CaT Reviews: UltiVerse: Protector of the Universe (S1)!

This is the fourteenth episode of CaT Reviews!, this time featuring season one of UltiVerse: Protector of the Universe, as requested by Reo 54.

Story
Haven't done a Season review (or any review really...) in a while, so I'm just going to do this episode by episode as usual, but with each episode separated into their own headers and what not for better organization. Okay? Okay.

Off We Go: Part 1
The first episode of this series starts off with the titular UltiVerse standing near a spaceship landing zone the audience is apparently supposed to know about already. The history of the Ulti Verse (bad pun) is evidently rich and full of lore you gotta know coming in. It's a matter of respect.

Anyways, Ulti is at this mysterious universal constant of a spaceship landing zone to welcome back Magister Arnux from a mission. Ulti asks how it went and Arnux says he'll tell him after they go inside and apparently also after the arbitrary yet nonexistent theme song.

Scratch that, Arnux actually explained how the mission went during the theme song, and apparently it didn't go so hot, since Ulti points out he lost eleven men. Arnux says "the war" is coming closer to their planet, and if they don't hurry and do something, they'll get stuck in "a big war". Whether The War and A Big War are the same war is up for debate, and is a point of heavy contention for UPotU analysts to this day.

"As any literary analyst who isn't a goddamn hack can see, the author clearly meant that The War was the primary external conflict, whereas A Big War is a symbolic war the protagonist must fight in his own mind to decide whether he will be able to throw away his morals to save those he loves from certain destruction."

"...This is a pharmacy. Who the hell are you? How did you even get in here? I'm calling security!"

"YOU MAY SILENCE ME BUT YOU CAN'T SILENCE THE TRUTH!"

So the gist of the conversation is that if they don't stop Vilgax (who is involved in this story because of course he is) from getting to their system, the war is gonna happen. Or something.

It's not very well explained.

Ulti volunteers to stop Vilgax and his friends (Khyber, Aggregor, etc.(just don't ask me how the hell they became friends in the first place)).

Yeah that's probably an adequate explanation.

Ulti asks...nay, demands, that he be allowed to go fight Vilgax alone. Why? Your guess is as good as mine.

After a sad farewell to his mom,

You can tell it's sad because the writer put (sad) in front of their dialogue.

Ulti grabs his unspecified equipment and leaves his home planet to go find Vilgax.

Off We Go: Part 2
After a "Previously on" segment of debatable necessity (get used to that btw) and the equally unnecessary Theme Song (whoops, my bad, I meant "Theam song" ), we see Ulti finding "The Polymorph King's Sword" (whatever that is) in the sack his mom packed for him. I find this development strange for several reasons according to Earth customs, but I don't know enough about Polymorph culture to dispute it.

Ulti jumps into hyperspace and infiltrates the ship of Malware, a leading member of Vilgax's army. He then proceeds to take down a couple of guards in a very confusing sequence. Guard 1: Stand down, intruder! Guard 2: What he said! Ulti makes an ice blast. There's no context for how the hell he was able to do this, so I'm forced to assume Ulti's ice powers come from the Deity of Convenient Abilities. UltiVerse: Okay, okay. I surrender. Guard 1 (surprised): You do? Guard 2 (Surprised): What he said. He is clearly preparing to attack you why would you believe him Ulti shoots the ice blast at the guards and the freeze. UltiVerse: I said freeze! You did not

Ulti moves on and finds Malware. He proceeds to enrage Malware with an idiotic back-and-forth that ends with Malware giving his mightiest "REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" and ending the episode.

Facing Malware: Part 1
This episode opens with Ulti explaining in voiceover narration that he got jumped by guards and put into the ship's prison. Since the guards failed to take into consideration that Ulti was made out of slime, however, they just slapped him in regular old chains in a regular old chain cell.

The worked as well as expected.

Ulti encounters the two guards he froze last episode, and instead of dealing with them again, just decides to teleport to Malware.



Okay I'm gonna be honest and say I just sort of assumed these random powers were coming from the "Polymorph King's Sword", which would at least make some amount of sense, but NOPE, according to the character page, the majority of Ulti's abilities are just part of his normal power set. His page also states his species as "Enhanced Polymorph", but no explanation is offered as to what that actually means.

(Don't get me wrong the sword still has random abilities that almost seem redundant with Ulti's own powers but whatever)

''Malware Shoots a blast at Ulti. Ulti Teleports behind malware.''

