After years of unspoken feelings, Taiju Ooki is about to confess to his crush. However, at that moment, a bright green light engulfs humanity, and suddenly everyone is turned to stone.
Thousands of years later, exactly the right series of events lines up in nature and leads to teenage genius and best friend of Taiju, Senku Ishigami, to be cured.
After using the cure on Taiju, the pair set out to jump-start civilization and save humanity by speeding through all the most useful inventions of human history.
Dr. Stone did what generations of science teachers have failed to do – make science seem like a ton of fun. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like Dr. Stone, head on down below.
Anime Like Dr. Stone
For Fans of Survival Through Intellect
7 Seeds
With extinction-level meteors heading towards Earth, the government attempted to preserve humanity with the 7 Seeds Program.
In this program, several teams of young people were established, frozen, and to be woken up in the future after the planet is livable again.
However, the world these children wake up in is wild and dangerous where they appear to be the only humans left.
Both Dr. Stone and 7 Seeds have the same plot, but carried out in different ways.
The main characters in each series were unconscious for thousands of years, and when they wake up, the world has reverted back to its most wild form. Their only job is to survive, rebuild society, and ensure humanity survives.
However, while Dr. Stone has many bouts of comedy, 7 Seeds is almost all serious since it does have some pretty haunting stories to tell.
Uninhabited Planet Survive
In the 22nd century, Earth has become uninhabitable, and humanity has spread out to other planets.
While on a school trip through space, a class enters a gravity storm and finds themselves stranded on a seemingly uninhabited planet.
However, while they struggle to survive, they don’t know what else is lurking in the shadows.
Both Dr. Stone and Uninhabited Planet Survive are tales of survival. While both series take place on wild planets, Uninhabited Planet Survive is more of a desert island scenario rather than one about rebuilding civilization.
Both feature children trying to figure things out, but the children in Dr. Stone are a touch more intelligent.
Astra Lost in Space
In 2061, the students of Caird High School go to Planet Camp in space. However, Group B5 arrived at their camp site only to be engulfed by a glowing sphere and transported 5000 light years away.
In a spot of luck, they find an abandoned space ship nearby and now must struggle to both survive and get home.
Although Astra Lost in Space is telling a tale of survival, it is a bit different from Dr. Stone. The most immediate difference is that it is about kids transported to the middle of space and who are planet-hopping back home.
Like Dr. Stone, Astra Lost in Space features children using their intellect and personal experience to solve problems. However, it isn’t as detail-oriented as Dr. Stone, and it ends conclusively in one season.
For Fans of Shounen Anime Intensity
Food Wars
Ever since he was a child, Souma Yukihira helped his father cook in his restaurant, constantly challenging him to cook-offs in anticipation for the day when he would finally win.
However, when his father suddenly decides to leave to go on a trip around the world, Souma is sent to the Totsuki Culinary Academy, an elite cooking school where only the top 10 percent graduate.
Here, Souma learns that not only are some of his classmates top-tier chefs, but they also engage in intense competitions called ”food wars”.
What Dr. Stone does to science, Food Wars does to cooking.
Both series are topics you would expect to see in a slice of life anime grounded in reality. Yet, those topics are explored – and explored in a factually accurate way – by making an exciting shounen anime. Much of the time, the characters aren’t fighting battles like a typical shounen, but what they are doing is made just as exciting as it if was a battle.
Injecting shounen anime excitement into an anime not about fighting a series of bigger and badder enemies is an art form, and both Dr. Stone and Food Wars perfect it.
Toriko
In this world, happiness is measured by what you eat. As such, people are always on the hunt for ultimate ingredients that are gotten from powerful monsters.
Those who battle these monsters for ingredients are Gourmet Hunters.
This story follows Toriko, a Gourmet Hunter, and his chef friend, Komatsu. Toriko aims to cook the perfect meal while Komatsu wants to reach the level of master chef.
Like Dr. Stone made science unexpectedly exciting, Toriko makes eating seem like an exciting adventure.
