrified Mirai surrounded by light. Which means the stone all around her body is coming off slowly by slowly.
Around Mirai, the villagers all express shock at how incredible the reviving formula's effects are. Gen remarks that this is the first time anyone from the village has seen something like this, and Senkuu bluntly states that the real problem starts now. He then states that it's called revival formula because it's capable of bringing back even someone who has brain death to full health again. In the next panel, Mirai breaks out of her petrified state completely and Tsukasa seems shocked.
The two siblings look at each other, and Mirai immediately recognizes her older brother. There are clear differences between how he looks currently and how he looked several milleniums ago, notably the longer wavy hair. But it's definitely her beloved brother. She remarks about how he looks different now before asking how long she's been asleep. Tsukasa at first responds with 6 years, before retracting his answer and saying thousands and thousands of years and the two hug warmly.
Kohaku looks pensive before talking about how Tsukasa was aware there was no way for her to be saved, but nonetheless he kept persisting with finding a way to keep her alive. She briefly thinks back to how she did the same for her own sister, Ruri, by constantly fetching water for her when she was ill with pneumonia. Finally, she alludes to the chapter title by saying that this is what Tsukasa has always been waiting for.
At that moment, Hyouga appears next to Mirai and tells her to go wash up in the river to remove some of the stone fragments on her body. Okay, the sequence of events here is pretty odd. Was Hyouga with them the whole time? Or he just showed up at that specific moment?
Chrome is counting the number of dynamite sticks that they made from the nitroglycerin from the cave, realizing that there are some missing. Ginrou then tells him that it's probably because they used a bunch, so the numbers don't add up because of that. The Sciencer counters by saying that he never loses track of ingredients so there's no way he's wrong. Next to Senkuu, Ukyo remarks that if someone had indeed stolen one dynamite stick and he didn't pick up on it, there could only be one person capable of that.
The scenes change back to the village, where we see Suika walking towards a makeshift prison. It turns out to be Homura's prison. It's supposed to be Mantle's turn to watch over her, but he's always slacking off so chances of him being there are next to none. The dog with her barks towards something and it turns out that Mantle has been knocked out. Which of course means, the prison cell is empty, something that the dog attests to as it uncovers a dummy in Homura's place. Suika immediately alerts the village and we see Yo quickly retreating from a few places next to the prison. Confirming his return to the story, something which didn't take too long. Like Homura I'm pleased to see the author didn't forget Yo as well. He's a generally unlikeable character, but he does offer some form of entertainment to the story.
There's a brief flashback about how he intended on turning around his situation by recapturing Chrome since he was aware of which direction he went towards. He managed to find the village, which is short on man power at the moment due to everyone being with Senkuu and Tsukasa at the old hospital ruins. Yo manages to spot Homura in the prison, and she tells him that she has a message for Hyouga. It's related to freeing her and the masked man's true objective. An interesting detail to note here, probably the first bit of exposition we have gotten about Hyouga ever since the story started.
We switch back to where Senkuu and his group are, and there's a huge explosion in the background. Everyone there seems in shock, and Chrome wonders whether it was an accident. Senkuu realizes with horror that the explosion happened at the cave of miracles. Kaseki laments about how the miracle water has been buried alive and they can't use it to make anymore nitroglycerin. Tsukasa and Hyouga are standing next to Mirai as she washes herself, and in the back we have Homura watching as she clutches onto two sticks of dynamite. This explains who stole the dynamite from Chrome's collection, while at the same time finishing on Ukyo's monologue from before.
Senkuu realizes something is horribly wrong, and immediately rushes to where Tsukasa and Mirai are, shouting at them to get away from there. Behind the two siblings, Hyouga has a sinister smile. He proceeds to lunge with his spear towards Mirai, and her older brother becomes aware of the danger. He remarks to himself how even an ambush or attack in his sleep would never take out the strongest high schooler (Something similar happened with Whitebeard in One Piece and Ace). However, if Tsukasa had someone to protect, then things would change completely. He proceeds to take his mask off again, akin to the previous chapter, before admitting that he was always waiting for this moment. Another shout out to the chapter title, and this is probably the best part of the chapter. The end of his spear is bloody, and Tsukasa is run through as he tried protecting his sister.
He collapses towards the river beneath, and Senkuu manages to reach him in time and holds onto him. The chapter ends with Tsukasa saying Senkuu's name.
Another solid chapter, completely blowing away all expectations. After last week's chapter it was pretty obvious that Hyouga would become the main villain soon following Tsukasa's redemption. The fact that we got all the questions about him, Homura and Yo answered in the same chapter was just expertly weaved. This actually makes me pleased since it seems like the story will go on longer than I had expected, and that's a massive plus one. I want Tsukasa to die, it would be kind of sad because of Mirai, but that would honestly shoot up Hyouga's villain factor by tenfold. Not to mention the story has been begging for a major death for a long while now.
Overall chapter rating:
9.5/10.To discuss and share your thoughts on the manga, you can visit our Dr. Stone section.
