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Quote:

Originally Posted by Byg42

Since all of Regulos is out, final thoughts on it, overall it's fine. Out of the post UGF1 webseries, I think this is probably my favourite. Since it's a comparatively smaller and simpler story, it doesn't suffer the bloat issues that UGF2 and 3 had. There's also a nice charm to seeing an Ultra story take on all these wuxia and kung fu story tropes.

That being said, it's not without problems. While it does have a better showcase of Regulos than UGF3, I'm still not too sold on him. In particular, I don't really jive with his arc. He's repeatedly told to not "give into his emotion", which feels like a very vague message and one that I'm not even sure fits his character. He doesn't seem that particularly impulsive or hot-headed, in fact Dias had more impulsive moments.

How he gets his Cosmo Beasts also feels a bit lacking. The way they were building up the Cosmo Beasts, about them having their own personalities and such, gave me the impression that they bonded with specific people who match their temperaments and style. So I was thinking that Regulos was going to have to find a balance between the strict Phoros and the free spirited Tubahn. But instead they tied it back to his whole "not giving into his emotions" thing, which again feels like a vague and underdeveloped message.

Action and choreography wise, I think Regulos is also really showing the limits and constraints of the green screen production. The action in UGF have never been particular "great", but they've always been saved by the pure fanservice aspect. Regulos doesn't have that going for it, and it exposes just how static and limited the camerawork and framing are. While I understand the pure green screen production is what allows these to even be made on the cheap, I think adding in some amount of physical sets would greatly improve the aesthetics and fight scenes. Like this week's New Gen Stars showed scenes from Ultra Zero Fight, which did have a combination of physical sets and green screen, and I'm reminded just how good those looked.

To end things on a somewhat positive note, I'll say that this is the most that I've actually like, cared about Diavolo. In all his appearances beforehand, he was just a boring, arrogant strong man for other people to beat up. Here, fleshing out his relationship, rivalry and betrayal of Regulos makes him more interesting and makes me invested in seeing where their dynamic goes in the future.

I feel like they set Regulous up to be a bit of a hot-head who goes on your typical martial arts protagonist journey (is really cocky about their skills, becomes obsessed with revenge, has to learn to temper their feelings and not give in to vengeance, etc.) I think that's what they were going for.

I also assume he bonded with Tubahn and Phoros' Cosmo Beasts because both were training him and both on some level chose him as their successor. I think there was even a scene where it showed him resonating with their Cosmo Beasts.

I definitely think this puts Diavolo and his whole conflict with Regulos into proper context. It's also the first time Diavolo's actually won, even if it wasn't through a straight fight.