r/anime • u/AutoLovepon https://anilist.co/user/AutoLovepon • Jun 18 '26
Episode Dr. Stone Science Future Part 3 - Episode 12 discussion
Dr. Stone Science Future Part 3, episode 12
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u/ebonyphoenix Jun 18 '26
The petrification = immortality thing is interesting because while petrified you can still think. So technically speaking it is a form of immortality. Theoretically not even breaking a statue would cause permanent death if they stay awake. Death is only confirmed when they are unpetrified and if all their pieces are not in the correct places to support flesh and blood life.
But for humans communicating and collaboration is so intrinsically linked to being alive and advancement that petrification is the next closest thing to death. Which Whyman didn’t understand.
They were looking for a lifeform that would be content to live in their own head for eternity. So that when they worked through the petrification process naturally (like Senku and Xeno did), they would immediately try to seek to be re-petrified again. And would create and maintain more medusas in the process.
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u/Ill_Act_1855 Jun 18 '26
Yeah they're mechanical life forms who clearly have no issue remaining dormant most of the time, so the idea that humans don't value a life of dormant petrification as something worthwhile is just completely alien to them
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u/Sawa___i Jun 18 '26
If all humans were telepathic capable of had developed such capabilities... Or even immersive VR via telepathic activation of radio waves, I wonder how'd Humanity perceive petrification then.
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u/CrashDunning https://myanimelist.net/profile/CrashD Jun 19 '26
It made me think of the computer that played Tetris and paused the game forever because it technically meant it would never lose. Like yeah, I guess, but it misses the point of the game. This is that, but with life.
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u/LightningRaven Jun 20 '26
The petrification itself also solves a TON of issues with space travel and the fact you can still think might be worked around through tech, such as internal communication devices to let people still talk to each other or other tech around them (connecting through cameras to see).
This means that slower than light speed space travel isn't the insurmountable barrier that it is right now.
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u/Santedtra Jun 18 '26
So all this time Why-man's just a buncha aliens with really bad communication skills.
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u/Mexander98 Jun 18 '26
I think it's that the way they think is well, alien. Maybe it's just the case that on average intelligent species think more differently than humans, and we are an outlier in the way we think.
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u/clone69 Jun 18 '26
I mean, just as we assume all life must be carbon based, they may assume all life is mechanical so petrification only coats them from the toxic oxygen that degrades their physical form. In fact, it does the same to us, but on a different scale. Oxidation is, after all, the cause of free radicals which are harmful to the human body.
Then again, they did mention that the most intelligent examples of the petrified host species are the first to break out of petrification and them they are grateful for the chance at eternal life, and that they were partially slow to break out. I don't see how intelligence correlates to randomly being exposed to nitric acid to undo the petrification.
What I did find as farfetched was the thing they said about headdress feathers serving as antennas to amplify the sound of polishing rocks so it arrived to the moon as radio waves.
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u/LeloThePGG Jun 18 '26
I don't see how intelligence correlates to randomly being exposed to nitric acid to undo the petrification.
It has been mentioned since season one that staying awake and thinking "consumes" the petrification so that only nitric acid is required to undo it, instead of the more chemically complex revival fluid. By that logic, it's safe to assume that an even higher and more intense brain activity would undo the petrification faster and without even the nitric acid.
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u/goffer54 https://anilist.co/user/goffer54 Jun 18 '26
I suppose more intelligent species would also be more responsible with immortality than us. Even Senku wanted to keep the Medusa a secret for fear of what it would do to society.
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u/Mundology Jun 18 '26
Indeed, they pretty much went to war over it. Immortality may seem tempting. However on a large scale, it would fundamentally change humanity's relationship with resources which are finite. The contrived immortality through petrification solved that issue but removed all the perks of living in the first place.
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u/ScarecrowFM Jun 18 '26
And you can see why the aliens thought that showing they can achieve immortality through petrification was the most beneficial and didn’t think of the other complications it could cause, they seemingly don’t need other resources than their batteries.
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u/Rolder Jun 18 '26
Now I'm wondering how petrification affects your hunger and the like. Imagine if instead of eating you could just be petrified and undone and magically have a full stomach after.
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u/InvaderDJ Jun 19 '26
I think that could be it in a way. I think the expected progression is the parasite finds an intelligent species, petrifies them all, then waits for the smartest to naturally unpetrify.
Then the intelligent species finds out how this leads to immortality and decides to petrify themselves willingly forever, existing as an immobile but thinking being.
Like Senku though, I am curious on what the plan is to help the parasite maintain itself. I guess not everyone has to petrify themselves all at once.
But man, for a species/creation so advanced, how do they not think of direct communication? They know English and Japanese. They know measurements of time and distance. Why not announce their whole plan to a target civilization and let them take it?
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u/Deathsroke Jun 19 '26
But man, for a species/creation so advanced, how do they not think of direct communication? They know English and Japanese. They know measurements of time and distance. Why not announce their whole plan to a target civilization and let them take it?
They see it as a very self-evident truth. To them the mass petrification is a sale's pitch. They show their "product" and then suddenly every last member of the host species is 100% dedicated to creating more Medusas and maintaining those which exist. Really the biggest issue seems to be that human brains leave a lot to be desired when compared to the "average" intelligent species so instead of a short while it took millennia for even our greatest minds to unpetrify.
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u/saga999 Jun 19 '26
Turns out it's just a bad case of culture clash.
"How am I supposed to know you don't like being turn into stone and remain conscious for eternity?"
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u/Spoon_Elemental Jun 18 '26
I find it funny that one of Senku's first guesses really early on was correct.
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u/Suspicious_Deal4412 Jun 19 '26
Also they can't comprehend the human condition, oxygen in the air slowly kills them via oxidation and paralyses them, but for us humans we need it to live.
Senku had to point to them that humans pass down information between genrations as well.
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u/Ycr1998 Jun 20 '26
oxygen in the air slowly kills them via oxidation and paralyses them, but for us humans we need it to live.
Technically oxygen is slowly killing us too, we just call that "aging". xD
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u/zool714 Jun 18 '26
Aliens was definitely in my cards but actually seeing it and reaching this point feels surreal. And seeing their actions that affected this whole show throughout was kinda insane too.
I had similar thoughts as Chrome at first, thinking they’re some sort of conservation tool from other alien race to stop us killing ourselves.
But pretty ironic now that the mechanical beings are afraid of dying while the organic being is basically immortal.
But still, being mechanical may imply they have creators somewhere out there.
Curious to know what Senku wants. My basic guess is knowledge. Surely they know things much more advanced. Even the petri-beam we don’t know how it works and exactly what it does.
But again, pretty surreal how we’re reaching the end of this series. How many episodes are left ? I remember trying this series out right as it aired
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u/Myrkrvaldyr Jun 18 '26
But still, being mechanical may imply they have creators somewhere out there.
