La Biblioteca de Amestris

I have wanted to do this comparison for a long time, especially since I learned about the manga of Dr. Stone in Reddit. Watching the anime was an astonishing experience, thus, I really feel I need more from Dr. Stone while I wait for the second season. Dr. Stone is unique and it has one of the most active and enthusiastic fan base I've ever seen (Part 1, Part 2).

The first thing that I noticed after re-watching the first episode with the first chapter of the manga is that the animation studio did an amazing job (TMS Entertainment studio, which is also responsible for Megalobox, one of my favorite series). While they respected every single page, they made significant improvements in some scenes. In other words, they kept the original narration while improving the art. I believe that this worked very well.

For instance, the petrification incident was incredibly well made in the manga. There is so much happening around the World, but your eyes can easily follow what's going on, even with the voice of Taiju Oki fighting to keep himself awake for days, months, decades, and centuries.  I personally find that these scenes were super important because it sets the atmosphere when Taiju wakes up and meet again with Zenku.  

It's a remarkable and very difficult scene to animate. It's also incredibly confusing from a narrative perspective because there is A LOT going on. Maybe that is why the anime followed the manga frame by frame. Still, when I watched both scenes in the manga and the anime, I preferred the animated version because of the significant improvements in the art and the addition of the voices and the music -I love the music of this anime. It may not have a lot of songs, but they really know how to make use of the few songs in the soundtrack.

Moreover, there is a scene in the first episode that I really liked. It's when Zenku states two high scholers will cut short in thousands of years of human history and science development. I remember been at the edge of my seat when I watched for the first time. These pages in the manga were great too, but I did not get the same excitement. When I look twice at the animated scenes, I found some small, but significant differences in which the animated studio made many improvements.

I will just take one. If you see below, the manga made only one frame showing a monkey with a stick representing the first stage of humanity and the long way that it took, but the animated serie shows many stages of this development in the flames. This was so exciting because it's spiced with the soundtrack of Dr. Stone. There are also new frames that made the scene longer and more enjoyable. 

I may be alone here, but I think that the incredible facial expressions and emotions that were so characteristic in the serie was a genuine improvement of the animation studio. Don't take me wrong, those expresions are in the manga, in fact, you can notice that the mangaka uses a very broad range of different expressions, which is amazing. Neverthless, I think that the animation studio made a significant contribution here.

Another improvements are these scenes when Zenku explainst something with blackboard. I love that in the animated series, the blackboard and the animations seems a bit more elaborated, but keeping the childish style.



I must say that in some parts the manga felt quite text heavy because of all the explanation. That is something noticeable, for instance, take a look at the amount of text bubbles and words. However, a great work is done simplifying the inventions and plots in these panels. Overall, you feel that you are reading a fast phase shonen at every moment. I feel that there is an incredible work of organization and planing of panels in this manga. The art-work may look simple, but it's also high quality work.

So far, I'm very satisfied. Both anime and manga are amazing. No regrets here on watching the whole serie again.


(Part 1, Part 2).