There were predictably way too many jokes for me to make with this, so I'll just let you pick from the top three.


 * teleports=*teleports behind you*
 * -|behind=*teleports behind you* nothing personal kid
 * -|you*=Aa1.png

They get into a fight which Ulti wins by melting Malware's sword with a Fire Blast from his sword (which is listed as an ability of neither Ulti NOR the sword, so don't ask me how this happened), after which Malware just kind of has a breakdown. Ulti gets back on his own ship and flies away, prompting another extremely confusing sequence.

UltiVerse: now for the Big Guns. He Presses a button and Malware's Ship Explodes. UltiVerse: Thank you, mom.

These three lines raise so many questions, least of which including:
 * 1) Why does Malware's ship explode when he presses a button?
 * 2) Assuming Ulti planted a bomb, which seems like the most likely explanation, when the hell did he even do that?
 * 3) We've seen guards on Malware's ship that Ulti clearly never tried to kill. Did he change his mind on that or just not consider it?
 * 4) If Ulti had this bomb the entire time, why didn't he just plant it and leave instead of wasting two episodes with random crap?
 * 5) Assuming the implication here is correct, Ulti's mom is the one responsible for equipping him with heavy weaponry powerful enough to destroy a presumably large warship. Where the hell did she get that in the first place?

At any rate, the episode ends with Malware talking to a mysterious figure in a dark room. Generic bad guy foreshadowing, let's just move on.

Vilgax's Wrath
After the "Previously on" segment, we see Ulti landing on Pyros to get some fuel because apparently Blowing Up Malwares ship has taken a lot of Fuel out of my ship and I think i couldn't get to Vilgax's ship and even if i did i couldn't escape. Okay, so he blew up Malware's ship with some sort of fuel-based weaponry on his own ship? Then what was that whole "Thank you, mom" thing about? Unless this is implying his mother is the one who installed the fuel cannons in which case I don't even know what to say to that.

The Pyronites are surprisingly welcoming and give Ulti a bit of fuel and a free lunch. Unfortunately, it turns out it was all a trick, as the Pyronites are working for Vilgax and steal Ulti's sword from right out under his nose. Ulti and the Pyronite in charge of taking the sword to Vilgax apparently leave at about the same time, because right after Ulti arrives, he sees the Pyronite with his sword flying in and promptly incapacitates him before reclaiming his sword.

The Pyronite turns around, Ulti teeports behind him.



Unfortunately for Ulti, Vilgax shows up more or less instantly after this, shrugs off a blast from the sword before grabbing it, bending it, and tossing it away. Ulti notes in narration that he intentionally lets himself get "captured" by Vilgax since he expects Vilgax to reveal his secret plans after capturing him.

It turns out he's right, as Vilgax: After i take care your System, i will have acesse to the teleport of Anywhere and i will take over the Universe.

Vilgax claims that the "Teleport of Anywhere" (best McGuffin name 10/10) will make him the King of the Universe. Ulti points out that other dimensions exist, which Vilgax takes as a good point. Vilgax promptly proceeds to wondering how to access the other dimensions and conquer them, which shows that he clearly never learned how to focus on a SMART Goal.



Okay but seriously go check out the wiki I got this image from it's a fuckin trip

Having learned Vilgax's plan, Ulti promptly grabs one of Vilgax's swords and starts beating the shit out of him. With Vilgax down, Ulti returns to his ship, refuels it, and then leaves and blows up Vilgax's ship. Again this isn't really explained beyond Ulti just pressing a button but whatever.

UltiVerse Meets Ben 10
This episode is rather unique in that it claims to be a fan episode that was later canonized.

Claims to be

In reality, from what I can find, this "fan episode" was written by Reo himself. I can only assume he labeled it a "fan episode" to separate it from canon as a special or something, but it's still a weird idea to call your own episodes "fan episodes".

Later on, Reo decided he wanted to canonize it, at least as far as I can tell, and decided to just throw it somewhere in Season 1. If you ask me, this wasn't really a good idea, since it's basically a filler episode smack in middle of a season that's been surprisingly plot-focused up until this point.

I'm not going to go into much detail as to what happens in this episode since none of it really matters to the overall story except Ulti and Ben defeating Aggregor and Ulti surprisingly NOT blowing up his ship. There's honestly nothing to gain from this episodes except the general humorous grammar mistakes and this golden tidbit: Ben: shoot me! UltiVerse shoots ben

After OV, can you really blame him?