As Toriko is often about going to fight something to harvest an ingredient to eat, it does fit the more typical shounen battler experience. However, the fact that it is about food and cooking in a dangerous world makes it a pretty unique and interesting experience just like Dr. Stone and its science focus is.
If you liked Dr. Stone because it was creative and exciting, but don’t mind something less educational, Toriko is a similarly amazing experience.
For Fans of Mad Geniuses
Appare Ranman
After drifting in the sea between Japan and America, socially awkward genius Appare and cowardly yet wise samurai Kosame hit land.
Without any money, they decide to enter the Trans-American Wild Race so they can go back to Japan.
With their steam-powered car, they must overcome bandits, challenges, and just plain weirdos in order to get from Los Angeles to New York.
Both Dr. Stone and Appare Ranman are about extremely driven, passionate, and occasionally stubborn geniuses. Their intellect in the world makes them seem crazy, and yet they are always the smartest people in the room.
However, while Dr. Stone is about jump starting civilization after the apocalypse, Appare Ranman is focused on a transcontinental dangerous race across the United States.
While the topics are quite different, Senku and Appare really are the quintessential mad geniuses of anime. Furthermore, both Dr. Stone and Appare Ranman provide exciting adventures with eccentric characters, Appare Ranman just does everything it wants to do and ends in one season.
Steins;Gate
Mad scientist Rintarou Okabe spends his days tinkering around and creating futuristic inventions with his lab assistants in Akihabara, but nothing of any consequence.
That is, until one day when his Phone Microwave, a device that changes bananas into green gel, gains the ability to send e-mails to the past, altering the flow of history.
Now Okabe must frantically deal with the consequences of selfishly messing around with the past.
Both Dr. Stone and Steins;Gate follow scientists with a lot of passion, a lot of intelligence, and a lot of cute personality quirks.
However, while Dr. Stone provides an exciting journey of scientific invention, Steins;Gate starts off as a more silly adventure in time travel, but becomes an increasingly more serious exploration of the effects of messing with a timeline.
Sabikui Bisco
A red wind has swept over Japan and withered everything in its wake. Wherever the wind blows, rust grows and consumes all in its path.
With humanity succumbing to this rust, and the world a barren wasteland, mushroom spores bore the blame for it. This has made archer Bisco Akaboshi, who grows mushrooms wherever his arrows land, into a notorious terrorist.
However, he is a mushroom protector who spreads his fungi in order to enrich the land as he searches for the legendary Sabikui, an ancient mushroom that devours rust in all forms.
While no one could describe Bisco as a genius, his companion makes up for his lack of intellect. In Sabikui Bisco, one main character has passion and confidence, and the other main character has intellect. Combined, they would make one perfect Senku.
Aside from the main characters in Sabikui Bisco each being one half of a Senku, the series overall is – like Dr. Stone – also about using uncommon techniques to try to cure the plague that is threatening humanity. It is just that instead of using science like in Dr. Stone, Sabikui Bisco is about hunting mushrooms and using mushroom-based (helpful) terrorism.
For Fans of Modern Conveniences in Primitive Society
Ascendance of a Bookworm
Motosu Urano loves books. She recently got her librarian certification and was about to enter her dream job when an earthquake caused her to be crushed by her collection of books.
She is reincarnated into a new world as the five year old daughter of a soldier. Unfortunately, in this world, books are reserved for the elite nobility.
What do you do when your station in life does not afford you access to books? Make your own.
While you can’t really call Dr. Stone an isekai, it shares a lot of themes with isekai. It makes Dr. Stone remarkably similar to the actual isekai experience that is Ascendance of a Bookworm.
Both series are about incredibly intelligent individuals being sent to a more primitive world, and bringing back everything they were passionate about. Ascendance of a Bookworm is more limited in scope since it is just about a bookworm making books more accessible to a medieval society. However, doing that means she needs to foster a lot of scientific invention in that world.
It is just all book-focused invention in Ascendance of a Bookworm.
