Director Shuhei Matsushita and Producer Shusuke Katagiri Talk About the Process of Adapting ‘Dr. STONE NEW WORLD’

Dr.STONE is a shōnen manga written by Riichirō Inagaki and drawn by Boichi. It was published in Shūeisha’s Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine from March 6, 2017, to March 7, 2022. An anime television series adaptation by TMS Entertainment aired between July 5 and December 13, 2019. A second season aired between January 14, 2021, and March 25, 2021. The third season aired from April 6, 2023, until December 21, 2023.
The anime is currently on a break but will return to adapt the final arcs of the manga, but our good friends at Anime Trending have had the chance to sit down for a talk with the series director Shuhei Matsushita and producer Shusuke Katagiri, who revealed some interesting details about the production of the latest season.
Several topics were discussed during the interview, and the crew members were asked about the creative process behind the series, now that three seasons have been produced, and this is what they said:
Katagiri: We paid close attention to the beginning and the ending of the first cour and second cour, especially the end of the first cour and the beginning of the second cour. We made sure that there was continuity to the story.
Matsushita: At the end of the first cour, we wanted the audience to be engaged so that we could carry them onto the second cour. Especially when we’re thinking about the flow of the script altogether, something happens and that concludes, but something else needs to be set up so that everybody is interested in watching the next. So that is what we paid close attention to for this season.
Source: Anime Trending
They were then asked about their love for the series, and each of them provided us with an answer about what they love best about the series as a whole:
Katagiri: I think one of the biggest appeals is that what they create leads to something next, and something next is always bigger. So they’re sort of scaling up and trying to do something bigger and better. Sometimes when original manga gets adapted into an anime series, sometimes because of the length, the limitations, we have to drop some of the story arcs or chapters. But with Dr. STONE, if you cut something out, then you can’t lead into the next arc. So that’s why we spend a lot of time and energy on storyboarding so that everything is coherent and makes sense.
Matsushita: For me, in terms of the scale of the story, such an epic saga type of story, we haven’t really seen that recently, so I’m definitely attracted to that element.
Katagiri: If you look at the page and see it has been 3,700 years, [it’s] like, “What?” You don’t really see that grand scale of a story.
Matsushita: They start from the bare minimum, and step by step, they really need to painstakingly build something up. That process is also very engaging to watch.
Source: Anime Trending
As we’ve said, a lot of other topics were touched upon in that interview. There was talk about how Dr.STONE has a different focus than most shonen titles, as well as how the production of the third season was handled, including some more important scenes and character development. If you want to read the whole interview, you can do it here, and you will be able to read about everything that has been discussed during the talk they had recently.
Finally, Shuhei Matsuhita was asked about how the fact that the Dr.STONE manga is finished will influence the future of the anime series since they now have to balance out the story with the fact that there are no more surprises because those who have read the manga know what is going to happen. Here is what he said:
Matsushita: Just because the story has been completed, [it] doesn’t mean that we can sit back and relax about the animation because what the anime series brings to the table feels a little different than the completion of the anime. There are fans who only watch the anime series and don’t read the manga, but we want those anime-only fans to experience those thrilling moments as much as the manga readers do. But with that said, because we know the ending, how it’s going to be completed, we can plan ahead and do foreshadowing, etc, so we do have that luxury.
Source: Anime Trending
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