Granted in-context it's with a portal gun that sends Ben back to his own dimension but still.

Facing Malware: Part 2
An entire third of this episode is pretty much just the recap of the last episode, so I can only assume padding out this episode is the main reason Reo canonized it.

After the recap, Ulti gets captured by Malware, who presumably has a new ship. Malware demands that Ulti hands over The Polymorph King Sword, but Ulti tells him that Vilgax broke it and threw it away.

Malware proceeds to Plan B and tries to destroy Ulti and somehow plants a bomb on Ulti's leg while he isn't looking; however, this is no ordinary bomb, this is a bomb that also takes away Ulti's powers because of course there's a bomb that can do that why not.

Since one of Ulti's powers is apparently being able to make his body a solid mass without the Anti-Gravity Projector, he collapses into goo. Malware gloats about this for about two seconds before Ulti points out that the bomb isn't going to stick to a pile of goo and just kind of slorps his way out of there and presumably gets his powers back.

Ulti gets to the ship's controls in spite of Malware's incompetent best efforts and apparently activates...something. I'm guessing it's the ship's self-destruct sequence or something, but it doesn't say. Either way, Ulti ends up making a beeline for his own ship with Malware in hot pursuit.

The episode ends with a hodgepodge of words so confusing that all I can deduce from them is that Ulti's ship blows up as he's escaping into Hyperspace.



Doom


Unfortunately, no.

So apparently Malware followed Ulti into Hyperspace by grabbing onto his ship or something (seriously even the episode doesn't know what he's holding onto) He lets go of whatever he was holding on and with Ulti's ship exploded, Malware assumes he's dead and lets go of whatever he was holding onto, disappearing into Hyperspace.

We follow an awkward and by awkward I mean nonexistent transition to Magister Arnux, who apparently saw the explosion somehow and thinks Ulti is dead for about five seconds before Ulti calls him and says he's leading Malware's ship into a black hole. He ends the call by asking Arnux to pick him up from the Anur System in three hours.

Ulti somehow exited hyperspace and got onto Malware's ship either before, during, or after the explosion (it isn't explained) and pilots it towards a black hole. Upon reaching the ship's final destination, Ulti escapes via escape pod, but not before freezing every guard in his path and leaving them to die.



Ulti went a bit off the deep end after losing the title of "Nicest User" to Yopo's massive shitposting campaign.

Ulti gets picked up by Magister Arnux, but it isn't long until they get attacked out of the blue by Khyber and his pet. Ulti goes to fight him and gets captured, but manages to escape since Khyber used the exact same power nullification bomb as Malware and take an escape pod from Khyber's ship right as it's about to enter the Black Hole. Arnux thinks Ulti got sucked into the black hole, but the episode ends revealing what is presumably Ulti's escape pod on the nearby planet of Anur Scaros.

Aggregor's Attack: Part 1
This episode surprisingly does not open with a "Previously on" segment, thank god, and launches straight into Ulti exiting his escape pod and getting found by a Kineceleran named NegaBoost. NegaBoost says Arnux sent him to find Ulti, but their conversation is interrupted by Aggregor being nearby for no adequately explained reason.

They fight, since Aggregor wants Ulti's powers, before Aggregor decides it's just easier to grab NegaBoost and run. Ulti goes after him and boards his ship, finding that Aggregor captured Arnux while he was at it. Aggregor then proceeds to Hyperspeed towards Ulti's home planet of Viscosia and starts blowing it up from space.

Arnux tells Ulti to calm down and reminds him that the "Teleport of Anywhere" is back in the Anur System (which makes Vilgax's previous statement regarding it nonsensical), then hatches a plan to turn the forces of "Vilgax's friends" against each other. Arnux proceeds to suddenly remember Ulti has teleportation powers and the three of them escape.

It doesn't do them much good, unfortunately, as Aggregor ends up absorbing Arnux and NegaBoost during the following sequence anyways, ending the episode.

Aggregor's Attack: Part 2
This episode brings back the episode recaps, crushing my momentary period of hope, and after all that, starts proper with Ulti having evidently escaped from Aggregor's ship using a ship of his own.

Aggregor chases after him in another ship and the two land on the "Main Landing Land" of a nearby planet with a portal into the "Ten Void", whatever that is. Ulti goes to check out the portal and Aggregor just kinda run over and pushes him in.