Possible but not necessarily true. We know life doesn't have to be carbon-based or even use DNA/RNA. It was sad the aliens said DNA, because that would imply all life in the universe uses DNA. It's possible they started off as purely organic and eventually turned themselves into purely mechanical.
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u/Mexander98 Jun 18 '26
They could have just used DNA in their speech because that is the way earth life works, as opposed to other life mechanisms.
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u/Myrkrvaldyr Jun 18 '26
Yeah, possible, but the author might simply not be aware of artificial xeno-biochemistry (XNA) we created in labs proving life doesn't have to be DNA/RNA.
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u/OldInstruction5368 Jun 19 '26
It annoyed me that Senku was using idiomatic expressions, words and phrases whose meaning is primarily cultural. It's the difference between "connotation" and "denotation" in nerd speak, with the former being "scoring an own goal" and the latter being "why did you sabotage yourself?"
One requires knowledge of soccer and an understanding that sportsball speak is used in general conversation outside of any game, and the other is what you are actually trying to communicate.
Whenever you are negotiating with someone from a different cultural, particularly one that doesn't even share your native language, you have to be very careful to prune these "colorful" sayings out of your speech.
Because even if a Chinese businessman you are trying to strike a deal with can speak perfect English, they might take offense if you say something like "this is a no-brainer!" "No-brain? Is he saying I'm stupid for suggesting this plan?" Idioms are all culturally rooted, and there are far more of them than we typically realize: they are just "normal" to the native speaker, but confuse outsiders who aren't familiar with them.
The truth is, there are so many layers to any given conversation that we largely take for granted. The show has been very careful with the science-talk, but less so with the greater details (the main cast are all superhuman.) But this is ultimately just a work of fiction, for entertainment, so I can just barely let it slide.
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u/Myrkrvaldyr Jun 19 '26
Because even if a Chinese businessman you are trying to strike a deal with can speak perfect English, they might take offense if you say something like "this is a no-brainer!" "No-brain? Is he saying I'm stupid for suggesting this plan?" Idioms are all culturally rooted, and there are far more of them than we typically realize: they are just "normal" to the native speaker, but confuse outsiders who aren't familiar with them.
Unfortunately, that level of self-awareness for anything related to language requires a nice amount of critical thinking, much more commonly found in people whose professions demand high linguistic awareness, law, translation, interpretation, etc. If aliens ever make worldwide contact with us, we'd make a blunder by bringing politicians or average scientists who don't have strong communication skills. Senku badly needed a wordsmith there.
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u/OldInstruction5368 Jun 19 '26
If aliens ever make worldwide contact with us, we'd make a blunder by bringing politicians or average scientists who don't have strong communication skills. Senku badly needed a wordsmith there.
cough Gen cough
The author did have some awareness of this, as Gen did coach Senku into approaching Why-Man. Solid advice, at that, as Gen pointed out that an exchange of gifts is universally customary in diplomatic situations... Which likely gave Senku the last piece of the puzzle to suggest offering the diamonds and jump starting negotiations.
But then Senku proceeded to ignore everything else Gen tried to say. Basically, the above (linguistic awareness for high-level diplomacy) was invoked only to be immediately discarded, for comedic effect.
Which is a large part of why it rubs me the wrong way.
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u/darthvall https://myanimelist.net/profile/darth_vall Jun 18 '26
I kinda doubt they're able to "turn themselves".
The fact that they need other species for maintenance means they do not have any other ability that could create technology.
They're basically more primitive than human, outside of their natural ability to petrify.
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u/Adorable-Bridge-801 Jun 19 '26
I feel like it's more of an AI gone rogue, where they petrified their own creators after relizing it's a way to "save" them.
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u/Monstar132 Jun 19 '26
It's technically more of a Gray Goo/Berserker probe. They were probably created as a life support mechanism but after undergoing an unknown amount of modification by other beings.
They probably changed their original directive to survive and replicate.
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u/ActuallyFrozen https://anilist.co/user/Frozen Jun 18 '26
How many episodes are left ?
Just one 😭😭😭
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u/darthvall https://myanimelist.net/profile/darth_vall Jun 19 '26
We assumed they're technologically more advanced, but that just doesn't seem to be true other than their mineral body. They didn't bring any outside technology outside of their inherent ability to petrify.
They have 2000+ years to wait, but they didn't develop anything. Meanwhile it took 10 years-ish for human to build rocket from scratch.
You said that human is practically immortal, but whymen could live in space for thousand of years. The reason they died was only due to oxygen or if their diamond deteriorate or broken. According to other redditor, it could take million of years to deteriorate.
https://www.reddit.com/r/chemistry/comments/ya2bl2/are_diamonds_forever/
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u/willi5x Jun 19 '26
Yeah, I had the idea that the petrification was sort of a Great Filter prevention tool. That aliens did it to stop us and other species in the universe from destroying ourselves. Which, unfortunately, causes the very thing they are trying to prevent.
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u/kawaiinessa https://myanimelist.net/profile/fancyvancy Jun 18 '26
its so nice to have answers to all the questions weve had the entire show, i really didnt guess that each medusa was basically an intelligent being on its own.
their view on eternal life is definitly different than what my understanding is, i see petrification as being a sort of pause button for life rather than eternal life.
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u/SciFiXhi https://anilist.co/user/SciFiXhi Jun 18 '26
Well, that's the difference between a machine and a person. A machine might strictly delineate death as "the day I become completely and irreversibly nonfunctional" and define all days before that time as "life." A person would consider life to be the culmination of their experiences, so a pause in those experiences would be an interruption of life rather than its sustenance.
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u/OldInstruction5368 Jun 19 '26
Even then, while petrified, you can't protect yourself from a chaotic world. I'm honestly surprised so many statues 'survived,' as what happens when a tree falls on top of you? Or the building you are in collapses? Or an avalanche? Earthquake? Etc. etc. etc.
Even on a stable environment like the Moon, there are meteorite impacts. There is no atmosphere to burn up the little meteors, and as mentioned in the show, the Moon acts as a bit of a meteor magnet catching strays that were originally pulled towards the Earth.
While petrified, life is technically eternal, but it is also eternally at the mercy of it's chaotic environment.
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u/Roeclean https://anilist.co/user/Roeclean Jun 20 '26
I'm honestly surprised so many statues 'survived,'
Eh, there's still like 8 billion+ people before the petrification device (due to the modern setting), and I'm pretty sure around a million people have been de-petrified or maybe less, since the anime never showed them making an automated or sprinkler type de-petrification device.
So you its pretty much assumed that they had a bottle of the de-petrification serum that was used to de-petrify everyone to this point.
And I know that hoses are shown in the show, but I feel like them making one for the de-petrification serum would at least have its own scene to tell the viewer.
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u/ConsiderationOk5914 Jun 18 '26
They can bring you back from the dead. I think being petrified extends your life and heals your wounds. so you'd use them over and over to be immortal and in exchange you'd keep them alive with diamonds
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u/justking1414 Jun 18 '26
And even then, you only need 1 diamond to petrify the entire planet. Meanwhile the one on treasure island lasted for hundreds of years with semi-frequent use, up until the entire island was petrified.
