You know, starting over isn't the end of the world.
Often times it can be the start of a better one.
And the anime I'm covering this season brings that idea to the surface as we take a look
at a series that literally had to build the world from the ground up.
And of course the one I'm talking about is the one that makes science fun, the stone
world of Dr. Stone.
Hey what's going on guys my name is Nate and you're listening to the Otaku Liberation,
a show where we help you break the chains that are holding you back in your life by
connecting some biblical principles with things from your favorite anime.
And hey if you guys are listening out there and you feel like you're getting some value
out of this podcast, please feel free to subscribe and leave a review because that would help
me basically improve this and improve this pod and make it better each time.
And without further ado, let's get into it.
So Dr. Stone is a series written by Richiro Inagaki and illustrated by Boichi.
And again as I always say at the beginning of the season, I don't speak Japanese, my
pronunciation is probably butchering these names.
Hey, I'm trying my best out here.
But yeah so the story overall for Dr. Stone is pretty interesting.
So it starts off with a mysterious phenomenon that petrifies all of humanity.
Like they all just turn to stone statues.
And as far as I am in the anime, we don't know why this happened.
We don't know how it happened in the first place.
And we just we just don't.
You know, I haven't read the manga or anything like that, so I'm sure people who've read it know how it ends and all that stuff.
But as far as I'm concerned, I don't know what's happening.
But so that's the beginning of it.
And thousands of years later, our main character, whose name is Senku, he wakes up alone in
this newfound stone world and he decides he's going to bring back all the civilization and
revive it for everyone on Earth.
Now I don't know about you, when I think about starting something over, I don't really think
about the whole world starting over.
You know, that's not really the first thing that comes to mind.
You know, think about, you know, sometimes when I when I'm recording episodes, I just
start over on here if I mess up too many times or if I just don't like the way I'm presenting
the episode.
But in this case, literally the entire world is starting over.
And honestly, it's kind of like, you know, what we've got to get with the guy did in
the Old Testament, right?
What's the great flood is, is very, very, very similar to that aspect, right?
Where humanity had had to start over.
We had to start over.
We were messing up too much in the first time.
God was like, you know what?
Maybe let me try again.
Let's see if they get it right this time.
Right.
But the the overall concept that I want this season to convey is the idea of going back
to basics.
And what that means is to go back to the beginning, go back to the source of, you know, wherever
you are in life.
And basically what I mean by that is it's easy for us to be distracted, you know, especially
in today's time, right?
Distracted by all the advancements in the game of the entire world in the palm of your
hand or in your pocket most times.
Right.
I mean, these these phones are way stronger than a lot of computers we had 60 years ago.
And but when we have all that information available to you at a moment's notice, it's
easy for to overlook the moments in general.
Right.
And we get so overwhelmed with information and what's going on, what's happening in
the world that we just we all just forget how to do basic things in all honesty.
And what I think this kind of helps portray is that, you know, technology can be used
as a as a tool for our survival and not the only means of it.
And really, we take a step back and we just we have to remember who we are and where we
came from.
And so and then throughout the season, as I'm going through each of the characters and
show how they convey the theme of going back to basics during our own way.
And what does that mean?
And how does it mean?
If we have to start over, if we have to, you know, go go back to the beginning, because
sometimes starting over isn't isn't a bad thing, right?
If that is not the end, I'll be.
Oh, sometimes you have to go back to the beginning to remember, you know, where you came from,
essentially, because I know for me, often when I'm working on something, whether for
my normal job or if I'm working on working on this pod or in my other business, things
like that, is that if I get stuck and I'm just kind of beating my head against the wall,
I take a step back and go back to, OK, what did I do before?
What did I you know, how did I get to this point in the first place?
You know, it's just kind of reverse engineer what I'm doing to see if something new jumps
jumps out at me, right?
And it doesn't work all the time, but it's part of my process and it helps.
It helps keep me on track and not become so just bogged down.
And so in in regards to Dr. Stone, right, they want they didn't have a choice but to
start over because again, like I said before, for unknown reasons, the world is essentially
sent back to the Stone Age because all of humanity was returned to stone statues for
thousands of years.
I think the I can remember the exact amount of years is over 3000.
Like is thing is closer to 4000 years have passed since they all were petrified.
And you know, nature has taken back over and humanity has to start from scratch again.
I mean, they they're all out in the woods and nature now.
So they have to reacclimate themselves back into the world.
And it's kind of funny because I'm just thinking about, you know, what what do you need to
reset in your life?
You know, what do you what do you need to put?
Just pause on it, just say, you know, and let me go back and try this again.
I don't think for me it was just a lot of different.
Yes, side hustles are the best way to describe them, I guess.
I mean, they're just trying to figure out different things.
Basically I want to do to leave my mark on the world.
Right.
And at first it was just strictly to make money because, you know, you need money to
live.
And I'm just being honest.
I guess that was the main reason why I was doing the vast majority of things I was trying
to do.
Right.
You know, you learn how to trade, start a couple of other business ventures and things
like that.
And one, it wasn't fulfilling, fulfilling to me.
And two, it just didn't it just didn't it just didn't make me happy.
That's why I didn't they didn't pan out.
That's why I didn't keep doing it.
And it took me starting over three, four or five different times to manage before I found
something that I just enjoy doing.
It's not even about money.
It's just about me feeling fulfilled and doing something that I love while also helping out
as many people as I possibly can.
And so for me, it was resetting my mindset about what it was that I was doing, what it
was that I was striving to do.
And and I was like, like I said before, oftentimes the only way forward is for us to go back
to where it all began.
And that's been in for me.
It was just going back to my why.
Why am I doing these things?