TRULY THE MOST EPIC OF CONFLICTS

THIS GRAND CLASH MUST HAVE ONLY THE FINEST OF BATTLE MUSIC



Perfection

After this, Aggregor gets attacked by a mysterious man as Ulti is wandering through

uh

The Null Void?

Meanwhile In the Null Void, Yes The portal leads to the Null Void.



"You see honey, what some hooligans fail to understand about the brilliance of this scene is that the duality of the Ten Void and the Null Void being presented as the same nebulous prison dimension is actually a direct parallel to the protagonist's own duality manifesting as A Big War that symbolically imprisons him in his own mind until he can resolve his internal struggle and emerge from his "prison" as a new man free from the chains of his previous sophistry."

"...I want a divorce."

Ulti comes across Zs'Skayr, who wants to team up with Ulti to take out Aggregor because...reasons. Back with Aggregor, the guy attacking him is revealed to be Darkstar, and the two duke it out before Darkstar absorbs Aggregor. This revives Arnux and NegaBoost (somehow) back on Aggregor's ship. They steal another ship and come down to rescue Ulti just as Ulti figures out that he can just teleport back to the portal he came in through, bringing Zs'Skayr along for the ride.

Ulti goads Darkstar into trying to absorb him, but Ulti's power is too much for Darkstar to handle, and he basically overloads and gets knocked out. Darkstar's mask falls off to reveal that it's actually not Michael Morningstar under the helmet; just some random sixteen year-old with black hair.

The episode ends with Ulti leaving to continue his quest, Arnux staying on the planet to watch over it, and NegaBoost going to visit Viscosia. What happened to Zs'Skayr?

Good question.

For some reason Darkstar isn't arrested and the very last scene is a few lines of him contacting Vilgax to tell him something.

ZinZoon
This episode actually ditches the recap as well, giving me just a little bit more hope for humanity. It opens with Ulti noticing that the sack containing his sword is gone right before his ship is mysteriously warped to another location and crash-lands on another planet.

This seems to happen a lot.

As it turns out, he crashed on the titular planet of ZinZoon and is found by another Polymorph named Zeron. Zeron shows him around and states that Polymorphs only live on ZinZoon, which Ulti doesn't bother questioning for some reason even though he himself is from Viscosia.

Zeron takes Ulti to his house, upon which they meet Zeron's girlfriend, who's excited to see Zeron after he's apparently been gone for three months. For just, like, no reason, Ulti and Zeron legit just act like total assholes about this. UltiVerse (To Zeron): How do you stay in a relationship with hewr? Zeron (To Ulti): Ikr Yeah that seems like a healthy relationship

They don't have much time to talk before they get busted by the feds, who are pissed at Zeron for skipping out on his post duties for the fifth time. They banish him from Helios City, the name of which reminds Ulti of his grandpa Raon Verse, who said he had lived there at some point.

Ulti tries to use this as leverage for whatever reason, and for even less clear reasons, suddenly decides his grandpa is actually called "UnliVerse".

Seriously.

It turns out UnliVerse is one of the three sons of a guy named Helio Surf, who presumably founded Helios City. This gets the feds impressed until one of them points out that UnliVerse apparently destroyed "Sector 5C", whatever that is, and they promptly try to arrest Ulti.

Ulti just kinda runs back to his ship and leaves the planet, and the episode ends with him finding the sack carrying his sword where it was supposed to be all along. He verbally acknowledges its presence, but then wonders where the hell it went when he was looking for it before.

Eons
This episode returns to the whole "overly long recap" thing, leaving me disappointed yet unsurprised.

The actual plot begins with Eon attacking Ulti's ship. Eon has apparently met Ulti before, leading to this mildly confusing dialogue: UltiVerse: Eon? I thought you changed! Eon: I Can't change, it's in my blood! Like I said earlier, the history of the Ulti Verse is complex.

Eon asks Ulti if he know why all of this is happening. Ulti predictably does not, so Eon sends him back to the creation of the universe for some reason. As it turns out, the Ulti Verse was created by a family of Celestialsapiens as some sort of family group project or something, and they end up noticing Ulti, who just kind of wakes up there.

They exchange a few words, with Ulti asking them if they're creating the Universe as he fades away. The kid suggests they name the Universe after UltiVerse-

Yes, this is a thing that actually legitimately unironically happens.

despite never actually learning his name, thus creating one of the weirdest fucking paradoxes to ever paradox.