High School Prodigies Have It Easy Even in Another World
After their plane goes down, seven prodigy children wake up to find themselves in another world.
However, as none of them are just normal students, they set out to improve and take over this world through the use of their specialties.
Do the advances of science make a world better or worse? Both Dr. Stone and High School Prodigies Have It Easy Even in Another World pose that question and land firmly on neither side of it.
However, while Dr. Stone shares a lot of concepts with isekai, High School Prodigies Have It Easy Even in Another World is a lot more stereotypical isekai. Both series focus on people from the modern world rapidly improving a society through their modern knowledge, but while Dr. Stone loves the details in doing that, High School Prodigies Have It Easy Even in Another World seems allergic to details.
If you like watching a primitive society be absolutely in awe with modern inventions, but don’t actually care about characters exploring a realistic path in making that happen, High School Prodigies Have It Easy Even in Another World is for you.
For Fans of Educational Science Anime
Moyashimon
Tadayasu is a college freshmen at an Agricultural University with a special power – he can talk to cute, chibified versions of bacteria and other microscopic organisms.
While it sounds like fun, his special ability gets him into all kinds of trouble.
Obviously, both of these series place high value on science and its effect on our daily life.
Dr. Stone explores the scientific advances that helped shape civilization while Moyashimon highlights how germs and bacteria shape out everyday life.
While Dr. Stone is fun in how intense it makes scientific invention, Moyashimon is more of an educational comedy.
Cells at Work
The human body has approximately 37 trillion cells that are hard at work every day to keep you alive.
Cells at Work tells the story of a red blood cell and a white blood cell and the tireless work of countless other cells to keep you alive. Germ invasions, scratches, and drama unfold inside this body.
While Dr. Stone explores many sciences, Cells at Work focuses solely on biology. It turns how our bodies work into an animated adventure and both shows have a way of teaching you real facts.
If you like creative and exciting science adventures, but also enjoy the real knowledge present in Dr. Stone, Cells at Work provides that experience as well.
Silver Spoon
Yuugo Hachiken is a hard-working, studious student, but he is tired of trying to live up to the academic expectations that are placed on him. So when it comes time to go to high school, he enrolls in the Ooezo Agricultural High School in Hokkaido.
Being so clever, he thinks he will excel in the institution, but soon learns that farming is much harder work, both physically and emotionally, more so than he expected.
Dr. Stone shows you how inventions helped society advance while Silver Spoon highlights where your food comes from by exploring the many forms of agriculture.
Both Dr. Stone and Silver Spoon are highly educational anime, but make learning fun by creating a plot that isn’t just regurgitating facts. You learn through what the characters experience on their adventures, and those adventures are interesting stories in their own right.
Science Fell in Love, So I Tried to Prove It
One day, beautiful female scientist Ayame told her co-worker Shinya that she loved him.
Both being rational people, they expressed their lack of experience with romance and decided to use science as a way to concretely conclude if they did indeed love each other.
Science Fell in Love, So I Tried to Prove It is a rom-com, so that is significantly a different experience from the shounen adventure presented in Dr. Stone. However, what these two series share is a passion for science!
Like Dr. Stone is about jump starting civilization through invention, Science Fell in Love, So I Tried to Prove It is about – well, what the title says. Two scientists fall in love, and try to find proof using real scientific method. Both series enjoy science, but also enjoy using real factual methods instead of just making things up.
Are You Lost?
After a plane crash, four girls are left stranded on a desert island. Luckily, one of them is a hardcore survival enthusiast thanks to being trained by her father.
Dr. Stone is creatively using actual science and information to teach its audience, but presents it like a shounen adventure. Are You Lost is more obviously an educational anime, but uses cute anime girls to teach people about common outdoor survival techniques.
Are You Lost lacks a good bit of the intensity and silliness that Dr. Stone brings to its educational focus, but the information is solid and it does have its moments of levity.
Do you have more anime recommendations like Dr. Stone? Let fans know in the comments section below.