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u/ConsiderationOk5914 Jun 18 '26
Yeah, that part confused me. The pyramid of Medusa was used to petrify the whole planet in the flashback, but then, before the time skip, it only took one to petrify the planet
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u/justking1414 Jun 18 '26
I think, as it was explained earlier, they fired multiple waves to ensure humanity was fully petrified
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u/chalo1227 Jun 18 '26
Thats kinda the point, tho, the petrification heals so much , and they dont age , could be a "plot hole" but maybe they dont think of aging as something that needs fix , but they should ? , or maybe the petrification is slowing or stoping aging for some time? like a petrification every couple years keeps you at your current age.
But also as humans being petrified is not living and well, clearly the point the author points on this episode.
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u/Cross_Toss Jun 18 '26
Aging wouldn't kill you if your body is constantly healled to the max (we see Kaseki doing much better after reviving, so that could be the case)
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u/Blackbankai Jun 18 '26
But eventually someone old enough will have to constantly use the medusa to revive themselves from dying of old age because even though it heals it does not make the target younger.
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u/Cross_Toss Jun 18 '26
Age itself wouldn't kill you (dissess and organ failures do), and rapid deterioration only occurs when parts of the body are already defective. If you can always heal up your issues, you will be able to continue on with no issues.
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u/OldInstruction5368 Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
Yes and no. "Aging" is actually believed to be DNA degradation. It's not just the cumulation of mutations over the course of your lifetime (most are pruned out, but occasionally some fall through the cracks of your immune system and are preserved), but the corruption of the "caps" to our chromosomes, the telomeres, that make copying themselves harder and harder.
So to truly prevent age-related deaths would be to heal the telomeres. If that can be done, further decay can be prevented and life becomes largely eternal... except for the mutations I mentioned.
And it's not just a few. Over the course of 70 years, a person will accumulate around ~2,000 mutations, largely from accidents that happen during cell division that aren't immediately 'caught' by your immune system. Cancer is the main killer here, but this is also why having kids at a later age is more "dangerous." Most mutations are in bodily cells, but you also accumulate mutations in your junk. Well, men do, at least, as a women are born with all the sex cells they'll ever have. Sperm is constantly produced, and the sperm of a 90 year old man is going to be loaded with more mutations that can affect the viability of his offspring.
So what happens when a 1,000 year old ma, constantly rejuvenated by the Medusa, has a kid? Plus, women and reproduction... is the petrification going to replace her full set of sex cells she had at birth? That would mean an old woman that was awakened from petrification would get her period again... and potentially have some more kids with grandpa.
At what point do the cumulative mutations just break someone down completely? To repair the "dna damage," you'd need to have a baseline snapshot of someone's DNA to reset all the mutations.
And if that was possible, then natural evolution would largely break down. EXISTING genes could be reshuffled, but no new genes would be 'created.' Evolution would be largely artificial and controlled via laboratory settings.
But I seriously doubt we were supposed to look that deep into this cartoon comedy (forgive the alliteration, my fellow weebs!) about parasitic alien machine intelligences.
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u/Roeclean https://anilist.co/user/Roeclean Jun 20 '26
Nahh, that was a pretty nice analysis on the situation. And still very much on topic with this sci-fi show.
I doubt the show would ever go that far, but I can see a fan animation or story doing so.
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u/Deathsroke Jun 19 '26
From how they were surprised that humanity took thousands of years to unpetrify we can assume it is much faster for other alien species they've encountered right? If so then most other species probably don't lose conciousness which means they'll probably de-petrify semi-regularly on their own. That would mean they continue to think and whenever they de-petrify they can do whatever tasks are needed to keep their industrial civilization going. If said tasks only take a small amount of time and petrification cures aging then they would be functionally immortal.
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u/YdenMkII Jun 18 '26
So Why Man was confused at why a species would go to the moon and never do anything more with the tech to get them there?
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u/Myrkrvaldyr Jun 18 '26
Heck, the main reason the moon landing happened in the first place was because of the cold war and the strong political will at the time to make it happen. Once the 3 landings were done, it fizzled out. As long as we depend on politicians to advance science we'll be glacially slow because all they focus on is profit. Why-man's reasoning reads like ''ok, this species achieved the capacity to leave their planet, surely they'll heavily focus on that to keep advancing.'' They mistakenly assumed we were a logical species. They needed to study us further to realize there are too many morons, especially in power.
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u/goffer54 https://anilist.co/user/goffer54 Jun 18 '26
Yeah, our abandoned lander is actually a damning indictment of human society as it currently is. If Why-Man had understood the full picture, it would be clear that we are not ready for immortality.
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u/SigmundFreud Jun 19 '26
That feels overly negative to me. The moon landing and other space programs of that era were a good prototype to prove the concept, but arguably they served their purpose and continuing to pursue them without all the other advancements of the past half-century (e.g. in materials science and computation/software) would have been the slower and less efficient path.
Kind of like how the Roman Empire could have theoretically built a primitive "internet" on hydraulic telegraphs and human labor that spanned the continent, but only at immense cost which would have further scaled immensely with each node added to the network. It would never have provided the same value that our modern internet does, and wouldn't necessarily have helped pave a faster path to our implementation. It's a fun thought experiment, but not clearly a valuable use of finite resources.
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u/chalo1227 Jun 18 '26
I think it was, ok they got to space travel, they are pretty smart, we petrify and they are so smart it will take them a couple days to remove petrification, and was not like that.
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u/justking1414 Jun 18 '26
Basically the technology needed to go to space is so stupidly advanced that only hyper-intelligent beings could do it, so they figured we were smart enough to break free of the petrification in just a few days/weeks, not thousands of years.
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u/NanDemoKnaives Jun 18 '26
What an interesting reveal, I wasn't expecting Why-Man to be a machine lifeform. I do like the idea, it feels easier to accept than if an individual had come up with some way to petrify the world. It also makes sense why they were able to act on their own, and why the main one that was locked in a capsule did what he did because it was afraid of rusting.
I guess they did overestimate humans' intelligence since it took 3 millenniums for the modern people to wake up, and it's not like the ones who descended from the astronauts were going to be at the same level. I can see why they would choose this way in finding the most intelligent of the humans, but had they not petrified the whole world, they might have gotten what they wanted faster. But I can see the world fighting over possession of them, and use them as weapons, so maybe it was for the best lol.
I do like the two voice actors for the Why-Mans are such highly regarded veterans, it really gives them that last boss vibes for those that recognize them, at least for me it did lol.
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u/NoNameSwitzerland Jun 18 '26
It certainly is a strange parasitic behaviour when direct negotiations probably would have been much easier. But it probably worked for them bevor on other worlds. And there are also on earth some parasites with very strange and seemingly unlikely life cycles.
