Character · Dr. Stone
Taiju Oki
Stayed conscious inside a stone shell for thirty-seven centuries because he had not finished a sentence.
In Otakana the clue reads: Enormous boy who stayed conscious for years
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Dr. Stone
- Letters
- 5 · Normal
The petrification catches Taiju mid-confession, standing under a tree, about to tell Yuzuriha how he feels. He spends the next 3700 years holding that thought. Everyone else's mind went dark. His did not, because he refused to let go of the one thing he had left to say, and when the shell finally cracks he comes out shouting the rest of it.
In the early chapters he is the engine of the Kingdom of Science. Senku knows how to make things, Taiju carries them: ore, timber, water, the whole first year of manual labour delivered by one enormous boy who cries at everything. He also refuses to hit people. In a fight he stands there and absorbs it, which turns out to be a workable strategy when the alternative is a stone axe.
His name is a small joke told twice. Taiju means big tree. His family name, Oki, also means big tree. Boichi draws him accordingly, at roughly the width of two other characters, and the series keeps finding heavy objects for him to move.
Spelling TAIJU
TAIJU is five letters and the pair to watch is the AI, two vowels side by side that English wants to smooth into one sound. It runs ta-i-ju, three beats, one J, nothing doubled. The family name Oki hides a long O that English print quietly drops, but the tiles only want the given name, so that trap never comes up. Both names mean big tree, in different characters.