So what's the consensus, does it follow the anime or manga, or is it completely separate?
Before the last 3 episodes or so I'd have said so, but after that dumb pseudo-SSJ4 nonsense and the retarded giant planet and whatnot, not really.
It scales down the magnitude of the conflict when tertiary characters could wipe the floor with the main villains no problem, plus the whole episode was just an excuse to pad the already shirt 20 episode runtime. some kid being able to scare galaxy level dudes shitless because he's huge sounds lame too and indeed was.
SSJ3 Goku > Ultimate Gohan?
I prefer the rust explanation.