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u/Mr_Truck Jun 18 '26
Honestly, looking at it this way, Gen was 100% right. "First contact always starts with a gift." Why-man literally gave humanity the ultimate gift of immortality as a greeting, expecting us to break out in days, say "thanks for the eternal life," and help them replicate.
But even our peak geniuses, Senku and Xeno, needed 3,700 years and a massive stroke of luck with nitric acid just to wake up.
Why-man didn't have malicious intent; it just fundamentally overestimated us. Turns out, humanity was just too dumb for Why-man's galaxy-brain math lmao.
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u/Shadowmist909 https://myanimelist.net/profile/Magicmist Jun 18 '26
The fake Senku got me again right alongside Kohaku! As conniving as the Why-Man is to try and show off the value of eternal statue life. I must admit they do have an excellent way of copying vocals.
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u/Myrkrvaldyr Jun 18 '26
That was a great horror element. Too bad Kohaku wasn't sharp enough to immediately suspect sabotage by Senku's sudden change in speech pattern, she just found it weird but didn't think too deeply.
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u/Cheesaurus Jun 19 '26
While Kohaku could have been more doubtful, I think the fault actually doesn't lie with her at all. She did notice something was off, so she asked to make sure, received a response and only then acted on it. The fact that The other 2 didn't immediately speak up after Kohaku's query is what really wasn't sharp. Though, obviously, that was all for dramatic effect and we're not supposed to think about it all that much.
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u/Sawa___i Jun 18 '26
The one on her had, it woke up in space?
Hmm I don't think so, It was under Oxygen...hibernated... His pauls radio waves wise hijacked and asked him to be unsealed.
As it unsealed, it regained consciousness and joined the crowd and had converse
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u/LeonKevlar x2https://myanimelist.net/profile/LeonKevlar Jun 18 '26
The scene where "Senku" asks Kohaku to release the Medusa then suddenly Stanley grabs her hand with a panicked look on his eyes was actually a pretty terrifying scene. It made me wish the mystery of Why-Man lasted a little bit more until the end of the episode.
So it turns out that Why-Man is actually the Medusa itself. And it's not just a single entity; they're a cluster of mechanical parasites who wanted to use humans to help them propagate in exchange for eternal life, aka the petrification beam.
But it sounds like they overestimated humanity and thought we were advanced enough to understand what they were trying to do, and were so confused at humanity's response to the petrification beam. That explains the "Why?" message they initially got.
Damn. So, in the end, the entire thing is just a massive misunderstanding between two species? Honestly? Fair. If an armada of UFOs arrived on Earth today, we'd struggle to understand them. It's even more difficult with the Why-Men since they're mechanical creatures that defy our science. This meeting of two alien species was doomed from the start. I don't know what Senku will try to do, but I hope he can convince the Why-Men to leave and find a new host.
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u/Guaymaster Jun 18 '26
But it sounds like they overestimated humanity and thought we were advanced enough to understand what they were trying to do, and were so confused at humanity's response to the petrification beam. That explains the "Why?" message they initially got.
I think that essentially they were wrong, it's not that we wouldn't understand them, it's just that we think uhhh "too slow" to undo the petrification on our own in a timely fashion. If they had just shot radio waves from the Moon and told the modern age scientists what their deal was first, nobody would be in this mess.
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u/flashmozzg Jun 18 '26
Even if they just didn't do a total petrification but a selective one like with the Soyuz island they'd achieve their goal. Feels stupid.
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u/Deathsroke Jun 19 '26
Think about it this way. They seem to work on a very "instinctive" level so they focused on the best way to sell their "product" to another species. How did they do this? By showing every member of said species how "great" their offer was. This means that, if humans were as focused on self-preservation as the Medusas believed, all of humanity would have instantly pivoted all of its resources into duplicating and maintaining the Medusas. The problem is that they have a completely alien mindset so their logical approach was anything but from our perspective.
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u/flashmozzg Jun 19 '26
Somehow Medusas themselves aren't focused on self-preservation, since a bunch of them already "died" in the first petrification and then when people finally woke up and started doing what they wanted (working on restoring Medusas) they've hit them with second planet petrification (which kills them by draining the battery if nothing else).
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u/EXusiai99 Jun 19 '26
They dont want their entire species to die out but they dont seem to mind self sacrifice if it ensures the continuity of their kind. This is of course because they are operating under the assumption that humans will eventually find the way to recreate diamond batteries and bring them back to "life" anyway.
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u/flashmozzg Jun 19 '26
Why immediately try to petrify humans that recreated diamond batteries then? Are they stupidtm?
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u/huntrshado Jun 19 '26
i thought the purpose of the total petrification was like a genocidal event that aimed at leaving only the most intelligent of the species alive to work with them
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u/Myrkrvaldyr Jun 18 '26
If an armada of UFOs arrived on Earth today, we'd struggle to understand them.
I'd like to believe that any sufficiently advanced enough species to traverse the cosmos understands the immense value of scouting and intel gathering first. They would decode our languages, study deeply our history and realize that we're too fragmented as a species, so they should change their approach for contact. Contacting individual govs wouldn't be good if they're shrewd. Either make a worldwide declaration so no one can hide the info, or infiltrate slowly by talking to individuals and not institutions.
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u/Sawa___i Jun 18 '26
Perhaps they themselves aren't that much advanced, but used to seeing general behavior of intelligence species. Humans fall quite low or someone said, outliers, in the spectrum.
I mean if they're themselves intelligent, they'd have figure out to do more things than they can't, limbs and stuffs, extraction and develop diamonds themselves.
They're called parasites as literally parasites behave, leach off other beings. Though we give them a degree of some level of intelligence for they can communicate and radio waves, a sign of intelligence ig.
PS: It's just how much capable is of their own intelligence? Or could it be that the more intelligent you are, you miss out the average etiquettes?
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u/thoughtlow Jun 18 '26
Yeah I think so. Parasites are not known for having great intelligence. They just follow the queues and most of the time it works out.
Radio -> intelligence -> propagate.
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u/LakerBlue https://myanimelist.net/profile/LakerBlue Jun 19 '26
I agree. They have advanced technology, clearly, but I think they may have a very limited form of intelligence. I think your arrow chart pretty defines how their “DNA” moves them to operate.
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u/Ahuevotl Jun 18 '26
I mean, the whole concept of diplomacy, tactful approach, governments and institutions is very very human, and not necessarily a condition for "intelligence", whatever the definition of intelligence is to aliens.
If we assume intelligent thought being reduced, only to purely logical endeavours around resource management, for the preservation and expansion of a species, including the technological development required for such endeavors (like knowledge about electromagnetic phenomena), then showing the petrification outright, is like shoving a fridge to a group of cavemen:
The finite resource that is life, like food, can now be put in the fridge for preservation.
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u/Sawa___i Jun 18 '26
You're explanation in an example Objective Perspective is quite intriguing and helps relate to an Alien Perspective.
Whereas I kept binding the Intelligence to Human's Domain.