Ulti appears in the Anur System, where he find himself in the middle of a war between the Petrosapiens and the Ectonurites. A Petrosapien fills Ulti in that they believe the Tetramands manipulated the Ectonurites into invading, but notes that some people think someone more powerful might be behind it.

Ulti fades out again and appears on Pisscis, where Magisters Arnux, Labrid, and Korwak are trying to figure out the name of their space police organization. Ulti suggests they call it the Plumbers and they decide to just roll with it for no adequately explained reason, thus creating another dumbass paradox.

He disappears and reappears into the Highbreed invasion on Earth, where Eon appears and tells him he'll understand all of this soon and takes him to one last place.

Ulti appears in a dark room where 5 shadows are discussing a "5th attack", whatever that means, and then descend into evil laughter. Ulti suddenly wakes up in front of Eon, who tells Ulti that he must solve the riddle of what this all means and trust nobody but himself, stating that the existence of the Universe is at stake, which is where the episode just kinda abruptly cuts off.

New Plan
This episode opens with a particularly egregious recap that actually takes up OVER FIFTY PERCENT OF THE GODDAMN EPISODE I think this more or less confirms my theory that these recaps are only used as padding for episodes that don't have enough content. This is fine on paper, since television shows do it all the time

Some more egregiously than others.

but this is just ludicrous.

As for the content that is actually there, the episode proper opens with Ulti asking Eon why he showed him all that, to which Eon responds: Eon: As you said i have changed Which directly contradicts what he said last episode but whatever.

Eon says someone is coming and apologizes to Ulti right before blowing up his ship for reasons unexplained. Eon reminds him not to trust anyone before vanishing, which is promptly followed by NegaBoost arriving in his own ship because plot convenience.

NegaBoost offers Ulti a ride on his way to a meeting, but more or less narrates to himself that he has EVIL intentions. They arrive on Kinet and Ulti stays in the ship as NegaBoost goes to meet up with some random asshole named Ahmad. Dark Essence: I told you, my name is Dark Essence, Speedair. Correction, Ahmad's edgy self-insert OC.

Dark Essence tells NegaBoost to kill "him", referring to Ulti, who has unknowingly wandered in on their conversation. They notice him and NegaBoost transforms into a more humanoid form called Speedair, summoning a sword and stabbing Ulti with it. This normally wouldn't be an issue except for the fact that Speedair stabbed the core that has gone unmentioned until now that presumably makes Ulti able to walk around without an anti-gravity device. Speedair: See you in Hell! The idea of Ulti of all people going to hell is probably the most ludicrous thing in this series so far.

The episode ends with Ulti collapsing into a pile of immobile goop as Dark Essence and Speedair leave the scene of the crime.

Last Pieces
After the obligatory long recap, the episode starts with Dark Essence and Speedair being confronted by Magister Arnux in space. Dark Essence mentions off-hand that Arnux used to be his lackey when they were in Dimension 51 (which has no real bearing on the plot as far as I can tell; it's just kind of a thing that's there) and the two start fighting.

Speedair is standing off to the side, revealing that he grabbed Ulti's core after breaking it. He wonders out loud what he should do with it, when all of a sudden some asshole named Black Scythe apparates out of nowhere and okay I think now's a good time to clear up where these people are coming from.

See, UltiVerse: Protector of the Universe is part of a multiverse with villains known as the "Dark Lords". They're an important part of the multiverse for whatever reason, and normally, a show that's part of an overarcing universe would go out of its way to make sure it functions both as a standalone series and a part of this larger plot, but nope! Here are these random assholes we scooped out of nowhere we won't bother explaining! Have fun!

Also each of the Dark Lords is based off of a wiki user for some reason. This has no function other than giving me the opportunity to make really cheap shots in this review but honestly it's not worth your time or mine.

Anyways, Black Scythe suggests Speedair keeps Ulti's core as a souvenir, after which he interrupts the battle happening in front of him as Dark Essence is about to kill Arnux. He flys in front of Arnux and Dark Essence strikes him with his sword. Dark Essence: Bry?! I'm Sorry! Oh yeah, Black Scythe is Bry's edgy self-insert OC. Of course this makes me wonder; if Black Scythe is a corrupted version of Bry, does that mean Black Scythe actually asks permission from the original artists?

(Okay one cheap shot) Black Scythe: Me too... NOT! I see 90s middle school insults are still in fashion. Black Scythe morphs back in to Ulti. Ulti has a new appearance. I did not skip anything here people. This is 100% actually legitimately how the story proceeds.