Why do I want to do these things?
What what benefit am I getting out of it and what benefit can other people get out of it?
And once I understood that, then Eridanger became a lot clearer at that point.
And you know, so you can just apply it to to your own life, your own mission, your goal,
your skills, really.
All right.
You just kind of really understand the why.
Think why the question of why is the root to all of this.
And sometimes it takes going back to your why to remind you and to help you push, push
through whatever roadblock obstacle that you're facing right now.
Because, you know, sometimes starting over doesn't mean completely doing a pivot.
It's just, again, like I said, reminding yourself as to why you're doing something to give you
the extra to to get through.
And you say for people, Dr. Stone, right, they have to essentially recreate all the
modern advances that we have today, you know, like medicine, clothes, even travel, because,
again, there's no cars in the Stone Age, right?
There's nothing there.
And throughout the story, you see how the the people from the old world, you know, modern
day people and then people from the stone world, how they interact with each other and
the things that they learn from things that they learn from each other, too.
Right.
Because the the people who turn the stone statue, they're not the only people there,
because as you find out in the story that there are astronauts in space, you know, from
the various countries, you know, Japan, America, things like that, there are people who weren't
on Earth when the petrification happened.
So when they came back to Earth, they essentially established different villages and whatnot
in in the opposite.
They had they had a community, right?
They're having having kids and descendants and things like that over the course of the
thousands of years.
So when Senku and the rest of the modern day people start to waking up, there are already
people there.
And it's interesting to see how the future past people interact with the modern day stone
people.
Right.
It's that whole dynamic is it's funny to watch because, you know, simple things like colored
fire, right?
You throw different different chemicals into a fire, the the fire's color.
And that's just like witchcraft to them.
So it's a little funny.
Sorry.
But so it is really again, Dr. Stone, the show, the overall show is pretty much a tale
about what do we do when we find ourselves back at the beginning?
Right.
How do we handle that?
I mean, seriously, I'm asking myself, how would I handle that?
I would wake up one day and all my accomplishments, all my advancements, all my achievements that
I've ever had in my life, you know, professionally, academically, personally, if they were just
erased, why not wipe and swipe away and start over, start over learning something new again,
or learning something as if it were new, you know, where the programming, general IT work,
you know, learn about finances again, learning how to do math again.
You know, and just things like that.
How will we go about it?
Because the video like this on YouTube all the time or somebody who is a professional
in what they do, whether it's, you know, someone who's in the stocks or there are day trading
or someone who is learning a different language or things like that.
Sometimes they put out videos saying, if I were to start over in whatever year this is,
how would I do it?
Right.
And I think that's a good exercise that all of us should go through.
At least I probably start doing it every year, you know, just once a year to say, okay, if
I were to start over now, start over this now, if I was to start podcasting over and
in 2023 or in 2024, whenever, how would I do it?
Because a lot of the times the things that are available in now in that time weren't
available back when you started.
So it might, you know, change the way you think about, you know, doing it now.
Again, so for like for this podcast, for example, let's say, let's say I started this back in
2015 or something like that.
Right.
So let's say it's been going on for a couple of years and I decided in 2023, how would
I, if I had to start over, how would I, what tools would I use at my disposal?
Like, you know, the, the audio editing software that I use here, the microphone that I have
now wouldn't have been available back then, or if it was, they weren't as up to par as
they are now.
So in now I just had to figure out, okay, so how would I incorporate it into what I
already have?
How would I, what would I change?
What would I improve on?
What would I keep?
Because again, for me, just because something is new, doesn't mean it's better.
Right.
Because sometimes you changing something up might actually make it worse because of the
learning curve, we just might not mesh well with your system, you know, whatever the case
may be, but it's still an interesting exercise.
In fact, at least you are aware of it and you can apply it in any way that you see fit.
And just doing that exercise, even if you don't change anything, even if you don't find anything,
really still opens up your mind to just different possibilities.
And ultimately it's kind of what the whole back to basics thing is, is just reminding
yourself, remind yourself of your why, and then open your eyes up to the different possibilities
that are available to you and not being so blinded and overwhelmed by what you're currently
doing because it's either become tunnel vision and so focused on one thing that you forget
about everything else and vice versa, where you just, there's just, there's so many things
going on at once that you can't focus on one thing.
All right.
So in either scenario, going back to your why, going back to the beginning and starting
over is really beneficial.
So overall, the concept of going back to basics is pretty much throughout the entire story
of Dr. Stone, I think it's pretty much what it's based off of.
And in my opinion, it helps, it helps prompt us to reflect on, you know, reset, rebuilding
and reconnecting with, you know, our why, the foundation principles of our lives in
general.
You know, why do we do what we do?
And I also encourage us to embrace, you know, the simplicity of it all.
Don't overcome the innovation to really take the new things and see how we can, and what
we can create out of it.
And you know, just say to get the pursuit of knowledge, but it's not just to the betterment
of ourselves and our craft and just really strive to be better each and every day.
And then the next couple of coming weeks, as I take a deeper dive into some of the characters
of Dr. Stone, we'll really see how they embody these aspects themselves and how even though
the the way they embody it is different, how it all ties back together.
So I hope you guys stick around because I mean, hey, these, I've never been more excited
about science until I started watching this show.
And it's a blast.
But hey, I just want to thank you guys for turning for tuning into today's episode.
And I pray that you get what you needed out of it.
And hopefully you learn something new about yourself.
Join us next week as we take a look at the boy genius elf who uses everything he knows
about the past to develop this prehistoric future and you know, that's the main character
Senku and hey, always remember you are the main character of your story and that story
doesn't end until he says so.
All right, be blessed.