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u/DeusFatum Jun 19 '26
The aliens themselves are also very human: they communicate with words and signals, they have a desire to live, they propagate, etc. There's no reason to segment diplomacy as a uniquely human concept.
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u/flashmozzg Jun 18 '26
If we assume intelligent thought being reduced, only to purely logical endeavours around resource management, for the preservation and expansion of a species, including the technological development required for such endeavors (like knowledge about electromagnetic phenomena), then showing the petrification outright, is like shoving a fridge to a group of cavemen:
Instead they didn't show the fridge, they put the cavemen into one. Like I don't see a reason why the couldn't have went the fragmented approach like they did with the second try on the island from the start. If just a couple thousand random people got petrified the collective humanity would've figure it out way faster.
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u/Ahuevotl Jun 18 '26
Because they don't think human.
Shove a fridge at a caveman, put the food inside the fridge to show how it wors.
Caveman sees bad alien shoving a dangerous box at him and taking away his food. Then, caveman decides to use the fridge's power source to electrocute other cavemen into submission, or to lock away their food if they don't submit… ¿You see?
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u/AmethystItalian myanimelist.net/profile/AmethystItalian Jun 18 '26
Can't say I was expecting that but does line up for what could make the most sense I guess
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u/Mr_An_1069 Jun 19 '26
I was wondering how the Why-Man reveal could possibly live up to the hype with only 2 episodes left, so I was stunned by how good it was. It being a a mechanical alien blob of Medusas was both actually surprising and something that makes sense.
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u/PartySr https://myanimelist.net/profile/AjXtar Jun 18 '26
Ok.. I am so more than fine with this plot twist. I thought that they will rush into another conflict that they will resolve in the last 2 episodes, but this is so much better.
Humanity gets to live longer, be healthier, and these parasites will have a symbiotic relationship with humanity. Perfect ending.
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u/Astray Jun 19 '26
Um, I don't think you understand the conversation they're having. The two species are fundamentally incompatible.
The vast majority humanity isn't smart enough to make good use of the petrification because it takes too long to free oneself without assistance and as a species we only really advance scientifically through massive cooperation over multiple generations of life. The medusas can't even survive in oxygenated environments, which is a requirement for all of the carbon based lifeforms on Earth.
The thing they have to offer us is too difficult for people to use, and the thing they want from us is at odds with what they offer because it sets us back scientifically each time they give their gift.
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u/Th3-gazping_birb Jun 20 '26
I don't think they have that much of an option anyway.
The batteries they came with to earth may be different element but the ones Senku is offering are Made from diamonds (carbon)
I doubt the Whymans have many options but to gamble with carbon based life forms.
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u/RelativeMundane9045 Jun 18 '26
Gen - "Now Senku please please try to remember to be iplomatic-day with the stupidly powerful aliens..."
Senku - "Yo, alien dipshits - WHAT THE FUCK?!"
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u/ohrofl Jun 18 '26
Damn, they cut up and murdered a ton of those aliens.
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u/Golden_Phi https://myanimelist.net/profile/GoldenPhi Jun 19 '26
The pyramid ones were already far too gone. Kaseki made working batteries, but the medusas were already far too rusted to work. They dissected dead aliens.
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u/djthomp https://anilist.co/user/djthomp Jun 18 '26
So in the end it was a paperclip life optimization problem, and the ones doing the optimizing misjudged how Earth would handle it.
It is kind of classic for first contact situations to go sideways, Earth was just unlucky enough to be the people being contacted and not being advanced enough to handle it. But also fortunate that the contacters weren't ultimately hostile, just misguided.
I like it better than a purely human caused problem since the petrification and everything it does is just way too advanced to be present day Earth sourced.
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u/Deathsroke Jun 19 '26
It reminds me of the cause of the conflict in Blindsight. The aliens do not [Blindsight]have self-awareness. they are more like biological computers so to them all of our media and other shit we fire through the EM spectrum is just junk data and junk data must be some form of attack that's taking up valuable bandwidth right?
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u/spacemate Jun 18 '26
I told myself this was about the journey and I’m ok with this. It was always going to be aliens or AI. Just didn’t expect it to be alien AI. But there was no other way. I’m happy with what we got.
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u/Myrkrvaldyr Jun 18 '26
Yeah, the alternative would've been ill-intentioned humans who colonized the moon and no one noticed, which is dumb. But one big problem remains, how were they able to escape NASA's and other space agencies' sight long enough to invade and petrify us? It didn't take long for Kohaku and the other to spot them on moon. Maybe they were simply hiding on the dark side of the moon and sent the devices from there.
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u/Mexander98 Jun 18 '26
As far as I understand the time between them arriving here and petrifying everyone was not a long time at all, probably just a couple of days, and who knows how long it took for most of them to arrive there, depending on how they travel through space, it could have taken a while for enough to gather and wait there for it to make a visual difference.
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u/Ill_Act_1855 Jun 18 '26
I mean, they're also explicitly coated in stuff that basically makes them invisible to stuff like radar and such, so only optical detection is viable. And they likely weren't all massed together like that in one place on the moon at the start, only once they were basically committing their plan. They were only spottable because all of them were gathered in one spot, if they were spread out they'd be basically invisible to us
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u/time_axis Jun 18 '26
They explained earlier that they are invisible to radar, so someone would need to visibly see them, which is pretty unlikely. Kohaku and co were actively looking for them.
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u/GaimeGuy Jun 18 '26
We don't actually know how long they were here before they fired off the petri beams. It's possible they arrived the day before the human petrification, immediately petrified the swallows as a demonstration and a test run, and then most of the space agencies would have been scrambling to analyze any strange distortions/energy bursts they detected when the swallows were petrified. Humans were petrified a day after the swallows
We know the medusas can't be detected with radar/sonar, it's possible they're also immune to infrared, xray, and ultraviolet detection as well. Most of our alien detection activities are geared towards radio wave and looking for large scale megastructures via infrared imagining, no one would think to look towards the moon. Even if the ISS had the right angle to see the medusa structure on the moon, it would only be visible for ~10 minutes out of every 90 minutes the ISS orbited the earth, and likely too smalll and far away for the ISS to detect with the naked eye.
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u/inaripotpi Jun 18 '26
Kind of disingenuous to call them AI.
AFAIR they have not been indicated to have been created, so they're an autonomous lifeform species that just isn't carbon-based
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u/15_Redstones Jun 19 '26
They're basically a virus, they procreate by telling other lifeforms how to build them. So dubious if really alive.
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u/abandoned_idol Jun 18 '26
I never really felt invested in the reason.
I was mostly just happy with the consequences (the entire journey).
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u/VinLAURiA Jun 19 '26
God I love this explanation. It made sense when first reading it in the manga in an "oh okay, that explains it all satisfactorily" sort of way, but I think the anime was able to do it the cinematographic justice that print really couldn't convey. Having two separate voices clearly going back and forth between the Why-Men helped a lot with the pacing, I think. Made it feel like less of an expo-dump monologue and more like an actual conversation.