How the hell is Ulti moving around without his core? Why does he have a new appearance? Since when can he disguise himself as other people? Will any of these questions ever be answered? The correct responses to each of those inquiries are Who Knows, Who Knows, Who Knows, and , respectively.

Ulti drives off Dark Essence with an electric blast (which is also not stated anywhere to be part of his power set but if I keep pointing out each random-ass power Ulti gets out of nowhere we're gonna be here all day) and the real Black Scythe teleports in and asks what the hell is going on.

Speedair gives a short recap and Black Scythe just kinda shrugs it off and tells him that "The Mission" is finished. No, "The Mission" is never explained either.



Why did you do it, John?

Don't play fucking coy with me, copper, you know as well as I do that BITCH had it coming!

Calling your analysis of "The Mission" stupid is no injustice worthy of murder!

AM I THE ONLY AWOKEN MAN IN A POPULATION OF SHEEP?!

Dark Essence, Speedair, and Black Scythe all just kinda screw off into hyperspace. Ulti asks Rook if he can track them- There is no introduction to Rook arriving at the scene or even existing in the series until now. The only way I can imagine this sudden appearance making any sense is that Rook Blonko is such a generic character that he will inevitably pop up in any story by default unless the author takes special attention to stop him.

Anyways, Rook finds that the three gathered Dark Lords have traveled to Viscosia. They warp to Viscosia and find it under attack from the Highbreed of all people, ending the episode.

Saving Viscosia
After the recap, the episode begins with Ulti asking Rook to take him down to Viscosia, and when Rook says he can't because reasons, Ulti just decides to jump out of the fucking spaceship towards the planet. This works and Ulti falls to the groud unscathed because of course he does. UltiVerse: Who did this? Well I don't know what you're talking about because the episode never specifies but considering you literally just saw the Highbreed attacking I'd say it was probably them you fucking idiot.

My incredible and difficult-to-deduce fan theory is proven right as Ulti spots the Highbreed and immediately demands to be brought to their leader, who ends up being some asshole named Dark Falcon.

Dark Falcon is also part of the Dark Lords, and is the edgy OC of a user named FlameStrike96, who, as it happens, is actually just a sock of Reo's back from when he had about five million of them. Considering Speedair is also Reo's edgy OC, I have to say this series has too many goddamn Reos.

Dark Falcon has a servant/partner/who fucking knows named SkyFall grab him his sword so he can kill Ulti because fuck it why not. Of course, as it turns out, he can't kill Ulti because the Ulti they captured was actually just a hologram.

I'm seriously running out of reaction images for all these deus ex machinas at this point.

Dark Falcon gets pissed and kills the two Highbreed who brought him the fake Ulti. Meanwhile, the real Ulti is spying on Dark Essence, Speedair, and an unknown figure as they talk about more bullshit that never really gets an explanation.

The episode ends with Dark Essence killing the unknown figure because reasons and Speedair spotting Ulti spying on them.

Destruction
After the final recap I have to suffer through (thank god), the episode starts with Dark Essence and Speedair finding Ulti, who just kinda teleports away. Dark Falcon teleports in to report to Dark Essence, and Ulti teleports into the meeting room they were in before. He finds out that the unknown figure they were talking to was Vilgax and discovers a picture of a Pyronite and a Loboan that don't have anything to do with season so fuck it.

He sticks around too long and the Dark Lords notice him, being joined by Black Scythe and a brand new asshole named Night Demon who just kinda pop into the episode out of nowhere. They get into a skirmish that ends with Ulti shooting an energy beam that all the Dark Lords reflect and enhance with their own abilities until they end up shooting it right back at Ulti.

Also Black Scythe has child-creating abilities apparently. Black Scythe creates a child That makes exactly as much sense in-context.

I have to wonder what the hell that wedding would have looked like.

Ulti ends up absorbing the corrupted blast and gaining a dark purple aura and some new tomfuckery abilities.

Like he didn't have enough of those already.

Ulti prepares to fire a dark purple energy blast and gives us this segue into a shitty joke on my part: UltiVerse: Die!



