[DreamSword]

Just finished episode 30 of Stronger, which marks the end of Black Satan and the rise of the Delza Army.

In regards to the former, bringing back Mister Titan as Hundred-Eyes Titan was a great move, albeit it still contained the general annoyance of General Shadow mucking everything up. Not just for Black Satan, but for my enjoyment as well.

Because again, I just really loved Titan as a villain, and I fondly think about some alternate universe where we got him as a sort of legendary rival to Stronger like how Ambassador Hell is to Ichigo. As it's when Titan unfortunately dies for real that my enjoyment of the arc as a whole went down pretty hard.

Now, to give the show some credit, it does actually tie in somewhat nicely with how the Delza Army is introduced. Why was General Shadow always screwing up Black Satan's' plans? He wanted the Delza Army to take over and, lo and behold, said army is full of backstabbing douchebags. The whole fighting with honor thing was just a ruse.

But I unfortunately still don't fully buy into it because really, there's no good reason why Great Leader wouldn't have just had Shadow executed multiple times over by that point. Shadow's' constant boasts about him being the one to personally end Stronger also go totally nowhere and are seemingly forgotten about come the second half of the show, so what gives? Was that all just elaborate ploy too? Which is another thing: Shadow takes credit for alot of what happened, but most of the stuff involving Stronger's' fight against Black Satan contain completely incidental things that in no way would have any sort of influence from Shadow.

Well whatever. The Delza Army is here and, yeah, I can definitely see why some would prefer this part of the show. Like I noted earlier, Backstabbing becomes a sort of central theme of the story from this point onward, and there actually a surprisingly serialized plot from here on out, despite the plot itself being rather simplistic. And maybe it's just me, but the general atmosphere of the show also improves, weirdly? The show takes itself slightly more seriously from here on which helps to keep me drawn in.

Ignoring how Shadow is involved, the only other real downside I see is the couple of times they try to make the claim that the Delza Army is far more dangerous than Black Satan when, like, the threat level is basically the same from what I can tell? Not a huge deal, just something that's very noticeable.

Oh and, of course, you probably have a good idea as to why I felt the need to stop and post after episode 30.

I've already talked about how I felt Yuriko wasn't exactly treated well for a good chunk of the show's' run, what with her definitive victories being able to be counted on one hand. And episode 30 marks the point where, unfortunately, she dies, no two ways about it. Which really sucked for me as problematic elements of the 70s aside, I did rather like her as a character. Tackle and Tachibana made a surprisingly good team!

But, I gotta give it to the show runners on one aspect, and that being that, at the very least, they let Tackle go out like a warrior; Managing to fight through slowly dying of poison and even managing to take out a Cyber Demon that even Stronger had been struggling with up to that point. Plus, won't lie, I definitely felt for Yuriko during the scenes where she made her promise with Shigeru and then after the fight where she passes on. There was an effort to this last episode that I totally won't discredit.

So... yeah, I'm on the last leg of Stronger now, and while I currently have mixed feelings in regards to the first half vs the second half, I am overall optimistic.