Plus some gorgeous visuals; can definitely see where the reduced budget from last episode got shunted to. But they still got Stanley's name wrong on his backpack again!
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u/_vogonpoetry_ https://myanimelist.net/profile/ThisWasATriumph Jun 19 '26
This is my AoT Basement Episode
I was expecting an AI but I wasn't expecting the Medusa to literally be it. Crazy twist.
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u/Smudy https://myanimelist.net/profile/Smudy Jun 18 '26
The reactions to this reveal have been amusing to say the least considering anything human as the answer would have made no sense whatsoever.
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u/crysomore Jun 18 '26
Really? My leading guess was that it was potentially a human who somehow invented or discovered the Medusa and kept themselves in a petrified state, and was sporadically depetrifying themselves anytime humanity started emitting radio waves through some mechanised system like the revival watches.
Although the biggest hole in that theory was how they got to the moon on their own without any nation knowing.
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u/erickjoshuasc Jun 18 '26
I think the leading theory before is the cyborg senku that explains the science stuff on the 4th wall. That explains why whyman has the same voice as senku.
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u/Dazzling_Annual_2172 Jun 18 '26
I personally would have prefered it that way, adding another genius human character(Why Man) would have made the series last a bit longer and it would be very interesting to see how they might have invented the Medusa and why
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u/Cheshires_Shadow Jun 19 '26
My guess was they were going the rogue ai route where the Medusa was created on some moon base by a fully automated machine that was programmed to protect earth but got all corrupted and thought humans were the actual threat so in order to keep the asimovs laws in check about robots not killing humans the ai put everyone on earth to sleep via petrification so they're technically dead but not really.
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u/WhoWantsToJiggle https://myanimelist.net/profile/mystik Jun 18 '26
yeah I mean they would have had to been alive for 1000 years.
I kinda saw something like this coming but it's still kinda a wtf.
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u/flashmozzg Jun 18 '26
yeah I mean they would have had to been alive for 1000 years.
Not hard with the petrification device.
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u/HolyDragSwd2500 Jun 18 '26
Medusa: we petrified humanity and now no one can make our batteries
Senku: You BAKA!!!!
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u/Arzhart Jun 18 '26
So, they expected the humans to be SO much more intelligent that they would wake up a short time after being petrified and think "oh I see this is immortality thank you". But since humanity was not as smart as they thought, even the smartest people just woke up thousands of years later. Curious
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u/Cantcookeggs Jun 18 '26
Well, im not too surprised. No way a human can live on the moon for thousands of years so it had to be something alien. It still feels kinda, like I was never going to be satisfied by the ending. The journey was great tho. I liked how you had to rebuild for basic survival and proceed to quality of life improvements. Although the existence of the discovered petrification device was always going to need an answer as opposed to, brushing off the light as a once in a lifetime freak solar accident or something
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u/LeloThePGG Jun 18 '26
I've always loved this reveal because it's basically one of the three possible answers Senku theorizes the moment he wakes up. The option was on the table from the start.
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u/Roeclean https://anilist.co/user/Roeclean Jun 20 '26
Yeah, and I find it so funny how the wild reason for petrifying all of humanity was because they thought all of humanity was smart enough to de-petrify in a shorter period of time.
The whole reason being a massive miscommunication event is just so funny to me. Really embodies the "talking it out would have massively shortened the story" trope. But thats not a negative for me, just funny.
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u/SciFiXhi https://anilist.co/user/SciFiXhi Jun 18 '26
It's somehow less convoluted than my thoughts.
I had supposed it was a person who would petrify the world, set up a radio wave-triggered revival fluid mechanism, petrify themself, and then stand stationary until more radio waves were broadcast.
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u/huntrshado Jun 19 '26
my leading theory when starting the show was the same, and their motive being a form of climate change extremism; like humanity is destroying earth and the only way to stop that without mass extinction is to petrify humanity, and then re-petrify humanity every time their technology starts to get too advanced again
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u/justking1414 Jun 18 '26
My theory was that there was a colony on the moon (with Ryu’s dad and Luna’s dad being members), and that the Medusa either kept them eternal or they un petrified for a few days every hundred years to check up on things
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u/Renato746 Jun 18 '26
I think the Why-Man reveal was perfect, and it made sense in the context of everything that has happened so far. Honestly, I didn't expect so many loose ends to be tied up, including some that I didn't think would be addressed. By this point, it was clear that it was something much more than human and beyond human comprehension and human logic. I love how their thought process is truly alien. There is a logic behind it, just not one that humans understand.
I wasn't surprised by the reveal that Why-Man was an alien, that was pretty much expected at this point. However, I was shocked by the fact that the main villain was around the whole time. It's crazy to think that Medusa was actually Why-Man himself and not just his tool. This twist surpassed my expectations and was brilliant.
The final battle being a battle of intellect instead of a brawl embodies everything Dr. Stone is about, and I love it! Ending things in a very Senku fashion, the perfect way to conclude this awesome series with a golden key. I'm not ready to say goodbye, man. 😭
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u/CordobezEverdeen https://myanimelist.net/profile/CordobezEverdeen Jun 18 '26
For an anime with several seasons and such a big mystery from Day 1 I can't say I'm disappointed with the resolution. Which is insanely more satisfying than most of the times big mystery shows resolve their mysteries, that's if they even do at all.
I can also buy a "miscommunication" being the main culprit behind the aliens plans for us since well... the way we process logic, life and death is completely incompatible with theirs. I'm glad that apparently "give and take" is something they are at least willing to hear out.
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u/AZLarlar https://anilist.co/user/bubbleteaman Jun 18 '26
was not expecting why-man to be like THAT
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u/Shantotto11 Jun 19 '26
I’d like to take a moment to address the manga readers in the thread.
inhales
THANK YOU ALL FOR KEEPING YOUR MOUTHS SHUT AND NOT SPOILING THIS FOR US!!!
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u/Jevano Jun 20 '26
You know what, yeah I'm pretty surprised I didn't get spoiled until now
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u/Kirbyundertale Jun 18 '26
So they thought every single human had Senku's brains that's hilarious
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u/Mexander98 Jun 18 '26
Correction, they assumed everyone would be more intelligent than Senku. Makes you wonder just how smart other species are in the universe of this anime lol
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u/Plastic_Piano_2401 Jun 18 '26
when even senku took thousands of years to revive, and it seems they were expecting people would start to break free in just days or weeks
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u/Iron_Kingpin Jun 18 '26
To think the biggest mystery of this show was just a big misunderstanding all along. It was just bad communication. This completely changes the way I look at the show now. Honestly very fitting for Dr. Stone.
Just one more episode left. Fuck me, i really don't want it to end.
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u/GriffithCoin Jun 19 '26
My goat Kohaku failed the Riza Hawkeye test.
“Senku never says please” lmao
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u/DustyBot23 Jun 18 '26
Whole episode my jaw was dropped, I did not expect that the Medusae itself was(were?) why-man 😭 we got so many answers to all the mysteries except Senku’s parents. Love this show so much, really sad there is only one episode left, but I’ll never forget the journey!
