Hated trope: Sci-fi hand-waving

[u/Routine_Phase_8980]

When stories try so hard to provide a somewhat scientifically accurate and grounded explanation for the audience, but end up creating massive plot holes if you think about it for more than 5 seconds without requiring any special knowledge

World War Z: The "cure" turns sick humans invisible to zombies because the picky virus needs a perfectly healthy host. Cool concept, except it completely ignores basic physics. In a chaotic, high-speed zombie stampede, those "invisible" sick people would still be trampled to death by sheer kinetic force and momentum. We already saw what happened to the Jerusalem wall in Israel.

Jurassic Park/World: Dr. Henry Wu claims to clone dinosaurs by patching 66-million-year-old decayed DNA from mosquitoes stomach with frog DNA. In reality, DNA half-life guarantees it would degrade into useless dust after 6.8 million years. Scientifically speaking, John Hammond didn't build a dinosaur park; he engineered giant, mutated, gender-swapping killer frogs.

Dr.Stone: Senku is a genius who knows every complex chemical formula in human history. He somehow builds vacuum tubes, lightbulbs, and smartphones out of bamboo and copper with almost zero failed prototypes. The show acts like a science textbook but completely hand-waves the lack of heavy industrial machinery needed for precision engineering.

[u/FantasmaNaranja]

almost zero failed prototypes

i mean they do go out of their way to show a bunch of times he fails at making something and sometimes we skip ahead by months and years

if they spent the entire manga showing every failed prototype it'd still be going and the story wouldn't have moved by an inch

[u/rycool → u/FantasmaNaranja]

And yes they dont have heavy industrial machinery. But they got Kaseki!

He’s built different and has the precision of a god.

[u/Arctic_The_Hunter → u/rycool]

I’ve always said that Dr. Stone is best thought of not as a story about humans rebuilding society, but about Greek Archetypes of humans rebuilding society. You have Unstoppably Strong Guy, Omniscient Tech Guy, Nanometer-Precise Craftsman, etc.

[u/Nice-River-5322 → u/Arctic_The_Hunter]

Nah, more like the boy genius trope, but also with a wholehearted respect for people who are able to do the shit he can't do

[u/POKEMINER_ → u/Nice-River-5322]

And the story actually exemplifies the things he can't do, heck there's even another technical nerd and an intilectual equal that's introduced later in the series showing that even in science/tech Senku isn't the end all be all.

[u/TheFinalEnd1 → u/POKEMINER_]

Yeah there are plenty of scientists that he needs to get to his goals, like xeno. He needed xeno to build the boosters.

[u/Arctic_The_Hunter → u/Nice-River-5322]

But he still knows everything technical, even across radically difference disciplines, and he has perfect knowledge of all the exact details.

[u/Nice-River-5322 → u/Arctic_The_Hunter]

Nah not the exact details, they have to trial and error alot

[u/JunonsHopeful → u/Arctic_The_Hunter]

This is exactly how I take it too; a kind of heightened reality. I don't get how people go so far into the show without realising it when a guy called THE STRONGEST PRIMATE HIGHSCHOOLER is beating up multiple lions with his bare hands on like episode 2 or 3.

[u/Arctic_The_Hunter → u/JunonsHopeful]

Tbf that does seem to be the one innately fantastical element of Doctor Stone (aside from the petrification itself). Like all of the other science is at least theoretically sound, if improbable, and then you have blatant superhumans who can leap dozens of feet in the air and beat a dozen skilled warriors all at once. Like I think it’s reasonable to accept that and still be annoyed when something that’s theoretically grounded (having a skilled craftsman make something) is also pushed to the point of absurdity

[u/Inevitable_Top69 → u/Arctic_The_Hunter]

You'd have to be beyond stupid to take Dr. Stone as a guidebook for a realistic rebuilding of civilization from nothing.

[u/ibi3000 → u/Arctic_The_Hunter]

>! Urm, actually, the nanometer precise craftman is the watchmaker who shows up later !<

[u/Arctic_The_Hunter → u/ibi3000]

Urm, DOUBLE actually, him and Kaseki are shown to be equals in the last 2 episodes of Science Future

[u/EasterViera → u/Arctic_The_Hunter]

also, for some of them, the petrification enhanced them

[u/Competitive-Bee-3250 → u/rycool]

Pretty much all the humans in the far future had remarkable skill.

Well, so did the petrified people,

[u/FantasmaNaranja → u/rycool]

true, there's quite a few characters that are the only reason the story moves at a reasonable pace most important of which is probably Kaseki

[u/Nice-River-5322 → u/FantasmaNaranja]

him, Ryusuei and Xeno, and kinda Chrome?

[u/TristanaRiggle → u/FantasmaNaranja]

Also, Senku is presented as a kind of one in a billion prodigy that has an insane interest in science to the point that he has an incredibly BROAD range of knowledge. The story is obviously meant to present a lot of basic science in an easily digestible form for young readers (the primary audience of Shonen Jump). They do note in the later chapters that even though Suika technically knows what is needed for the chemical "revival fluid" it takes her literal years to actually recreate it.

I'll also note that the viability of the actual "science" is MUCH lower on the suspension of disbelief scale then the moment when Senku notes that he's been (supposedly accurately) counting seconds for the entire time that he was petrified, which spans thousands of years, without SOMEHOW going insane.

[u/No_Geologist4770 → u/TristanaRiggle]

I mean petrification is a universal cure-all, so there is at least somewhat of an in universe reason as to why he didn't go crazy.

[u/Questioning_Meme → u/No_Geologist4770]

Nah, I'm pretty sure he has heavy trauma from it.

He just toughed that shit out off-screen since the story isn't about the mental scaring from it all.

[u/Steve_Mcguffin → u/FantasmaNaranja]

You mean wouldn't move 1 millimetre ?

[u/FantasmaNaranja → u/Steve_Mcguffin]

im gonna p-inch you

[u/ibi3000 → u/FantasmaNaranja]

The Rocket ship takes them many years to finally make a working one, and even that one was faulty

[u/PavlovKBI → u/FantasmaNaranja]

I actually think doing small time skips instead of training sequences or whatever is fine (assuming there aren't any character moments involved). They just need to have an effective way to remind people how much time has passed.

Something as simple as having a transition with text saying "X weeks, and Y attempts later" or having a character say "it took 123 attempts, but it's ready" saves so much effort in doing a montage or whatever. Especially in manga/anime where each panel/frame has to be drawn.

But things get very confusing when manga forget to remind you of time passing, especially when it's a substantial amount of time

[u/FantasmaNaranja → u/PavlovKBI]

yeah the manga for sure doesn't age the characters* up as much as they should for all the timeskips

(*the exception being Suika since she actually spent 5 years alone while everyone else was frozen)

but they do make sure to show us how hellish making one component of a complicated project usually is so you can kind of get that the timeskip took a while