Tsukasa loses everything and has to settle for being bought off, in essence, because Senku manages to accumulate enough of a technological advantage even without any additional revivals. (The series unconvincingly says that Tsukasa’s politics were superficial and so he got what he really wanted in the end, to try to rationalize how it worked out for him. Seems like cope to me!)
The story plays a bit of a sleight of hand there with Tsukasa having the additional motivation of saving his little sister, which is a pity because they could have at least played up a bit more his conflict with Ryusui (who really seems to stand for everything he hates). But I suppose given his situation, gracefully accepting defeat is reasonably within his personality. He’s not insane or bloodthirsty. After realising he’s lost, lashing out would only mean humanity risks losing it all, while he can’t win any more anyway. Besides his whole cadre has shown itself to be either incompetent or willing to betray him (the amount of people who either switched to Senku’s side at the first sign of technology or downright backstabbed him is staggering), so maybe he’s just realised his cause never had much of a chance to begin with. He basically never found another idealist like him; he pressganged some people who had no other alternative and found a few thugs who only wanted a chance to be violent assholes. That’s not how you build a functional army.
Yeah, it’s definitely something of a deus ex machina gimmick. Tsukasa just plain lost and the logical ending is for him to be stoned or killed—but gosh darn it, they just wanted him around too much and to redeem him somehow, so hey! here’s this other thing which has not been foreshadowed or meaningfully written into his characterization or worldbuilding, like, at all. I rolled my eyes when I saw that twist coming. Even given the Dr Stone formula of wildly swerving between ‘shonen’ and ‘Robinsonade’, it was poorly done.
(Ryusui would’ve been a better negation of Tsukasa, but would have been tricky to to make that work. If you are at the point his naval skills really matter, the Tsukasa war has to be over already as the exponential cascade should’ve already long passed irreversibility by the time you have the manpower to build sailing ships rather than, say, a dugout canoe.)
Tsukasa just plain lost and the logical ending is for him to be stoned or killed
except that 1) there is sometimes too much of such hostility in the real world, 2) some people can legitimately be redeemed—that is, they change thinking strategies and approximations to their values when they see what has been created (re: Einstein’s reaction to atomic bomb creation), 3) I don’t think anyone depicted in the anime would have valued fairness/consistency/other base for punishing Tsukasa—and with death penalty, no less—over compassion.
Authors might have held the position (shout-out to @the gears to ascension!) “[we] want literally every human to get to go to space often and come back to a clean and cozy world. This currently seems unlikely. Let’s change that.” Even if they haven’t: there is such vibe, and I somewhat endorse it!
Senku definitely holds that position, and of the authors I wouldn’t be surprised if Boichi at least did—he is famously a big lover of classic science fiction. If you check out his Dr. Stone: Byakuya solo spinoff manga, it starts out as a simple side story, showing the life of Senku’s dad and his astronauts companions in space, and then spirals out in a completely insane direction involving essentially an AI singularity (understandably, it’s not canon).
There is a certain “Jump heroes shouldn’t kill wantonly” vibe I guess but truth be told Jump heroes have gotten significantly more willing to dirty their hands recently (now Kagurabachi seems set to become the next big thing, and Chihiro has a body count in the dozens at this point). So I don’t think editorial fiat explains this either.
It’s really part of the manga’s fantasy, as in, realistically, sure, Tsukasa would have been killed or kept in stone. But just like everyone is able to make up really complicated fully functioning devices with rudimentary means, everyone is able to reach Aumann Agreement within a relatively short time of being proven wrong. That’s just how the world rolls.
The story plays a bit of a sleight of hand there with Tsukasa having the additional motivation of saving his little sister, which is a pity because they could have at least played up a bit more his conflict with Ryusui (who really seems to stand for everything he hates). But I suppose given his situation, gracefully accepting defeat is reasonably within his personality. He’s not insane or bloodthirsty. After realising he’s lost, lashing out would only mean humanity risks losing it all, while he can’t win any more anyway. Besides his whole cadre has shown itself to be either incompetent or willing to betray him (the amount of people who either switched to Senku’s side at the first sign of technology or downright backstabbed him is staggering), so maybe he’s just realised his cause never had much of a chance to begin with. He basically never found another idealist like him; he pressganged some people who had no other alternative and found a few thugs who only wanted a chance to be violent assholes. That’s not how you build a functional army.
Yeah, it’s definitely something of a deus ex machina gimmick. Tsukasa just plain lost and the logical ending is for him to be stoned or killed—but gosh darn it, they just wanted him around too much and to redeem him somehow, so hey! here’s this other thing which has not been foreshadowed or meaningfully written into his characterization or worldbuilding, like, at all. I rolled my eyes when I saw that twist coming. Even given the Dr Stone formula of wildly swerving between ‘shonen’ and ‘Robinsonade’, it was poorly done.
(Ryusui would’ve been a better negation of Tsukasa, but would have been tricky to to make that work. If you are at the point his naval skills really matter, the Tsukasa war has to be over already as the exponential cascade should’ve already long passed irreversibility by the time you have the manpower to build sailing ships rather than, say, a dugout canoe.)
except that
1) there is sometimes too much of such hostility in the real world,
2) some people can legitimately be redeemed—that is, they change thinking strategies and approximations to their values when they see what has been created (re: Einstein’s reaction to atomic bomb creation),
3) I don’t think anyone depicted in the anime would have valued fairness/consistency/other base for punishing Tsukasa—and with death penalty, no less—over compassion.
Authors might have held the position (shout-out to @the gears to ascension!) “[we] want literally every human to get to go to space often and come back to a clean and cozy world. This currently seems unlikely. Let’s change that.” Even if they haven’t: there is such vibe, and I somewhat endorse it!
Senku definitely holds that position, and of the authors I wouldn’t be surprised if Boichi at least did—he is famously a big lover of classic science fiction. If you check out his Dr. Stone: Byakuya solo spinoff manga, it starts out as a simple side story, showing the life of Senku’s dad and his astronauts companions in space, and then spirals out in a completely insane direction involving essentially an AI singularity (understandably, it’s not canon).
There is a certain “Jump heroes shouldn’t kill wantonly” vibe I guess but truth be told Jump heroes have gotten significantly more willing to dirty their hands recently (now Kagurabachi seems set to become the next big thing, and Chihiro has a body count in the dozens at this point). So I don’t think editorial fiat explains this either.
It’s really part of the manga’s fantasy, as in, realistically, sure, Tsukasa would have been killed or kept in stone. But just like everyone is able to make up really complicated fully functioning devices with rudimentary means, everyone is able to reach Aumann Agreement within a relatively short time of being proven wrong. That’s just how the world rolls.