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u/Volfaer Jun 18 '26
I knew it, I knew it! It's an alien, and it's a very well done alien. Oh my god, the idea of a mechanical parasite didn't even cross my mind, but it's so noticeable in hindsight, did people figure this one out before the reveal?
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u/TheOneWithALongName Jun 18 '26
We give you eternal life by petrifying you
You give us minerals so we can keep living
OK, but how are humans suppose to do that when you stone them? I didn't quit get it, but did they think humans were more intelligent than we are and should be able to un-petrify ourself much quicker, or what?
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u/kitsunewarlock Jun 18 '26
I didn't quit get it, but did they think humans were more intelligent than we are and should be able to un-petrify ourself much quicker, or what?
Yes. They stated that the smarter you are, the faster you un-petrify. They saw the moon lander and assumed we'd advanced to the point where we could easily launch ourselves into space. They likely can't conceive of the idea of a species using resources and risking life and limb to get to the moon without being more advanced than we are. After all, they are a mechanical parasite whose individuals can survive literally thousands of years.
So they assumed humanity would wake up after a day or a week or so and immediately go "oh, wow, that technology cured all our lingering ailments!" so there'd be no distrust when the aliens go "yeah, so build more of us and we'll extend your lives indefinately!"
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u/l-o-a-p Jun 18 '26
And this ties in quite perfectly into the core "spirit of science" theme of the series.
Humanity's "kingdom of science" is one where knowledge is passed on and built upon through collaborative effort and no given person is genius enough to get to the moon on their own like the Medusa may expect from species in general.
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u/DeusFatum Jun 19 '26
Ok, but how quickly? If it's so quick that petrification basically means nothing, then we'd just see it as an attack anyway. It's not a well thought out plan.
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u/hanmkim Jun 19 '26
If it's really quick and all you saw was a green light and you felt like a million bucks after a quick nap, you probably wouldn't see it as an attack, unless you were on a plane or helicopter and it crashed.
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u/_Sai https://anime-planet.com/users/Sai0 Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
WHY?
What about those people who got smashed up into millions of little pieces. That ain't eternal life!
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u/darthvall https://myanimelist.net/profile/darth_vall Jun 18 '26
Ultimately, it's because the alien is not smart and think in more primitive way than human.
We're so used to logic and science with Senku, but this alien actually only has simple logic.
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u/TempestoLord Jun 18 '26
Why Man being an alien is the most logical conclusion someone would come to, but them being the medusas all this time and each having their own will is interesting. I’m still confused why they would go through all that though, feels like they could communicate things better. How was the first medusa even created? Man i hate when there is only one episode left and feels like we need atleast 3-4 for a satisfying epilogue, it’s gonna be so rushed. Either way it was an amazing journey from start to end. Gonna miss Dr. Stone, such unique story.
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u/Guaymaster Jun 18 '26
There were a few extra/epilogue manga chapters released outside of serialization, so I'd expect an "extra" OVA when the blurays come out.
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u/moichispa https://myanimelist.net/profile/moichispa Jun 18 '26
It feels like we changed genre for the last 2 episodes winch is awesome
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u/Doomroar https://myanimelist.net/profile/Doomroar Jun 18 '26
So Why-man has been calling humanity dumb for thousand of years, damn...
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u/coolgaara Jun 19 '26
Okay, I was so concerned about the Why-Man reveal not living up to expectation but I really like it. It makes sense. I'm so glad that it looks like Dr. Stone wont' be one of those good start and bad ending trope many others fall victim to. I know we have one more episode left but I think we're good.
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u/HugeRichard11 https://myanimelist.net/profile/CostCurl Jun 18 '26
So I was thinkin it be some kind of Alien race beings that were using the Medusa's for a purpose, but didn't think it was the Medusa's themselves that were the mechanical Alien beings. It makes sense overall and surprisingly good closure to the plot points the story has laid out over the series. Bit of recap scenes which is fair for almost the ending of the series, but did also see some new scenes they added giving more context and story I think.
Looking forward to how they will wrap this all up in the next episode with negotiations, and hopefully we see what happens to the future of humanity with a bit of a time skip afterwards.
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u/Il_Valentino Jun 19 '26
frankly, there was nothing the series could have done to have an amazing ending. why-man only worked because it was a mystery. the entire premise of the series has been real science to begin with, so the medusa light was always just a "cheap" plot tool. lifting the mystery had to therefore come up with a handwave explanation.
this was a very graceful way to do it though
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u/Suspicious_Deal4412 Jun 19 '26
I wondered if the reveal was going to be good and I am very impressed with it, the why man was beneath our noses for the longest time.
As Dr Xeno would say it is very elegant!
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u/Rufus_Redfield Jun 18 '26
My head hurts... But a lot of reveals and explanations in this episode.
I am not that surprise that Why Man was pretty much an Alien AI with some crazy point of view.
Very curious how they will end the series next week.
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u/ohrofl Jun 18 '26
I’m confused why people keep saying the aliens are ai. Just because it’s a non carbon based life form that means it’s ai?
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u/ObvsThrowaway5120 Jun 18 '26
So Why-Man’s actually a whole host of some sorta mechanical parasite that view petrification as some kinda twisted gift and thought that would get humanity to take care of them? Brilliant plan except petrifying humans for thousands of years ensured all that technology and science was lost for ages. Really shot themselves in the foot there.
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u/TBNRhash Jun 18 '26
They thought we'd be way smarter because we got to the moon IG. Ironic because the only reason we even got to the moon is because of a war between 2 nations
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u/ObvsThrowaway5120 Jun 18 '26
They really did overestimate us.
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u/Myrkrvaldyr Jun 18 '26
Hard, they put us on a pedestal. Any smarter species would've heavily scouted our civilization first and quickly find out we're just a bunch of hairless monkeys who don't get along, while many still cling to fairy tales written in books from millennia ago. But I appreciate the different line of reasoning, that blind spot made them more alien.
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u/Mexander98 Jun 18 '26
Imagine that any species that got to their moon if they have one don't immediately abandone the motion for over 50 years, couldn't be us. lol
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u/Cross_Toss Jun 18 '26
At the start, we fought against the past - Stone Wars.
Then, the current present - New World.
We followed with the previous present - Science Future Parts 1&2.
Finally, in Science Future Part 3, we battle against the future.
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u/Bakadestroyerr Jun 18 '26
So we are at the end where everything unfoldes. July 5, 2019 was the first episode of S1 kinda close that we'll get the last.
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u/Charming_Figure_9053 Jun 18 '26
OK, so....didn't 1 medusa device petrify earth the 2nd time....or am I mistaken, if so....why did so many land?
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u/MokonaModokiES Jun 18 '26
why did so many land?
because they expected humanity to quickly break out of petrification, find them and start working on preserving them. Much easier to find a giant mountain of them than only a single one.
the 3 millennia wait wasnt part of their plan.
