It’s a complicated topic, but all is well that ends well.
I liked Tsukasa as a character in the series Dr. Stone. He had a clear vision for the stone world and was working to make it a reality. He wanted a pure world without any of the adults from the previous world bringing back the old ways. A fresh start is what he wanted and a chance to make things in the way he felt was right. Tsukasa was an idealist, but to make the ideal a reality Tsukasa was forced to make decisions that included who to restore and who to destroy.
Tsukasa was acting against the older generation with malice. He destroyed their stone statues which was akin to murder, considering he had the knowledge that those encased in stone could be revived. He actively chose to rid the world of what he considered to be trash, also known as the adults of the old world. His idealism led him to make an evil decision over and over again.
While watching his character through the series it was hard to grasp what his core motivations were. He cloaked his motivations and his reasoning why he was hard set in his convictions. He merely announced to Senku his intentions to take the stone world into his own hands and create a paradise of his own making.
Tsukasa is an intelligent character capable of grasping the situation at hand and making rational decisions that would guide his goals. He understood what was at play with the knowledge at hand, but he lacked all available information. While intelligent, Tsukasa relied on his own knowledge of things and never explored that other options could be available to him. Or it could be that he didn’t want to.
Tsukasa had to be forced to change his view of the stone world.
While Tsukasa was going out of his way to create the world in the image he wanted, Senku learned more about the mystery revolving around petrification. It was the fact that Senku was willing to learn about petrification and how it could be beneficial in its healing effects that he survived Tsukasa’s death blow. While part ruse and gamble on Senku’s part, it duped Tsukasa long enough for Senku to find allies and work on his science.
Senku not only was able to recreate the science of the old world, he was also able to force Tsukasa into a stalemate by creating a powerful explosive. It was then that Senku leveraged the fact that Tsukasa had a sister that he could heal using the effects of the petrification. In the end Senku was able to revive and heal Tsukasa’s sister, where even modern medicine had failed.
Tsukasa’s world view was fundamentally altered in this moment. Everything he was fighting to do and what he wanted changed in the moment that the sister he was fighting to protect was now back and fully restored. Tsukasa didn’t know that the petrification could be used to heal others, or even those closest to him. If he had known Tsukasa would have behaved differently.
Revealing Tsukasa’s secret revealed his motivations for the reason he wanted to purify the world of the old science. It’s not hard to imagine that until this point he had harbored ill feelings towards modern science beyond the fact that it was capable of mass destruction. It had failed to save his sister. The old world had failed to save his sister. The let-down of modern science warped his thinking and led him down a dark path.
Tsukasa was a villain but with his newfound change of heart has been saved from despair and villainy.
Do you agree? What are your thoughts? I want to know!
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Read my other Dr. Stone Posts!
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