Although Dr. Stone is revolutionary in its incorporation of science into the shonen genre, there remains a major mistake that's overlooked.

In the anime Dr. Stone, humanity is petrified for 3,700 years until our protagonist Senku finally awakens in a world overtaken by former zoo animals and uninhibited wildlife. Luckily for him, Senku is a genius science prodigy with a near-perfect memory of a myriad of scientific phenomena.

What fans may not know is that although the artist Boichi has a degree in physics, the writer Riichiro Inagaki does not have a degree in a scientific field. Instead, the team relies on an unnamed scientific advisor, as stated during multiple interviews. Even the movie Gravity, revered for its many scientific accuracies, still managed to overlook the fact that stars don't twinkle when viewed from outer space. As such, it is unreasonable to assume that all the science in Dr. Stone is completely accurate -- as shown in its problematic portrayal of gunpowder.

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Senku explains that the most important advancement in a technological civilization is the acquisition of calcium carbonate, which can be used for four unique purposes: agriculture, construction, sanitation and weaponry. It is useful in agriculture, as it removes the hydrogen ions, thus enriching the soil. It is necessary in construction since, if combined with sand in high heat, people can create mortar. It's useful as soap because mixing calcium carbonate with oil creates soap.

Finally, Senku explains that the fourth use of calcium carbonate is in gunpowder. After all, as Senku says, gunpowder is simply made from sulfur, charcoal and potassium carbonate. The keen reader may have already picked up on the major error, which can be seen in Episodes 2-4 of the anime and in Chapter 4 of the manga. It is not calcium carbonate that is used in gunpowder, but rather potassium carbonate.

Interestingly enough, potassium carbonate manages to successfully serve each one of those four unique purposes that Senku mentioned. Potash can make liquid soap at the cost of shoehorning in the corny "in a world where illness is life and death, soap is our Dr. Stone" quote. Wood ash also makes for a great nutritional supplement to agricultural fields. Finally, potassium carbonate is a very effective additive for making strong cement and mortar. This leads much credibility to the theory that the author mistakenly confused calcium carbonate with potassium carbonate.

Further lending support to this theory, it is not incomprehensible that the author may have confused the kana. After all, in Japanese, potassium carbonate is written as 炭酸カリウム and calcium carbonate is written as 炭酸カルシウム; one cannot help but notice that they both start with the same two kanji and end with the same two katakana. The other possible but problematic solution to this dilemma is that Senku neutralized the calcium carbonate and then added potash off-screen to create a very impure potassium carbonate. This impure potassium carbonate would be problematic owing to its inert reaction to moisture.

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As evidenced by Geoff Smith in his article "Saltpetre in medieval gunpowder: Calcium or Potassium Nitrate," the conception that lime was used in medieval gunpowder manufacturing is a persistent and unfounded rumor proven by the chemical reaction taking place in Das Feuerwerkbuch, Folio 77, where the author notes that the indicator of good saltpeter is a pure blueish lilac color when ignited. While calcium carbonate creates an orange-red flame when ignited, potassium carbonate creates a purplish violet color -- confirming that medieval saltpeter was made with potassium carbonate, not calcium carbonate.

The most notorious enemy of pre-modern gunpowder was moisture, and therefore, humidity. Keeping gunpowder dry was essential for it to work properly, and before the capabilities of vacuum sealing, this was much easier said than done. Gunpowder was frequently rendered useless from a simple spill of water and could rarely be kept for long without moisture creeping into it. Even worse, calcium carbonate is much more difficult to ignite and takes only a few degrees of humidity to be rendered inert.

This is where the location of Japan makes it even more problematic considering that calcium carbonate is ridiculously hygroscopic. When taking into account the absurd average annual humidity in Japan, which ranges from 70 to 80%, one can't help but realize that calcium carbonate would almost certainly be impossible to ignite.

Overlooking this, Dr. Stone is a consistently thrilling manga that manages to subvert the usual flashy action-oriented shonen genre with a healthy injection of science. Dr. Stone's fun and challenging application of various scientific fields have made this anime one of the greatest experiences that the shonen demographic has to offer.

Dr. Stone is available to be read in the Shonen Jump vault at Viz.com or streamed on Crunchyroll.

Dan McMahon is an Anime Features Writer for CBR. He favors writing about that which impassions him such as anime, manga, and comic books. Dan's personal hobbies include inline-skating, reading, whittling, cooking, mixology, and aviation. He/Him or They/Them @Dan_E_McMahon