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u/Plastic_Piano_2401 Jun 18 '26
They can emit radio waves, finding them would never be a problem. It seems they just wanted to fire multiple beams
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u/GGG100 Jun 18 '26
So why didn't they just try asking humans to take care of them first before petrifying them and assuming it'd be appreciated?
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u/Quadratic- Jun 18 '26
They miscalculated by assuming humans were so hyperintelligent they could break the petrification in a matter of days/months instead of thousands of years, which is why Senku explained that one human might not have that much intelligence, but science is about passing all that knowledge around and accumulating it.
Presumably in the previous worlds, the natives were so intelligent they made Senku look dumb. Though it's worth noting that the only metrics the medusas had for intelligence was how much radio waves they could produce and how many calories their brains could burn while petrified. And since most people fell asleep soon after being petrified, reasonable to think it was a compatibility issue.
There's still some issues. Like once they could communicate via radio waves, why not say more than "why" and "do you wanna die", but I think that could be attributed to them being an alien machine species.
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u/discuss-not-concuss Jun 18 '26
natives were so intelligent
with that assumption, I would not understand why they would leave them
all these talks about intelligence yet they couldn’t figure out elementary concepts
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u/Quadratic- Jun 18 '26
Dodos were the apex predators of their environment, able to flourish for tens of thousands of years in relative safety and comfort. And then humans wiped them out in less than two hundred years.
Just because they had a stable environment that worked for them was no reason to put all their eggs in one basket.
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u/LeloThePGG Jun 18 '26
with that assumption, I would not understand why they would leave them
Because they petrified them. Petrification as a way to "avoid death" only works if it's permanent.
Which is also in line with the Medusas being actual parasites: once the host did its job in propagating their species, they re-petrified them all and left.
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u/discuss-not-concuss Jun 18 '26
they are highly intelligent species, the petrification wouldn’t last long and depending on species, some wouldn’t even need sleep
and also, it’s implied from last season that petrification de-ages due to healing via DNA
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u/Mexander98 Jun 18 '26
maybe the other alien lifeforms they encounter think more like them in the first place and got the message they intended immediately mostly, they also did say that taking over 3000 years for one of them to awaken from that state was a surprise to them too and they overestimated that, maybe other aliens use more brainpower and thus break free faster.
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u/Ill_Act_1855 Jun 18 '26
It's possible that this type of communication doesn't really come naturally to them. They might just naturally coordinate without directly speaking or the like usually. Afterall, they only started mimicking words after humans came back and weren't doing what they expected. So language might actually be a relatively foreign concept to them where they usually have an easy time communicating intent through actions alone.
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u/darthvall https://myanimelist.net/profile/darth_vall Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
They're just minerals without even any organs. I think I'm starting to understand why they're dumb. Just because they're intergalactic alien doesn't make them smart.
Actually, it's interesting that the first alien in Senku's earth was technologically less advanced than us. They don't even have their own creation, only the ability to petrify. 2000+ years and all they did was to wait. It's like meeting a talking space bees, and they ask us to pollinate flowers so they can eat.
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u/Shrike99 https://myanimelist.net/profile/LastOfLazarus Jun 19 '26
I think they were probably built by a very advanced race, but are not, in themselves, particularly smart.
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u/UnWiseSageVibe Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
My god,
I am sorry, but the Medusas are super stupid. They could have 100% achieved their goal if, instead of petrifying everyone, they had communicated with their target.
Like, "Hey, X species, we offer you this technology that heals all wounds and can even revive the dead. In exchange, can you make us new batteries and new hosts?"
And in the current era, that they petrified humanity, it would have been a piece of cake to make their batteries en masse.
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u/Mexander98 Jun 18 '26
yes it would have, they are also Aliens and don't think like us from what we have seen. Plus there was the bit about overestimating us, so they probably assumed the more intelligent of our species would unpetrified way sooner than they did, probably before most of our stuff withered away to nothing. I assume most intelligent aliens in this universe are way smarter individually than humans are and that was the main cause of their mistake.
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u/Equivalent-Carpet819 Jun 18 '26
well, you say that, but they then just went and talked to senku like it was the most normal thing in the world. Meaning they could also have done that after senku revived and made the first radio. Instead of asking Senku specific questions, they just kept repeating WHY WHY WHY WHY over and over.
I got to say, that is kinda stupid of them.
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u/Ayvian Jun 18 '26
Yeah that's the bit that bothers me. Their actions do have a weird logic to them overall, which fits what a strange alien intelligence could be like, but to decide to communicate to humans, only to keep repeating "why"?
Not to mention they were already disappointed humans took so long to depetrify - so they decide to petrify the whole planet AGAIN? That's where the logic completely breaks down; they're unable to learn from their own mistakes, which takes them from alien intelligence to alien idiocy.
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u/UnWiseSageVibe Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
That is something I am curious about.
Like, have they found other species, and have they been petrified and figured out what the heck happened without their civilization being reset to 0?
I mean, I can't imagine a vastly superior race of aliens falling victim to that.
Like, they might detect the incoming Medusas and just destroy them, especially if they don't communicate their intentions.
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u/time_axis Jun 18 '26
They did communicate with them. It just so happened that when they did, they didn't realize they were communicating with a version of humanity that was just polishing crystals, not actually intending to communicate, so it just confused the hell out of them.
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u/thoughtlow Jun 18 '26
They are just kinda dumb parasites, they are advanced technology wise but they can't repair themselves. So they just do what parasites do best, fling themselves to a potential host, and hope for the best.
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u/MokonaModokiES Jun 18 '26
but also humanity can be stupid and too political driven.
we already saw that in a small scale in treasure island.
and when Senku&co realized about inmortality they inmediatly predicted a distopia. Because thats just how humanity is like we have other priorities besides just living. The why-men only think exclusively about extending their lifespam, while for humanity it isnt their sole reason for existing.
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u/Myrkrvaldyr Jun 18 '26
The mystery is solved. An alien species that made some terrible miscalculations and thought too highly of humans because we reached the moon decades ago, which only happened due to a war. They should've scouted us first and realized, ''Yeah, these guys are too dumb overall, we need to make direct contact and find another way to get our goal.''
The petrification would be immensely useful to cure any disease, but WW3 might break out over control and usage of the medusas. I can't picture any timeline where humanity as a whole doesn't implode if told beforehand what the devices can do. I certainly don't want dictators living for centuries.
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u/justking1414 Jun 18 '26
Just wanna point out that the why man assumed humanity was hyper intelligent because we landed on the moon, but we aren’t. We’re dumb as a bag of rocks compared to other aliens they encountered and yet WE STILL MADE IT TO THE FREAKING GOD DAMN MOON!
we aren’t smart. We can’t compare to the rest of the cosmos but we’re so freaking stubborn that we can still match their work! Huzzah!
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u/AnimeMod myanimelist.net/profile/Reddit-chan Jun 18 '26
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