#commeson

So last time Vegeta and Jaco went to Planet Potaufeu to rescue Goten and Trunks, who stowed away in Monaka’s delivery truck. While there, the boys met Potage, the planet’s sole inhabitant, and a band of invaders, led by a wanted criminal named Gryll.  Gryll wanted to steal something called “superhuman water” from Potage, and it seemed like he managed to pull it off, but now he’s all purple, and when Vegeta blew up his goons, they turned into purple slime that enveloped Vegeta and stole his powers.  So now we have this “Copy-Vegeta” who regards the original, now-helpless Vegeta as nothing more than a discarded shell.

Incidentally, the dub features Brian Drummond as Copy Vegeta, which is a clever reference to the Ocean dub of Dragon Ball Z, where Drummond played Vegeta.  So this is a neat way to have him reprise the role and act alongside Chris Sabat, who replaced Drummond when Funimation transitioned to an in-house voice cast. 

But how did we get here, and what does the superhuman water have to do with any of it?  Well, before we can address that question, the good guys need to get out of this fix. This is accomplished when Copy-Gryll tells Copy-Vegeta to hurry up and absorb all of the powers of the others, but Copy-Vegeta refuses.  He also hesitates to attack Trunks, and in that moment of indecision, the good guys make a break for it.

Also, Jaco uses his flight boots to keep them busy long enough for the others to fly ahead.  He crashes, though, because he only has enough power to use them once a day.  Well, that clears up my question from when I read the manga.  There, Jaco said he could only use his flight boots “once”, and I wasn’t sure if he meant once in a great while, or once ever.

Once Jaco catches up with the others, Potage starts answering Vegeta’s questions.  Sheesh, look at Vegeta here!   He looks freaking enormous!  I mean, yeah, he’s the tallest one in this group, but not by this much!

Okay, so first thing’s first, there is a legend of a “superhuman water” on Planet Potaufeu.  Jaco’s heard of it, and Gryll came here to steal it, but the legend isn’t true.  Its actually called the “Commeson”, and it’s a weapon Potage’s people created a long time ago. 

The people of Potaufeu didn’t have much in the way of self-defense, so they devised Commeson as a way to use their enemies’ powers for themselves.  When an invader attacked, the Commeson would envelop them and form a duplicate of the invader with all of their powers and abilities.  That duplicate would then be loyal to Potaufeu, and defend the planet from future threats. 

Over time, the Commeson produced many such duplicate bodies this way, but it eventually became self-aware, and turned against its creators.  From there, all the Commeson wanted was to absorb more abilities and grow more powerful.

Realizing that the Commeson would spread across the galaxy like a plague, the people of Potaufeu came up with an “antidote”, one that could weaken the Commeson enough to seal it away.  They treated themselves with it, then tricked the Commeson into absorbing them, which neutralized all of its stolen powers. 

Potage was the only one who didn’t sacrifice himself, because his job was to take the dormant Commeson and lock it away for safekeeping.  For the past hundred years, he’s lived alone on the planet, making sure no one goes near the Commeson. 

The problem is that the Commeson developed a reputation for being a magical elixir, because people assumed the copies it created were the originals, transformed and empowered somehow.  That’s why Gryll came to Potaufeu in the previous episode, and now we finally get to see what happened to him when he opened the container.  The Commeson emerged, copied his powers, and then attacked Gryll’s men, creating copies of them as well.  Goten, Trunks, Potage, and Monaka managed to escape, and that’s why all those purple guys were chasing them when Vegeta and Jaco showed up.  They weren’t Gryll’s men, they were copies.

So what happened to the real Gryll?  He and his men were left where they lay, stripped of their powers.  Within minutes, they began to fade away, until they vanished completely.  This is what happens to all of the Commeson’s victims.

And that goes for Vegeta as well.  Potage guesses that once he starts to fade, he’ll have about five minutes before he vanishes completely.  Feel free to make up your own “five minutes” joke here.  I’m busy.

The only way to save Vegeta is to destroy the copy, which won’t be easy, since the copy has all of Vegeta’s powers.  Nonetheless, Goten and Trunks give it their best shot by fusing into Gotenks.  For some reason, they keep making Gotenks look taller than he should as well.  What it up with this show?

Meanwhile, Goku is training on King Kai’s place.  He seems to have recovered from the Delayed Onset Ki Disorder he had in Episode 43, but while he helps himself to some lunch, King Kai senses Gotenks and Vegeta fighting on some distant planet.  Goku teleports over to see for himself...

... and he finds two Vegetas.   One is transparent, and the other is purple.  The purple one was about to kill the boys, but Goku still needs them to explain which one is the real Vegeta, which is kind of irritating.  Vegeta explains that all Goku has to do is kill the copy within the next five minutes. 

But Vegeta keeps gloating about how difficult that will be, since the copy is as strong as he is, and he’s too proud to suggest that the copy could lose to Goku.  We’ll get into that a little more in the next episode.

Meanwhile, Copy-Gryll, who seems to represent the main intelligence of the Commeson, is frustrated that Copy-Vegeta isn’t understanding their objective here.  The whole point is that they want to absorb all of these guys and make more Copy-warriors to add to the Commeson’s power.  But Copy-Vegeta has too much of Vegeta’s pride and rugged individualism, so he refuses to accept help from Copy-Grylls, nor will he use his goopy power to just absorb Goku’s powers.  Instead, he insists on fighting Goku the old-fashioned way. Copy-Gryll tries to bring Copy-Vegeta back into line...

But Copy-Vegeta turns on him and kicks his ass.  This doesn’t kill this portion of the Commeson, but it does put an end to its ability to imitate Gryll.