Bingo Bongo

Of course it doesn't make sense for Ulti to say this considering what he actually does is just banish the Powerful Lords to their home dimension and blow up their ship. Ulti starts falling to the ground as a random Kineceleran tries to catch him but fails because Polymorph. He asks Ulti if he's okay, and Ulti just replies by asking where he is. The Kineceleran somehow knows him by name and addresses him by it while telling him he's on Viscosia, to which Ulti responds with: UltiVerse: Who's Ulti? And with that somewhat generic cliffhanger, Season 1 of this series is over.

Jesus Christ that took a while.

So, what do I think of the story overall?

A couple of different things, actually.

The initial premise of the series, and the first four episodes following that premise, were actually fairly good (terrible presentation aside). It starts off as a story about Ulti leaving his home planet to stop Vilgax and his "friends" from invading his home system. It has a solid personal goal for the protagonist to work towards and a good setup for a bunch of villains Ulti has to fight before facing Vilgax. This formula could have been kept for the whole season and it would've worked well, but Vilgax, the main villain as presented thus far, is defeated in episode four and the series just kind of loses direction from there.

The episode involving Vilgax feels like it should have been the season finale instead of the random Highbreed attack on Viscosia. Ulti is faced with the villain behind the rest of the villains he's faced so far, his signature weapon is broken, and his quest should logically come to an end. Instead, Vilgax is defeated early, and everything flies off the rails from that point on.

The series keeps up its tight flow from one episode to another, but after defeating Vilgax, it sort of loses its point. The rest of the season feels like the plot is just flapping around randomly until the Powerful Lords are suddenly introduced, and even then the Powerful Lords are boring villains I can't bring myself to care about that honestly just feel tacked on. The season tries to connects the two plots via Vilgax being involved with the Powerful Lords, but it feels entirely pointless.

There are a ridiculous amount of plot points and unexplained events that happen in the post-episode four plot that are obviously just setup for later events that never come up again in-season. If they come up in Season 2, good for them, but there are only so many plot points you can leave unexplained before annoying your audience.

The sheer number of Deus Ex Machinas and powers pulled out of Ulti's ass were also completely ridiculous. These happened at least once an episode, and were honestly a little impressive to witness on the same level as was the Titanic sinking into the ocean.

Overall, I think the Story of this season gets a score of 1.8.

Writing
Oh my god the writing for this series

I must be turning into a valley girl because I literally can't even right now

That joke about broken English earlier? That doesn't even begin to describe how badly this is written. Everything that happens is told in the most barebones yet nonsensical way possible, with grammar errors every two words and described in such broken terminology that sometimes you can't even tell what's going on. Some of what I wrote about each episode's plot might actually be inaccurate because of how confusing it was to read.

Also it used my eternal pet peeve of emoticons in dialogue.

I only caught them in a glance

I couldn't be bothered to reread the whole season to figure out exactly where they were

BUT THEY WERE THERE GODDAMMIT

SITTING THERE

MOCKING ME

I'M NOT CRAZY, YOU'RE CRAZY

(ahem)

Overall, the Writing of this season gets a score of 0.3.

Characters
Okay, to start off with, Ulti is boring. He just is. He's obviously a stand-in character for the irl Ulti, but he doesn't have much in the way of carrying Ulti's actual personality traits. He's actually fine in the first four episodes, where he has a goal and absolutely ridiculous villains to work with, but after that, you could pretty much just replace him with a cardboard cutout and you'd get the exact same story.

Nobody else has much of a personality either. The side characters...exist, the majority of villains are only entertaining because of how hammy literally every single one of them is, and the Powerful Lords are just boring edgelords that make the main character look like the straight-up pinnacle of personality. There's nothing absolutely terrible about these characters, I guess, but there's nothing actually good either.

Actually, there is one side character that was kind of interesting, and that was (surprisingly) Eon. His implied history with Ulti immediately gave him something to work with personality-wise (even though it was never explained), and he remains a sort of morally ambiguous addition to the cast that doesn't overstay his welcome.

So good on Reo for making Eon of all people actually interesting but bad on Reo for making everyone else boring.

Overall, the Characters of this season get a score of 1.0.

Conclusion
Season 1 of UltiVerse: Protector of the Universe is a potentially decent if terribly written show that throws away the good parts of the story it had going for it after the first four episodes, making the remaining eleven episodes a real drag to read. The fact that it has an overarcing narrative was an unexpected bonus, but the narrative lost its direction, and nothing else about the series is really worth sticking around for.

Overall, I give UltiVerse: Protector of the Universe Season 1 a score of 3.1, Nothing Personnel...Kid.